View from an Airboat (October 2009)

NOT a Green-Back Heron!

DUH Me!

It's an American Bittern. 

Thanks for the above correction go to:

      J. Andrew Boyle

Visit his bird-banding blogsite at:

http://wekivaband.blogspot.com

Gators in the Swamp. No airboat ride is complete

    without oodles of gators, is my opinion.

      Tri-Color Heron

                 Anhinga drying his wings.

                 Can you see his green eye?

      Another anhinga, this time in flight.

    Anyone know what those other birds are???

        A Cypress Tree.

     See it's "knees" over to the right?

        For everyone who's hung with me so far...

                        Another Gator!!!!

                               Yay!

    

        Thanks for looking at my airboat ride photo's.

Beach Meditation

Hi All!
I took this picture the other morning at sunrise.

Can't get it out of my head. 
I keep going back and looking at it.

I am just so jealous. 

Wouldn’t it be great to get up before dawn, throw on some sweats, drive to the beach, grab a latte to-go, then find the ultimate sweet spot on the beach to meditate and watch a glorious sunrise over the Atlantic?

My version of heaven, indeed.

Okay, this is not an undoable event, that’s for sure.

This is all it would take to realize this dream.

          Checklist for Meditating on the Beach at Sunrise

1. Don’t stay up all night on the laptop or ipod touch.
2. Set the alarm for 5 am and don’t hit the snooze button, even once.
3. Turn on my internet radio station, Pandora,  www.pandora.com ,  and choose one of my custom radio stations.
4. Fire up Everly Brothers or maybe Jimmy Buffett would work.
5. Shower (details deleted, we all supposedly know how this is done).
6. Apply appropriate Beach Meditation make-up.
• I am not a meditation purist, but I do have the idea that make-up free would be the proper way to go. I plan to start slowly and work up to that...someday...maybe. 
• Then again, trust me on this one...you do not want to see this face without make-up.
7. Pick a suitable t-shirt from my eclectic collection (I’ll post pics someday....too ambitious for me at the moment).
8. Jeans is all I wear. I was kidding about the sweats. It sounded cool, but I’d look like a Twinkie in a blanket. Not the fashion statement I wish to convey.
9. Feed and water the birds. (Pics, names, cute stuff they do...will post later).
10. Jump in the car (well, slide carefully in and put on seatbelt...if you want full disclosure, you’ve come to the right place).
11. Drive to nearest fast food drive-thru du jour for a portable-friendly breakfast food choice.
12. Go to nearest designer coffee drive-thru and add a yummy, comfort-food...I’m-treating-myself-special-because-I-deserve-it iced latte (the mocha swirl ones that taste like hershey syrup right out of the can when you don’t swirl to mix up the ingredients and you keep the straw at the bottom where the good stuff is.....mmmmmmm....and it hits your bloodstream and screams down your spine like a shot of some drug. Well, I don’t do drugs, so this is as an accurate description as I can come up with from personal experience...sorry bout that).
13. Note: you notice the coffee point above is the longest. Well, that’s because it’s so damned IMPORTANT! (That’s the caffeine yelling there. I would never, ever do that unless under the EVIL CAFFEINE influence).
14. Drive to beach, put down mat so butt doesn’t get damp, breathe deeply, chant a mantra and meditate, watching the gorgeous sunrise spectacularly occurring in front of me.
15. What the hell! The sun’s a quarter of the way up in the sky! What time is it anyway! Crumb! It's 9 am!
16. Try again tomorrow: note to self...set alarm to about 3 am to make this work.

AAAAHHHH. It still sounds like a good idea....