Eight Years

Today is the 8th anniversary of Under Western Skies.

It’s too big a task to look back over nearly 650 posts and well over half a million words from the entire run. Focusing on year 8, though, it’s been good, and I’ve enjoyed covering a lot of territory with you.

Nature and wild places have been an important part of this blog since the beginning. This year I realized a longtime desire to see the Big Trees: the Coast Redwoods in northwestern California’s Redwood National Park.

In April, the wettest winter in recorded history turned southern California’s landscape a lush green, carpeted with tall grass and flowers, as in this shot made at Santiago Oaks Regional Park in Orange County, 30 miles east and inland from my house.

I also wrote about the spring bloom from Joshua Tree National Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and right here along the Los Angeles coast. Here’s Anza-Borrego.

What I haven’t written about is that 6 months later, after a summer of sun, heat and no rain, those same places were brown and crackling dry. The very spot in the photo of Santiago Canyon became an inferno of flame that devastated the canyon and more than 9,000 acres of Orange County, destroying 15 houses. I haven’t been back to see it, but it will be charred black, awaiting whatever rain comes to begin the cycle again.

Nature is both bounteous and relentlessly fierce.

I also wrote about cities, towns and villages, new and old architecture, trains and highways, libraries, museums and art. At one point, it occurred to me I’d never written about one of California’s most iconic structures, and dug into the photo archive to write about the engineering that holds the Golden Gate Bridge in that spectacular fashion:

The variety and abundance of interesting things in the world will never fail, so long as our curiosity to pursue it persists.

One reason I started this blog in 2009 was to write about my experience as I began reading one of the “big books” (both literally and figuratively): In Search of Lost Time. I’m reading this year’s big book — long, but not so long as Proust’s  — right now. I’ll tell you in the year-end reading wrap-up how it went, along with other highlights from the 2017 reading list.

The most important portion of each anniversary observance is to thank you. Thanks for reading, clicking, following, liking and commenting. It’s a pleasure to know that I have fellow travelers, fellow readers, fellow fans of art and the life of the world, whether out on a trail, in the middle of a city or sitting in a chair with the latest book on the reading list. The connection with you has been the greatest pleasure I’ve gotten from 8 years of writing.

Connections are particularly important right now: especially between people who live in other places, come from unfamiliar cultures or have backgrounds different from our own. There are always those — even here in in my nation of immigrants — who would exclude “the others.”

You’re welcome here. They haven’t closed all the doors and windows yet.

I’ll keep exploring, looking, reading, wondering, and I hope you’ll come with me.

As always, along with “thank you,” there is one more thing to say.

What’s next? Let’s go!

Some of the photographs in this post and select images from Under Western Skies are available on Shutterstock.com. CLICK HERE to view the Underawesternsky image portfolio.

© Brad Nixon 2017