Recently in Nature and universe Category

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?

Slowly but surely it is getting darker, the moment I wake up and have to cycle to town, time to think differently, moving through the darkness as it approaches and envelops me, and then what? We will have to see.

As it turns out, the Magellanic Clouds are first-time visitors.

I never could have expected that at all. For more than hundreds of years, it has been accepted as common knowledge that these wonderful celestial bodies were nothing more than natural extensions of the home galaxy in which we live.

Almost human thoughts that we could nearly grasp here and now.

Beliefs can be easily shattered by the endless stream of sterile measurements and calculations of science, in its pursuit of acquiring more accurate knowledge of the universe and thereby risking that we slowly but surely dehumanize mother nature.

I am sitting in the train, and I'm not so keen that it is raining pretty hard outside. In about ten minutes or so I'll be arriving at my final destination Station Gouda. Meaning that if the precipitous climate does not change shortly, I will have to cycle home in the pouring down rain. Unprotected by my rain gear which I unknowingly left at home figuring that the really great summer weather we had been having up to now would not change in the near future. Little did I know at the time that the world climate is becoming more and more unpredictable these days. "Dames en heren, Station Gouda..."

Yesterday this giant gorilla escaped from his cage at the local zoo, running around on a rampage and injuring a couple innocent bystanders before being drugged and carried away.

Very reflective of human nature in that each and every one of us has a hidden gorilla inside of us trying to escape. We try to subdue this inner gorilla but it does not always work. When he escapes there is no more holding back, so beware not only for yourself but for those around you as well.

There I was walking with my youngest son Maarten, and it was a slightly cloudy day with the wind hissing through the many leaves in the trees surrounding us right and left along the path we were pursuing together.

Interesting sound, though it didn't quite sound like what one would expect wind through trees should sound like.

"Suppose you are sleeping," I asked him, "and you suddenly wake up in the dark not knowing where you are?"

"You wake up and hear this sound," and I pointed to the many leaves in the trees hissing and swaying, "would you know what kind of sound it was?"

"Could be a flock of locusts, or a bunch of waves crashing down on the beach, or clouds of dust scraping the dry asphalt, or anything else for that matter."

After less than a split second of rumination, Maarten turned to me and said innocently, "sounds like just a bunch of leaves to me..."

I realized then and there that it would take several more years before my son would mature enough to appreciate the nonsense of philosophy that distracts my mind from the messed up reality on a daily basis.

This April has turned out to be the driest month ever in recorded history in Holland. A number of fires have spontaneously risen in various places which are exceptionally arid, and folks are becoming worried. So much for global warming and all of the unpredictable consequences which may or may not happen.

I stood outside and everything was nice. Nice blue sky above, nice slight breeze cooling me off, nice silence so unobtrusive, nice slightly damp feeling from the memories of morning, nice whitish clouds drifting from west to east, seagulls arriving and a bunch of cars trying to find a parking place, and don't forget that there are those leather back turtles swimming from who knows where to the Galapagos Islands, oblivious of this situation but that is for the best. Human thought versus nature's way of thinking and/or accepting. Standing outside is pretty darn good, as long as I do not get too involved with the intricacies of what is supposed to happen, or not. It will happen or it will not happen.

The sun was expanding itself into a huge orange ball on the horizon. The lower it descended the larger and brighter it became. I could have stared at this wonderful scene for hours on end because it was so impressive. However, not wanting to become blind by staring too long at the beauty before me, I decided to look the other way. That is when just in time this fantastic orb descended half-way and in no time became nothing. Disappearing below, and then what?