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This post contains a variety of scenic pictures taken on hiking trips around the world. If you click on the picture you will zoom in – and if you click again, zoom again. It’s fun and brings a greater sense of immediacy and reality to your viewing – give it a try.

Black Necked Swans, in a lake near Puerto Natales, Chile. We stopped here on our way to Torres Del Paine National Park. It was a windy, cool day and the glare of the sun on the waves at that time of day made it difficult to get a good picture.

This is a picture of Ama Dablam, a 22,300′ mountain in Nepal on the way to the Everest Base Camp. To quote from Wikipedia, “Ama Dablam means “Mother’s necklace”; the long ridges on each side like the arms of a mother (ama) protecting her child, and the hanging glacier thought of as the dablam, the traditional double-pendant containing pictures of the gods, worn by Sherpa women.^[2] For several days, Ama Dablam dominates the eastern sky for anyone trekking to Mount Everest basecamp.”  If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you’ll see that I happened to catch an avalanche in progress near the top of the mountain on the left side.

Here is another picture of Ama Dablam taken from the other side of the mountain. Notice the heavy overhang of snow 1/3 of the way down from the peak, ready for avalanche.

This is a picture of the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta, taken on the return from a hike to the nearby glacier. The hotel is located in Banff National Park.

This is another picture of the hotel taken from a greater distance, near the far end of Lake Louise.

This is the view further up the trail away from Chateau Lake Louise. The gravel ridge in the middle of the frame is a terminal morraine formed by an advancing glacier.

This is a view of the glacier and the morraine. The picture was taken from higher up and closer to the glacier, from a Tea House in the park where we had a sandwich for lunch. We hiked about halfway from here up the morraine towards the glacier.

This picture was taken in Torres Del Paine National Park in southern Chile at the end of a day hike to one of the glaciers in the park. The boat is arriving at a camp ground in the park, delivering supplies to the hotel and bringing hikers back to the end of the road at the other end of the lake.

This is a picture of the Mer De Glace glacier above Chamonix, France. Several glaciers come together around the bend, outside the field of vision. The bare rock on the valley walls show how much the glacier has shrunk in the last 100+ years.

This picture was taken from the National Park just above Namche Bazaar looking at Mt Everest, the pyramid-shaped mountain left of center behind the ridge in front of it called the Nuptse Lohtse wall. Lohtse is the peak to the right. The Everest base camp was about 8 days hiking from this spot. If you click on the photo you can see the spindrift blowing off Everest and Nuptse.

This is Glacier Bay, Alaska. The day was so bright and the reflections off the glacier and snow so strong it was difficult to get a good picture with the automatic camera I was using.

• Be Accepting – if it hasn’t changed for a while and it isn’t yours, accept it and get on with your life.
• Be Confident – don’t try to prove yourself right in every interaction. It isn’t necessary, and pisses other people off.
• Be Helpful – don’t obstruct, help move things along.
• Be Humble – avoid arrogant behavior, it isn’t attractive, often arises from a misunderstanding of the situation, and doesn’t earn you any friends.
• Be Gracious – strive for a measured response, avoid sarcasm and digs.
• Be Patient – the world has its own pace. Match it, don’t get exhausted trying to change it.
• Be Relaxed – but focused. It is a mind-set that is very productive and leaves you open to new possibilities.
• Be Smooth – show some class when problems arise. Calm thinking is usually more effective, shows better, and, flexible bumpers survive crashes.
• Be Understanding – it’s usually not about me. Listen.
• Be Useful – be the solution, not the problem.

Sunlight

I’ve grown accustomed to feeling the warm sun on my back now and then, as I wind through weeks of tasks and trips and problems, but never for long as walls and doors and planes are meant to block it out.

I’ve grown accustomed to feeling the bright sun in my face once in a while,  when I pause from paperwork and planning, a flash of brightness, then the cool office neon, and the harsh orange light of lonely public places in the dark.

I’ve grown accustomed to watching the distant sun dim here and there, setting in cities east and west, glorious golden afternoons fading into twilight, as I make my lists and tally tasks undone.

I’ve grown accustomed to feeling the touch of the radiant sun brighten my spirit, now and then, once in a while, here and there, in stolen moments of shaded days dulled by drudgery and worn by time.

I’ve grown accustomed to the sun…

02/2011-03/2011