Pakistan

Rock and rubble and sand, insufferable cold and more rock, rubble and sand; add to that impossible environment a supercharged helping of religious Islamic insanity and you've got Pakistan - he called it hell!

He was a soldier who'd been stationed in hell. But his time was up and he was now leaving that barron, treeless, lifeless pile of worthless real estate. Amazingly he was still breathing! 

The C-5M airforce transport plane carrying him and his fellow soldiers up and away from the filthy pit of Pakistan was in the air now. God how good it felt. Euphoric was the word. But the damned zealots on the ground with their Russian M-16's wanted them downed and dead. Just like they wanted All infidels dead. Infidels being, of course, any and all who dared to hold a religious belief different from their Islamic, hate filled, extremism.

Their bullets riddled the plane, punching holes in various spots along the sides. Miraculously the engines were never hit and not a single bullet that shot through the hull ever found a man!

The plane and it's cargo of soldiers lifted into the air and shortly afterward landed safely.

The ordeal was otherworldly like he had been on the set of a sci-fi movie. Sentenced to die on a far away planet filled with brainwashed religious zombies now he and his buddies had escaped. He'd always heard war was hell. Pakistan proved it.

Stay alert for Natures's wonders

September 28, 2022

Cedar Key, Florida 

John Muir once said "In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks". Today Cedar Key was no exception to Muirs observation. While Hurricane Ian was coming ashore in South Florida with 7 to 8 foot storm surge waves; I walked on a sandy sea bed here in Cedar Key.

High and dry

 The wonder of nature is that both the devastating storm surge and the empty sea bed are direct results of the same storm named Ian.

The storm circulates in a counter cloc kwise motion. My location on the north central Gulf Coast island of Cedar Key is getting the storm winds out of the east. 

Heart Cockle

This wind direction literally pushes the waters back out to sea creating vast areas of dry sea bed where there is normally water. 

Stranded Atlantic Toadfish

Today the tide has not returned at all through two high tide cycles. Large expanses of empty sand bars are exposed. 

Eel

Wait, wait these, so called, empty sea beds are empty to the casual observer but to the guy who looks more closely nature, as Muir suggested comes through with far more than we seek.

                        Hermit Crab

               Lightening Whelk

                      Auger

                Atlantic Toad Fish

   Limilus polyphemus-Horseshoe Crab

                    Crown Conch

                Aquatic Plants

        Hermit living in a Moon Snail
The storm called Ian in all his fury brought damage & destruction ashore in South Florida but in Cedar Key today it gave us a gift. The opportunity to get a glimpse of some amazing marine life. It's true, nature in all of its wonder, always gives us more than we seek.

Of Love & the Passage of Time

Young Love. Did ya ever consider how it is with love? Its one of the few things in life that doesnt age. Love is timeless, it didn't grow old like we did over the past lifetime.

Love is changeless. Look around you; most everything has changed with the passage of time. Not love.

Love may have grown, deepened it may have matured over the years. But it hasn't aged, not one day, and it has not changed, not one bit. No, not love.

Love may have taken some hits along the way. It may have been battered some as time marched along with us in tow. 

But guess what our love is as young as it was that day several years ago when we too were young.

Love. It's one of the few things that didnt grow old along with us; and in our case it didn't die.

Young love. Here's to the next forty-nine.