Sunday, August 11, 2013

Hatcher Pass

     Yesterday Dad, Hanna, several friends of ours who will remain nameless and secret, and myself, visited the magnificent and majestic natural wonder just minutes from where I live; Hatcher Pass.
Now, despite it being named after a person, it is not Hatcher’s Pass, even though that is what everyone everywhere calls it.

     Anyway.

     We parked the car and walked up a mountain to a lake that a friend of mine who will remain secret and nameless knew about, and had been to. As we walked I was struck by how crazy nature is, just the sheer amount of detail in nature blew my mind, the tiny, tiny swirls of plants that grow in hard to access locations.
   
      I have always sort of suspected that nature and the earth is a sort of trick, a simulation provided for the amusement of people, that the only reason anything exists is so that people can go and look at it but you go to a place like hatchers pass and that’s so obviously not the case. You walk up to any rock and you stare it and no matter how long you stare you just keep. Noticing. Details. If I were to recreate this somehow it would take me so much time, and so much energy and would be so. Boring. Our nameless and secret friends are religious and I felt so, sad for them. I mean, I understand. It is so, so easy when presented with something so strange and complex that your mind can’t handle it to just push it aside and say, well of course, God made all this so that I may see it and it is great. But whatever. Isn’t this supernatural being great! God is the amazing thing here.

      That is the wrong thing. You’re still stuck in that mind set of ‘Of course everything exists so that I may see it’ and you are not seeing the thing that is in front of you. Because the world is not a simulation for your benefit it just is there. Lichen will continue to grow on rocks and create the most insane patterns whether you walk past it or not and that is awe inspiring. Rocks can be perfect cubes in nature and that is so weird. There are tiny black flowers and it is all basically pointless and that is amazing. Those flowers and massive forests aren’t growing so that they may be good plants and then go to heaven or something, trees don’t have a concept of anything because they are trees and that is okay.

      The concept that the world is massive and insanely detailed and doesn’t exist just for me is a thought I try to have regularly but it is hard to do that. And when this concept is presented in a way that you cannot ignore and you cannot deny and when this all happens in a very low-oxygen environment it is the craziest thing. Awesome in the true sense of the word.


     So here are some pictures.


As you drive up you notice how intense everything is. How green the ground, how blue the sky. 



Hey, our town’s down there. 

Sunday, August 04, 2013

On Tardigrades



     SO back in may I enrolled in a biology class at the college near here, I needed the biology credit and man if biology isn’t half hard. It nearly killed me learning about chemistry and cell organelles, {Fun Fact: All of your energy is created by teeny tiny turbines in all your cells. Literally turbines. Anyway.}
     For the final part of the class I had to write a paper {4–6 Pages, double spaced} cited to APA standards with at least six references. The topic was up to me but it had to be biology related. I’d never written a paper before, and I’d never even heard of APA.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Time Travel



Hey! I got ahold of a time travel device but it only has the one shot left, so this is what I decided to do. 


—Jacob


Sunday, April 14, 2013

How to Photography



Step up step up!
Have YOU ever wanted to take pictures of things but just didn’t know where to START?
ALLOW ME!

For the next couple of weeks watch this playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLStygM4i5VdDzVFqNwO_J1CjDaJcKIPRn
And subscribe for ensured delivery of subsequent installments!


Wednesday, April 03, 2013

There Was a Snake in Our Yard

SO I was out in our yard, here in Arizona, taking some pictures and walking the fence, very reasonable things to do in your own yard.
I walked towards the corner of the yard, I’m maybe a meter from the fence now and I see a tree branch.
Tree branch moves, just a tiny bit.
It’s a snake.
I run, terrified, to the back door, the sliding glass back door, the locked sliding glass back door.
After what felt like hours of terrified tapping on the glass Mom comes up and lets me in, staring at me like I’m an insane person.
I tell her there’s a snake, she goes over to look, I get my zoom lens and follow her.

After careful review of the photos in the field we determine it’s a gopher snake, harmless.
Unless you’re a  mouse, bat, or gopher.
It only eats tiny mammals, turns out.

Now the snake’s in the corner, he tries to slither out the crack in the wall he obviously came in by.
He has eaten a mouse or other small mammal whilst here, he’s fat and full and stuck.

Now here’s a video of what happend next:










Tuesday, February 26, 2013

GE Sponsored Tour, Day Two

The second day had a lot more stuff in it.



Portrait: Photographing a photographer photographing a photographer.
Included: The first time the staff photographer smiled. {The guy on the right.}

Monday, February 25, 2013

Lunch in Sedona

 Dad if you didn’t know, has a plane.
And for the first time since we’ve started doing this it’s in AZ with us and also not broken.
So a couple days ago Dad said “Hey we’re flying to lunch. In Sedona.”


Takeoff.

GE Sponsored Tour, Day One

THE whole point of this trip was something oil–related, I think there was a conference?
{Dad’s part in this was that he and his team were buying spare parts from GE.} Because there were so many people there GE sponsored a tour for the “Spouses” {Really the wives/Girlfriends. And Me.} Spouses is in quotes because I was the only guy {On the Tour} I saw.
 There were a bunch of organised things, but I only went on the tours of the last two days.


We were on Tour #1. 


Portrait: This was quite the official outfit, there was a guide and a guard and a photographer.
This is the photographer, I took a couple of pictures of him because of his grumpy face.

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