Category Archives: Recreation

Lighthouses of Brazil

A friend of mine from the Coast Guard, Abe VanOeveren, now retired, loves to travel to Brazil. Knowing I was running this site he asked if I wanted photos of the lighthouses he comes across in his travels. My answer was a definite YES!

So, below are photos sent to me by Abe. I am appending his comments as he wrote them as I myself know nothing about the lighthouses, so I will leave it to my expert. He says:

Hi John, Last email you mentioned lights in pictures. I’m not sure if you have a place on your website for pictures of lights from other parts of the world. In my travels in Brazil I’m always on the lookout for lights big and small and sometimes it is surprising what shows up. They are not all grand structures like estevan or Father Point flying buttresses but there are some beauties on the Brazilian coast . . .I’ll send some pictures of lights in Brazil, but the files are big (3mb) and take forever to upload (also to download). Abe

 

P1000899
– photo © A. VanOeveren

 

P1000900
– photo © A. VanOeveren

This one is in Manaus; Brazil, on the shore of the Amazon river. It is attached to the Alfandega (customs house), and generally off limits to the public. I had to ask for permission to go into the walled compound to get close to it. Light probably has been shrouded for years, so its  hard to tell what kind of lens is inside. Continue reading Lighthouses of Brazil

Lighthouses of Prince Edward Island

Prince Edward Island Lighthouse Society

 Click on the partial map for the website.

From the Prince Edward Island Lighthouse Society comes this beautiful descriptive map of ALL the lighthouses (manned and automated) on Prince Edward Island (aka PEI), the smallest of Canada’s provinces. It consists of the main island and 231 minor islands. Altogether the entire province has a land area of 5,685.73 km2 (2,195.27 sq mi). (Wiki) Continue reading Lighthouses of Prince Edward Island

Reprint – In the Sanctuary of the White Bear

In the Sanctuary of the White Bear   Green Living   The Ecologist

A rare white ‘spirit bear’ in the BC temperate rainforest. Photo: Ian McAllister / pacificwild.org.

[su_quote cite=”To many who live here, this singular being is an emblem of the sacredness of the rain coast and its vulnerability. “][/su_quote]

In the sanctuary of the White Bear by Canadian Poet Lorna Crozier

17th November 2013

 

Poet Lorna Crozier vists the Great Bear Rainforest in BC, Canada and finds a fragile paradise imbued with myth, meaning and magic for local indigenous peoples.

The big grizzly is perched on the other side of the river bank, so near he can hear the rain on my jacket. He raises his blunt head and courses the air. Stares at me and sniffs.

Above the stench of rotting salmon, my smell has been drawn into a grizzly’s nostrils, through the nasal passages inside his long snout. Part of me now lives inside the mind of an omnivorous animal whose Latin name ends with horribilis.

The bear is here for the salmon, who have returned to the rivers of their birth to spawn and die. We’re here for the bears.

Photographer/filmmaker Ian McAllister has joined my husband Patrick and me on our first morning to help introduce us to his home turf, the Great Bear Rainforest, a tract of land that follows B.C.’s coastline from the tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska Panhandle. He and his wife Karen run the Pacific Wild conservation group to protect this astonishing piece of wildness that they’ve known intimately for over twenty years.

The largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, the traditional territory of the Kitasoo / Xai’xais First Nation, this region is only two short flights from Vancouver. But we are as far from a city, as far from ordinary life, as you can get. . . . more

This essay originally appeared in Toque & Canoe, and in Counterpunch.

[private]With seven others, we’ve been bounced across the ocean to our riverside destination in an old forestry boat. At home, most of us can’t spare the time to meet a friend for coffee, but here we’ll wait side by side, motionless and quiet, for several hours in the drenching rain.

Two guides armed only with pepper spray keep watch over us. They assure us they’ve never had to use it. Their confidence and my excitement make me tuck any fears I have away – into a back jeans pocket I can’t reach under my layers of hoodie, vest, jacket and rain gear.

All of us crouch with binoculars and cameras, careful not to sink our knees into a salmon. Hundreds of them, tossed by bears from the river, are turning into a foul mush. When the grizzly appears again, about twenty feet across from us on the other shore, we know Ian is getting the best pictures. We keep snapping anyway.

