Wilmington NC

Our daughters have been away all summer... one in Europe and one in Nashville, Tennessee. Every vacation for the past 23 years has been with our daughters. This year we decided to take a few days for ourselves. We'll take a family vacation in a few weeks, but this one was ours... and it has been nice... very nice!

Both of us love the beach. Both of us love fossil hunting. Neither of us had ever been to Wilmington, so we chose all three. Fossil sharks' tooth hunting inland in Aurora, North Carolina and onshore on Topsail, Wrightsville and Pleasure Islands [keys of the Outer Banks of North Carolina].

This image is from Wrightsville Beach, 5 miles from Wilmington.

peace brother

I've been tagged by Anthony www.flickr.com/photos/abennett23/, so here goes:

01 -- One world. One people. One nation. One tribe. One family. We all inhabit our one world together. Why.... why can't we just get along!?!

02 -- Two become one. Sherri and I became one almost 25 and a half years ago.

03 -- Three in one [The Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit].

04 -- Four directions. From my Cherokee heritage, the four directions are: North [blue; sadness, defeat; winter--survival, waiting]; East [red; victory, power; spring--reawakening after a long sleep]; South [white; peace, happiness, serenity; summer--time of plenty]; and West [black; death; winter--final harvest, end of life's cycle].

[05] Five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste.

[06] Six children in my immediate family. I am the sixth.

[07] Seven is the perfect number. It represents fullness, completeness. There are seven days in a full week. God rested on the seventh day. In the Bible, there are many references to seven: seven churches, seven scrolls, forgive a man seven times seven times.

[08] Eight planets [by the new astronomer's rules].

[09] Nine planets [by my rules]. You go Pluto!

[10] Ten digits: ten fingers; ten toes.

I tag the last ten flickr friends to comment on my photos [Anthony is exempt since he tagged me]. Anyone else who would like to play along with this tag is welcome to do so.

Visit my flickr stream.

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The company for which I work has a very nice, award-winning courtyard, complete with a waterfall and a meandering stream [all man-made]. Trees, flowers and shrubbery line the cobblestone walkways. This image is a reflection of some of the low-lying trees and flowering plants in one of the small ponds in the courtyard. I totally enjoy walking through the courtyard. My daughter sometimes brings her friends here on digital photograph field trips. During the spring all the flowers are in bloom and they provide a beautiful backdrop for portraits.

lookin out my backdoor

I visit this nature preserve so often that sometimes I feel like I am looking out my backdoor. From this deck overlooking the wetlands I know when a new tree has fallen or when a beaver has been at work or when a new baby owl learns to fly. I know the right time of day to visit to catch the best shadows.

I know the people that visit here often. There's the couple who both lost their jobs last September and they come here every day, because it is free and stress-relieving. I know the man who brings Oscar [his aging bulldog] with him three times a week. He leaves Oscar on the observation deck while he briskly walks the boardwalk three times up and back from the parking lot. I know the couple with five children [all under ten] who come here every Friday to count water moccasins... I can hear them coming 500 yards away [the family, not the moccasins]. And then there's the elderly bird-watching couple who visit every Saturday morning, binoculars in hand, hoping to catch a glimpse of a white egret or a blue heron. These folks are like my neighbors, dropping by to visit my back porch ever once in a while.

William B Clark Nature Preserve
Nature Conservancy
Rossville, Tennessee

You can view more of my photos on Flickr. Just click the headline of this post.

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boards

The light on this walk through the wetlands of the Clark Preserve was vibrant and brilliant.