TRAVEL: Turneffe Island, Belize

 Turneffe Island Resort is set on a small caye  the size of a few football fields, at the southern end of the world's second largest reef.  It's a comfortable, informal group of cottages facing the morning sunrise.

It's popular with scuba divers and fisherman, who go out for permit and bonefish with flyrod.  I came here because the snorkel boat goes out twice a day, coffee is delivered to the room every morning, and it's far far away.

Wind energizes and cools, and the palms click as I sat upstairs on my screened porch watching sky and sea. I never felt like I was indoors. The enjoyment of being outdoors and soothed by a warm breeze was almost continuous.   A screened outdoor shower was a fine pleasure, listening to birds call.   

I am compelled by the existence of islands in vast blue waters. From the air high over the Pacific I have watched as the plane, unerring, gained Hawai'i, Yap, Okinawa, The Philipines, Wake, Guam, Moorea, Bora Bora. Then it aligned with the ribbon of runway that would grant me footfall upon these shelters, so only of the earth and not of the world. 

So quickly to be borne up, then step out, a few hours later, in a world so strange and different, so new and beautiful. I felt this in the early years as a flight attendant, the strength of acceleration during take off, and the feeling has never left me.

I love the sensation of floating, and the fluid body movements snorkeling requires.  A free dive is a metaphor for focused propelled searching.  The experience of immersion in warm liquid illumined translucent color permits me release and the opportunity to seek.

Cloud mountains were on the horizon at sunrise – the sun rose behind them, pale fire igniting the edges until it gained ascendency at the cloud’s top, and then glory reigned for another day in paradise.   My room was on the second floor, facing east, and each morning I sat on the screened porch watching this while I read the paper, and drank my coffee. 

How beautiful the lines of blue in the water and sky – how can one horizontal line be so endless , still, and active simultaneously?

THE NAMING
"Names can name no lasting name". (Tao the Ching I)

Each of these creatures moves me profoundly.  I find them, and I see them, innocent in their sentience.

Smooth trunkfish - one of the most comical fish on the reef, along with puffers - this guy simply floated in front of me about 4 feet away, rotating fully about 4 times so I could take lots of pictures of him at every angle.  I was very delighted and grateful at my good fortune. Of all the fish, these seem to be aware of my presence, regarding me with a gentle, politely inquiring gaze.

Spotfin butterfly fish - usually seen in pairs, they are charmers, and the variety of coloration found in butterfly fish is delightful, but purposeful, always. Nature is not intentionally decorative, and I wonder how each design serves the fish's safety and existence. 

French angelfish,intermediate phase

Spotted drum - the long fin is curling up as it swims here - it usually looks like a v-shape.

Banded butterfly fish

French angelfish - a wonderful black and gold fish, elegant and thin, surpassing any bold abstract jewelry design.

Blue chromis (about 2") like seeing large fireflies, these dart about the reef, the blue color forever elusive and unachievable on the palette.

Dusky?squirrelfish (not elusive as they are in Tahiti)

Glasseye snapper - I found this myself

Drum or goatfish? - seems to rest on its front fins on the ocean floor

Gray angelfish - a complement to the French and queen angels, it's coloring is restrained and rich.

Hogfish

THE BLUE HOLE

In 2012, Discovery Channel ranked the Great Blue Hole as number one on its list of "The 10 Most Amazing Places on Earth". It's also  a part of the larger Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a World Heritage Site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).The Blue Hole is 410 feet circular sinkhole limestone formation with underwater stagtites and stalagmites.  Around the edge the reef forms a circle about 150 yards across. Jacques Cousteau made it even more famous with a documentary film.

Snorkeling around the inner side of the reef that has grown around the hole was a special pleasure because the water is even warmer and very calm. Visibility is very good, and one views the coral structures and fish as in a gallery instead of looking down at them.  Then, off to the opposite side, the color shifts to an amazing shimmering blue. (Internet photo)

Half Moon Caye
is the site of a large breeding colony of red-footed boobys, with about 4000 of them nesting in the ziricote trees. Their guano nurtures a littoral forest, a habitat which is declining seriously in the western Caribbean. It's also home to the Belize Atoll Gecko, which is endemic to the reef system. The coconut palms are not indigenous to the islands, but were imported by colonials.  