Our group is staying at the First Nations-owned and operated Spirit Bear Lodge located on the ocean’s edge in the fishing village of Klemtu.

Through its tall windows, we scan what looks like a National Geographic documentary. Pointing out seals and eagles, we and the other guests, most of them from Europe, crowd around the window like kids around an ice-cream truck.

Maybe if we’re lucky, at dusk, we’ll see one of the wolves unique to the western coast. Along with deer, they catch salmon.

The lodge is modeled on the traditional long house and it’s named after the elusive white bear called the ‘Spirit Bear‘.

Raven, the traditional story goes, made one out of every 10 black bears white to remind us of the ice age. This unique creature is here to make us grateful: the world wasn’t always as green and lush as it is today.

Every morning, rainforest life generously comes to meet us. Five senses aren’t enough to take it all in.

Isn’t this what Canada’s all about? Barely inhabited, out-of-the-way places that remind humans who we were before we became so fearful, so tame? Before we became so destructive as a species?

As twilight falls, we return to the lodge by boat for its scrumptious dinners, the halibut so fresh that the name of the man who hooked it and the date he did are listed on the menu. Manager Tim McGrady – fierce in his love of this watery ecosystem – greets us at the dock and asks what we’ve seen.

Over the 12-foot-long cedar dinner table, Patrick and I go on and on about a mother and a baby humpback, the mother slapping her tail repeatedly on the taut skin of the ocean. Was it whales who invented drumming?

Five minutes later, we would see two Orcas knife through the water. Then we understood. The humpback was warning her nearby pod and scaring off these skillful hunters who might have targeted her calf.

The next day, I travel up the ocean channel to an old crab apple grove where a spirit bear might appear. Patrick chooses a shorter trip. In my case, the spirit bear lives up to its other name – ghost bear – and stays invisible.

But Patrick sees a grizzly flop on her back to feed her triplets, so close a camera catches a drop of milk on her nipple when one cub tumbles off her belly.

I’m jealous. But an afternoon boat trip on the Pacific makes up for what I missed.

Patrick and I watch two humpbacks blow an elongated oval of bubbles to trap shrimp-like krill. The whales then rise to the surface through the centre of this airy net, their magnificent mouths wide open, catching their meal.

Looking down a whale’s gullet makes me shiver. Boy, how small I am!

On the day a storm blows in and the boats can’t go out, Doug Neasloss, the visionary behind the lodge, invites us into the Big House in Klemtu and tells us the history of his people and the work they’re doing to protect their homeland.

In 2012, they declared their territory off-limits to trophy hunting of bears (even though the B.C. gov’t allows it). Then, with other Coastal First Nations, they made a film about a grizzly skinned and left to rot in a field, head and paws carried out past a sign banning such hunting.

The timing of the film is sadly relevant. Just before its release this past September, The Vancouver Sun published photos of a defenceman with the NHL’s Minnesota Wild – how ironic is that name? – holding the severed head of a grizzly he shot in a rainforest estuary.

The tenderness the Kitasoo / Xai’xais feel for their culture and their home territory is palpable. We hear it in our skippers, who are all from Klemtu, and in Sierra, a grade 11 student who’s one of the lodge’s guides-in-training.

Every night in bed, she reads one of her people’s stories, and in her dreams, she’s in the story, walking among the humans and the creatures of the forest. The humans and the animals are talking to one another.

Many believe the Spirit Bear has special powers, she tells me.

Having sunk into the moss floors of the forests, having been held in the mind of a grizzly and the eye of a whale, I’m O.K., this time, to have missed Raven’s reminder of the ice age.

I’m sure there’s another reason for its creation, a reason that will sink in after I’m back home.

To many who live here, this singular being is an emblem of the sacredness of the rain coast and its vulnerability. They fear for potential oil spills in the area.

To them, this nightmare is a real and present danger as various levels of the Canadian government debate the sanctioning of oil tanker traffic through this delicate ecosystem.

They imagine the white bear soaked in oil, rivers and estuaries thick with crude muck, salmon thrashing in its slick, and orcas smeared with bitumen.

