Curious Notions

I’ve gotten behind on posting my daily pictures, in part because last weekend was Fall Break and I spent that time taking my first trip to New England. Some exciting things have happened since the last post, but I’ll let the photos do some of the talking.

Joe and I left town after work on Friday and began our drive to Massachusetts. It’s always interesting to see central New York outside of Ithaca–while you’re in Ithaca, it’s easy to forget how peculiar and isolated we are. The countryside in this picture is pretty typical of this part of New York and reminds me quite a lot of the part of Arkansas in which I grew up.

We arrived at Joe’s house fairly late on Friday night and rose early to drive with his parents to their place in Maine. The weather was fantastic when we got there, prompting Joe and I to take the canoe out and paddle five miles or so on the lake–far enough to say that we paddled from Maine to New Hampshire and back. This particular shot–as one might guess from the awkward angle–was taken over my shoulder but is lovely nonetheless.

I discovered that the lake provided some fantastic reflection pictures, especially near sunset. Since few boats were out at that time (in October at least!), the water was incredibly still, allowing interesting shots like this one, where I managed to capture the trees, the sky, and the bottom of the lake in one shot without any Photoshopping to create the overlay effect.

After our first day on the lake, the weather turned much more autumn-like. On our final day, we woke to a slow rain with mist rising from the water. I took this photo from the boat dock, between chores to close up the cottage for winter before we drove back to Massachusetts. I was sad to leave the solace.

Before we left his hometown, Joe insisted on taking me to a farm that sells homemade ice cream. He had egg nog and blueberry; I tried a scoop of pumpkin and one of maple walnut. It was quite yummy. There was a pen nearby with these fellows and a cow; the goats were pretty amusing to watch because they were constantly trying to all be on top of the tallest rock at the same time, like children playing King of the Hill.

An unfortunate side effect of Fall Break ending is work started again. I wasn’t ready to leave the office until well after dark, so all of the photos I got on the 10th were nightshots. This particular one is a mash-up of several long exposures at the corner where College Ave. meets Campus Rd. I think some of its companions will appear in my gallery at some point, too.

The 11th was one of those autumn days where it simply rains steadily for the entire day. On such days, an extra waterfall appears in Cascadilla Gorge next to the engineering quad.

People complain a lot about Ithaca’s lack of sunlight, but one advantage of having clouds is getting interesting lighting around sunset.

One of the unusual aspects of Ithaca is that we are home to a Buddhist monastery. As a result, it is entirely normal to see Buddhist monks walking around Ithaca. For the past month, these monks have been building a sand mandala at the Johnson Museum of Art as part of the festivities surrounding the Dalai Lama’s visit to Ithaca. This photo is a detail of part of the edge of the mandala; I’ll post more photos of the entire mandala later. The precision and detail in the shapes and shading of the mandala are absolutely exquisite. The mandala itself represents a palace in which a deity is housed. After the mandala was completed, the monks held a dissolution ceremony, in which they swept all of the painstakingly-placed sand together, processed with it to Beebe Lake, and poured it into the water to release the deity and allow it to disseminate its blessings upon the world.