The lionfish is a spectacular creature, but a serious threat to the reef fish of the Belize barrier reef system.  It is not native and was introduced into the area probably from home aquariums in Florida.  It is voracious, and  a single lionfish, in one study, could reduce the juvenile fish populations by almost 80% in just five weeks.  

I was very surprised that my snorkeling didn't find as many fish as I have seen in other locations. I saw many juveniles, but we saw many more fish in Tahiti and Hawai'i, I think.  I suppose the lionfish is the reason, as we saw 4 or 5 of them during 10 snorkel excursions.

Queen angelfish - the movie star of the reefs.  Sighting of  these is always a spectacular event.  They are exquisitely bright with extraordinary blue and yellow colors that waver and radiate in the sunlight.

I saw several reef sharks, but at a distance and they quickly swam off when they became aware of us.

Rock beauty, adult - another special fish, it is boldly colored.

Blue tang school - a dark fish with bright neon blue fin edges that glint with movement and sun

Scrawled cowfish - A new fish for me - this guy posed for me- he's about 18" long, and has little horns over his eyes. I found them quite funny, too.

Trumpetfish (photo by JV, my snorkel guide) a wonderful skinny fish that sometimes hangs in vegetation vertically to feed and hide

Squid - we saw a group of these floating serenely - the spots on their backs are like tiny white-blue LEDs

Face, spiny spider crab (photo by JV) - my snorkel jefe, JV, was a Criol ex-commercial diver who found many wonderful creatures hiding while we were reef cruising. He loved my new camera.

Spiny spider crab (photo by JV) 

Spiny lobster - we saw dens of 4 or 5 of these several times, and also saw a slipper lobster.

Marbled grouper - this species is reduced on the reefs from overfishing

Scorpion fish - can you see his eye and body hidden on the sandy bottom? He looks rather cuddly, despite his prickly body.

Yellowtail damselfish - these small fish also flash light blue pindots on their dark bodies as they dart among the coral tips - a favorite sighting (about 2-4")(internet photo)

Species list (not photographed, but viewed): sea pearl,jellyfish,web burfish,green and spotted morays, parrotfish, Spanish hogfish, yellow-headed wrasse, gobies, cushion starfish, graysby, coneys, Christmas tree worm, sea anemone, 4-eye butterfly fish, longsnout butterfly fish, grunts, tarpon, black durgon, barracuda, needlefish, Spanish lobster, slipper lobster, giant grouper, spotted goatfish, peacock flounder, crevally, porkfish, juvenile 3-spot damselfish, yellow-headed jawfish, stoplight parrotfish    

SPONGES AND CORALS

Sponge?  the corals and sponges all suggested abstracted ceramic sculptures from the California ceramics movement led by Peter Voulkos

Orange tube coral? Amazing bright orange clump - I cannot discern the projecting tubes however.

Pillar coral? - the tips are pale lavender

Common sea fan - but their ubiquitousness gives the golden and khaki corals the complement of violet and lavender, and their gentle undulations in the current are beautiful. 

Staghorn coral

Elkhorn coral

Southern stingray (photo by JV) a large one, taking his time. We saw these three times, and also an eagle and spotted ray.

Queen Triggerfish - so common in Tahiti and Hawai'i, this is the only one I saw in Belize.

JV, Turneffe's resourceful snorkel captain, took me out twice a day for two hours each trip. I think he was quite amused and  by my engagement with snorkeling.  I had told him this trip was on my "bucket list", as a shorthand way of explaining myself, and he devoted himself to making the snorkeling unforgettable, which it is and was.

To my delight, I had scheduled this trip during the full moon phase, and every night from my porch I watched the moonrise, the moonpath beckoning me to return to Belize.
 

Such intense and compressive distilled beauty here.  Purity of sun, wind, sea, sky, purity of light and cloud.  It is whole, of oneness.  

ART: The Rothko Chapel, Houston

On the way to Belize through Houston, I stopped over two days, drawn by the legendary Rothko Chapel and the museums there.   Art created as a means of transcendence has been vitally engaging for me, and the symbols that are made from this practice fascinate me - marks have the possibility of making images which will offer a transcendent experience.  Wrought from the materials of the earth, yet they have the power to reveal a deep and connected belief to timeless and godly existence, 

the themes of spiritual experience manifest in art throughout centuries and cultures.   For me,  even the process of attempting to make a transcendent object reveals a deep and connected belief to timeless and godly existence.  