I’ve fallen under the spell of this rare sanctuary where salmon are born and die, where wolves have learned to swim and fish, and where mist may turn suddenly into the lumbering body of a mystic bear.

How diminished, how thin-hearted, how lonely we are as a species if there aren’t safe places in the world where the unique, the magnificent, can survive.

Postscript: The day after Patrick and I arrived home, Oliver from Germany, one of our companions who’d stayed an extra day at Spirit Bear Lodge, wrote that he did see a Spirit Bear. It stepped out of the moss-draped trees onto the stones of a river where he was set up with his camera on the other side. How thrilled he was. He’s seen what few people in his country, what few people in Canada or in the world, have ever seen. Check out thislink to his images

Lorna Crozier is a Canadian poet and holds the Head Chair in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria.

This essay originally appeared in Toque & Canoe, and in Counterpunch.[/private]

Mise Tales Thirty

 

For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.

Sisiman's Lighthouse, Bataan

 

A lovely Black & White (B&W) shot of Sisiman lighthouse in Sisiman Bay, Mariveles, Bataan, Philippines. Click the photo for a larger version on Flickr

 

 

Pink St Mary's Lighthouse by the Chicken Wing - FlickrAnd another photo from Flickr of St. Mary’s lighthouse in Whitley Bay in the north east of England which is currently being lit up pink as part of the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign. Again, please click the photo for a larger version.

 

 

Image2And a third Flickr photo showing a lighthouse at night. This one is unique in that it show the loom of the light – the wide skirt or beam of light that follows the lens as it rotates. This is usually not visible at a distance, but only in the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse at night due to dust particles and/or fog in the air.

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lighthouse plansDo you want to build a lighthouse for outdoors or indoors? Loads of plans available on this GoBookee website. I noticed the top three plans required credit card validation (no charges) but I am leery of this so skipped them. The rest of the links are for PDF documents which download freely – lots of plans and information to keep you busy all winter! The photo at the left is just one of many.

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Plum Beach LighthouseDeadline looming for Plum Beach Lighthouse license plate orders – what a way to raise money for your favourite lighthouse!

Oct 29, 2013 6:04 AM CST By Bryan Monaghan – email NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. 

If you’re interested in getting a Plum Beach Lighthouse license plate in time for Christmas, get your order in soon.

The Friends of the Plum Beach Lighthouse say orders must be in by the end of October, to get the plates made in time.

Proceeds from the plates help pay for operations at the lighthouse, including upkeep and yearly inspections.

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Angels Gate

 

100th Anniversary of the Angels Gate Lighthouse, San Pedro, California,  also in Wikipedia

 

 

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logoNorthern Lighthouse Project

The Astronomy North Society will work with partners and sponsors to design, install and maintain a series of rooftop lighthouses in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. These lighthouses will be used to raise local awareness of space weather, geomagnetic storms, and the science and splendor of the aurora borealis. . . . more

Beacon for Northern lights

Yellowknife will have something other than the aurora lighting up the night sky starting tonight.

Five concrete lighthouses have been installed this week by Astronomy North at high-traffic areas of the city which will shine either blue, green, or red, depending on solar activity. The non-profit organization calls the initiative the Northern Lighthouse Project.

“On Friday night, Yellowknife will become the first community in the world to have its own space weather alert system – an early warning system for geomagnetic storms,” said James Pugsley, president of Astronomy North.

These storms determine the intensity of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern lights.

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Is anybody interested in a job as a Sous Chef in a lighthouse? Lighthouse Restaurant that is!

Senior Sous Chef – Parkers’ Lighthouse (Long Beach)

Parkers Lighthouse

 Parkers’ Lighthouse in Long Beach, CA has an excellent culinary opportunity for a seasoned Sous Chef who will provide strong support for back of the house operations. We offer competitive compensation, benefit plans (medical, dental, 401(k)), and professional development.

JOB REQUIREMENTS: . . . see more

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A Nice Lighthouse Hotel in Subic Bay

The Lighthouse Marina Resort
The Lighthouse Marina Resort – photo retlkpr

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In early 2010 I made my third trip to the Philippines, alone, and for six (6) weeks. One of my first stops, besides Manila, was Subic Bay. A friend I had never met, Dave Starr picked me up at my hotel in Manila and drove me to my hotel in Subic Bay – not the one mentioned here. Continue reading A Nice Lighthouse Hotel in Subic Bay

Mise Tales Twenty-Nine

 

For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.

