Recently in Nature and universe Category

This afternoon I look out of my upstairs window, and I am confronted by a mysterious formation of clouds with purple lining dashed against a dark blue sky.

What is nature trying to tell us?

One's first impression might be that this is an ominous foreboding of a cruel winter to come, as this has been predicted in the papers during the last week. Supposedly this time around the winter will be a severely cold and challenging climate.

I prefer to remain positive and consider this awesome window view as a friendly farewell from nature. Let's acknowledge her kind gesture of thanks, there she is urging us to look forward to the return of next years sunny and warm climate.

Just hang in there is all.

We had some pretty heavy snowfall during the night.

There's not a single cloud in the sky and it is perfectly blue. Nor is there a single contrail to be seen anywhere. This is indeed a very rare sight to experience, when the sky is normally criss-crossed by hundreds of fresh and fading airline streaks of vaporized air.

The sky seems so peaceful, but scary at the same time, making you feel religious just in case something foreboding is about to occur.

Viewing such tranquility, it is hard to imagine that no more than a couple thousand kilometers to the west there are violent eruptions spewing millions of tons of ash and rock into the sky. Is it ready to blow up?

The previous time the same volcano was so active almost two hundred years ago, it lasted more than a year. So we should prepare ourselves for a long haul I'm afraid. Just hope that none of that ash falls down here.

As we grow older we acquire certain insights into the way we are and our true relationship with the world which surrounds us.

In some ways this can be quite confrontational. Rather than fighting the truth it is more worthwhile to let it flow over you, like a series of waves splashing on the beach.

In other ways this realization can energize and give one a more powerful push in newer and more exciting directions.

While relaxing on the rubber raft a hundred or so feet from the beach, I can still hear those waves splashing in soothing, musical regularity. A distant drumming sound coming closer and closer.

I will open my eyes later when the time is ready.

My dog Luca loves to roll around on top of dead animals.

Take for example the days we walk along the waterway where a bunch of fishers have been spending the day.

Luca will sniff out the residue and if she's lucky she'll spot some dead fish which has been gutted and whose bones and scales have been left their in the sun to rot away.

Before I notice and can do anything about it, there she is rolling around upside down on top of the dead fish rubbing her back into it with much delight and wiggling.

The problem is that even though I wash her down when we get back home, the house stinks like a dead fish for a couple days.

They claim that this is normal dog behavior, a kind of instinct or throwback from the early days of wild dogs before they were domesticated. In order to survive, they would need to stalk and kill prey. In order to hide their own scent, they would roll around in many disgusting substances so that they could approach their prey undetected.

This sound kind of silly and I'm not so sure I believe it.

Why Dogs Love to Roll in Smelly Stuff

Today the weather was so nice that I decided to take Luca on a long and relaxing walk along the Reeuwijkse Plassen.

Just when I was ready to hop in the car, Sabien came downstairs with a sneaky smile on her face and asked:

"What's it like to take Luca on a walk now when in the beginning you really didn't want to have a dog in the house?"

A couple hours later, I returned home with my pants and coat splattered with mud, and I took Luca back to spray her down with the hose.

Luca just loves it when we take her to the Reeuwijkse Plassen and she never seems to tire of fetching the yellow tennis ball no matter how far we throw it into the distance, again and again and again.

This morning while cycling to the train station, I was treated with an amazing landscape of frozen solitude and extreme whiteness. Everywhere I looked it, was completely silent. I couldn't even here myself cycling. The plants and trees were frozen solid and light scattered from there shiny surfaces with an eerie anticipation.

Fall is nice when it comes to the transition of seasons, the trees losing their leaves, the air becoming colder, the late afternoons getting darker along with the prolonging of shadows and the sun setting low on the horizon.

For the avid golfer, this subtle change of nature can become a bit of a disaster. There are so many leaves lying on the ground, that it is very easy to lose a golf ball here and there.

Even the finest drive hit smack down the middle of the fairway runs the risk of rolling and stopping right under a large brownish leave that happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Good-bye golf ball, no hope ever finding you again unless I just happen to peak under the right leave, one chance in a thousand maybe even a million, it's hard to say exactly.

Sometimes one of those green-keepers comes along with his giant leaf blower which slightly alleviates this aggravation, but only as long as you keep the ball on the fairway.

The slightest fade or draw causes the ball to bounce and disappear into one of those massive piles of leaves, half a foot deep and spanning tens of meters of a crumpled brown expanse.

Also the fall means that the sun is lower on the horizon, and more than one longish par four poses quite a challenge pointing you directly into the sunlight. You hit the ball just fine, or so it felt like it, but where did the ball land exactly? Much to my surprise there it is right next to the flag, buried in the bunker, over there behind a tree, or never to be found again.

The game of golf remains a true and honorable challenge despite the different ways that nature tries to make life more difficult.

See also Autumn Rules for an entertaining account about bazillions of leaves.

Early every morning just before the sun comes out and the ground is still moist, droves of slugs make a heroic attempt to cross the narrow bike path.

To the human eye this path is about two meters wide, just wide enough for two bikes to pass each other, but for the average slug it's more likely something nearer to two football fields long.

Nature calls and the many slugs leave the comforts of the tall grass in pursuit of something better. What this might be no one is sure.

Unfortunately, many do not survive this noble adventure, their meager lives smashed in an instant underneath the massive tires of the randomly passing bicyclists.

This slug makes it across without any problems, that slug barely misses the giant tire and manages to slip by the last few centimeters, and fate calls the shots as yet another slug gets splattered before it can even perceive what life might be like on the other side.

Like dead soldiers strewn across a disheartening battlefield, the squashed slugs are scattered as far as the eye can see.

What unearthly battle could create so many innocent victims?