The day I visited was overcast and thick with atmosphere and chill.  So, the oculus of the Chapel admitted only dim light which held the secrets of subtle color and form that Rothko placed in the 14 paintings.   

I moved around the chapel viewing the paintings obliquely, at a distance, from the floor, but could perceive only the deepest purple black tones, and perhaps a black green. Several had deep maroon borders which enclosed deeper shades, and the sides of the support were painted a brighter deep red.  On only one painting could I perceive the hovering rectangular mass, low on the canvas, of deep maroon-purple, on a deeper dark background.

For me, these paintings had become Black Paintings.  They were opaque; they manifested the nature of the Tao, unknowable.  They were solemn, even funereal in their gloomy aloof dignity.  I heard low cellos’ attenuated tones, not the high keening of fresh grief.  

I grieved again for the sufferings of the world, struggling for equipoise, to hold a personal space for repose while remaining engaged with action to push back against all removes goodness from our hearts and lives.  

FILM: Night Train to Munich, 1940

This film was on my list of classic films to see.  Yes, it reminded me of Hitchcock, but it's a bit clunky in retrospect.  I go easy on old films like this one because they met the production values of their time. That said, what's wonderful about this is the cinematography.  The shadows are the most inky velvet smothering shades of secrecy and portending doom.

It's an early film of directorCarol Reed, best known for Odd Man Out, and The Third Man.  Knowing this,  I could feel the kind of pacing he favored - a slow workup to something dreadful.

And of course, you'd want to see Rex Harrison play a Nazi.  His attenuated graceful form verifies that old chest nut about the attractiveness of a man in uniform, even though it's a Nazi one.  It's chilling when Paul Henreid's  character is exposed as a Nazi - I should have seen that coming.

I liked the plot twist here - the escape occurs at the beginning and then the good English scientist and his daughter are recaptured and must escape again.  There's amusement layered into the film with two English diplomats whose self-absorbtion is dismantled by their contacts with Nazi offices and come to Harrison's assistance  to enable an escape.

The final scene, made using  painted backdrops, involving escape on cable cars traversing a high mountain chasm between Switzerland and Germany, is stunning.  The mountains are hyper mountains, working to represent the possibility of a bright future and the intractable force of evil government.

The portrayal of the Nazis does little to reveal the scope of their monstrosity - they appear quite stereotypical, though one scene where a sadistic doctor perfunctorily and hypocritically examines prisoners to determine if they are fit for punishment is chilling

BOOK: Storm Front, by Jim Butcher

Genre splicing - a genre of its own; choose two or more and contrive to build an artwork. See, it's kind of like conjuring, or...magic? Jim Butcher's gumshoe is a wizard who's chosen to be a private detective to help the world. 

I loved the geeky, sophomoric Harry Dresden - named after several fictional wizards - character. He's a grown older Harry Potter/Hardy Boys avatar for perpetual adolescent readers who miss their visits to the young adult literature section of the library.

This novel is illustrative of what happens to a concept that lives symbiotically with others that from the gun are deeper and more fully resolved. They seem chalky, murky, with moments of quite good/funny material swirled with "lite" matter. (a cosmic particle released by pop culture entertainment that passes through the atmosphere at the speed of light and then crashes and burns). 

Like many crime genres, there's plenty of gooey gore, These scenes have a voyeur quality, like a kid whose sneaked into the porn section of the video store. 

If I liked "magic" better to begin with I might have liked this book more. It's actually quite entertaining, and it has a wry droll gosh-darn-it campy send-up tone that's amusing, especially at the beginning of the book. 

You could give it a try and it's worth doing it.  But here's the problem: there will never be another Harry Potter.  So it's like nibbling the broken chips in the bottom of the bag - fragments of yummy but without the satisfying salty crunch that the first few large chips on top deliver.

PHOTOS: All my wildflowers: Sierra Nevada

When I hike I usually hunt for birds, butterflies, and flowers.  And I carry identification books for them, too.  A walking library.  It's amusing to me how meaningful it is that I can make an identification from the text.

I always think of the parable of the Lilies in the New Testament - the Heavenly Father feeds them, but I  receive the gift of their presence in my sight.

my favorite wildflower

Agnew Meadows Wildflower Walk, Devil's