A beautiful view of the Nazare lighthouse at Praia do Norte outside the Portuguese fishing village of Nazare, Portugal. It is back dropped by what may be the world’s highest surfing wave.Article and photos on the National Post Sports page.

Nazare Lighthouse at Praia do Norte outside the Portuguese fishing village of Nazare
Nazare Lighthouse at Praia do Norte outside the Portuguese fishing village of Nazare

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Bravo! Coastal Rainforest in British Columbia Now Protected!

BC_Coast_Pacific_Wild

 

This photo above from Pacific Wild shows only a part of what is being protected

The title for this article comes from a news release by the Treehugger website on July 27, 2006.

nrdc-bear-bc-02Their article from 2006 said: “The government of British Columbia has agreed to protect more than 5 million acres of the Great Bear coastal rainforest. It is home to the world’s last white-colored Spirit Bears “

The Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) was also quoted in the article.

The thousand-year-old red cedars, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and balsam blanketing this swath of rugged coastline provide vital habitat for wolves, eagles, grizzlies and several hundred Spirit Bears. Found only in the Great Bear Rainforest, the Spirit Bear gets its white color from a recessive gene occurring in roughly one of every ten black bears born in the forest. The Spirit Bear figures prominently in the mythology and culture of several indigenous communities — known as First Nations in Canada — that have inhabited the Great Bear Rainforest for thousands of years.

The new conservation agreement, negotiated directly by the British Columbia government and the region’s First Nations, will protect an unspoiled area twice the size of Yellowstone National Park from logging and ensure the right of the First Nations to manage their traditional territories. In addition, the agreement establishes new, more stringent standards for logging in the rainforest outside of the protected area. “The accord will preserve this irreplaceable rainforest but still allow for controlled logging to sustain local economies,” said NRDC senior attorney Susan Casey-Lefkowitz. “It is a new model that shows we can save our most valuable wildlands and our communities at the same time.”

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A Day at the Beach

I posted an article on a book that shows you what makes up beach sand,  A Grain of Beach Sand, and a lot of it is shells and glass. The larger pieces of glass are collected and use in jewelry as in the story Nootka Sea Glass.

Cobalt Blue Earrings Perfect Pair on Long Earring Wires
Cobalt Blue Earrings

Now another company I have found called A Day at the Beach has an online page and also a Facebook page. They specialize in earrings, bracelets, pendants, and necklaces with also a chance to special order items.

Pictured here is a pair of cobalt blue sea glass earings from their earrings page.

There is also a page on necklaces and bracelets.

For their custom designs check out this page which shows off many different variations.

Next time you are at the beach keep an eye out for sea glass pieces which are rounded off and safe to handle. They come in many brilliant colours only limited by the colours of the glass bottles from which they are made. Glass is so much prettier than plastic on the beach don’t you think?

 

More Messages in Bottles!

When I wrote the story Message in a Bottle I was just using what information I had on hand. The last quotation in the story was from a news source on the British Columbia (BC) coast where a Tofino, BC man found a one hundred and seven (107) year old message in a bottle.

I wanted to keep that story updated but the local media seemed to have lost track of the story as the man wants to donate?/sell? the bottle to a museum without opening the bottle.

While Googling the story of the Tofino man I found the news video of his find on Youtube . . .

Message in bottle from 1906

Continue reading More Messages in Bottles!

Now You Have to Cook Them!

After posting the story Then You’ve Got to Clean Them! I obtained permission from Pacific Wild to use some photos showing the cooking of the salmon by the people in Bella Bella, British Columbia (BC). These pictures just made me drool. The people were cooking planked salmon which has to be one of the tastiest ways of cooking salmon over an open fire. See the photo and gallery below:

Planked Salmon - Bella Bella - Pacific Wild
photo courtesy of Pacific Wild

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The photos above are in no set order – just as I downloaded them. On the lighthouse we used to cook the salmon many ways but this was the most fun, and the tastiest. Continue reading Now You Have to Cook Them!