Let's Go For A Walk 2017

Then we can sit by a fire and have S'mores...

..and a dinner at twilight before we walk home.

BEAUTY: Photography--Finn Beales

Welsh photographer Finn Beales likes to go to interesting locations for 72 hours and immerse himself in a milieu in order to photograph all the nuances he sees.

He and his wife recently came to my neck of the woods, Northern California, to photograph a road trip to Lassen State Park and into the glorious redwood forests. But first they flew into SFO to start their trip and of course had to visit the spectacular Marin Headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge (a favorite spot of mine). And they ended their whirlwind trip at the stunning, picturesque beaches in Mendocino County.

I adore my state...

Check out his 72 Hours series on his website to see other beautiful locations around the globe.
http://www.madebyfinn.com

Print by Eric Rewitzer and Annie Galvin of Three Fish Studios.
https://www.3fishstudios.com/

Redwood Holiday

I feel so lucky to live where I do. Northern California is one of the most beautiful places in the United States. We have so many different landscapes and climates: ocean vistas, beaches, mountains, redwood forests, vast expanses of fields, rolling golden hills. Cool and foggy, warm and sunny...
This is one of the many reasons why most of the country wants to move here, and why our real estate bubble never really burst. It is a highly desirable area.

This Memorial Day, a friend and I hiked trails in a local redwood forest. It was a perfect day with perfect weather, and I feel doubly lucky to have such a gorgeous area so close.

BEAUTY: Architecture--Wayfarers Chapel

Designed by Lloyd Wright, son of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and built in 1951, The Wayfarers Chapel located in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, is a miracle of engineering. Comprised of precious few redwood beams and a tremendous amount of glass, Lloyd Wright called his design a "tree chapel."

When construction was complete, it was just a building on a dusty hill, surrounded by saplings. But Lloyd Wright said, “When the trees that surround the Chapel grow up, they will become the framework, become a part of the tree forms and branches that inevitably arise from the growing trees adjacent to it. I used the glass so that the natural growth, the sky, and sea beyond became the definition of their environment.” Now, the chapel does indeed blend in with the grove of redwoods that surrounds it. It is a stunning sight, and an important part of the lineage of the history of architecture.

Above: Frank Lloyd Wright, left, with his son Lloyd and grandson.

On a personal note, I had a dream some time in 1981, where I walked into a church that looked almost identical to the Wayfarers Chapel to see my grandfather who had died nearly a decade earlier. At the time of this dream, I had never seen the structure and did not know of its existence. I can still see it clearly in my memory of the dream, and it was astonishingly beautiful, even ethereal, because of the part of the church that was not there--the walls--as well as for the seamless link to the surrounding trees and sky.

http://www.wayfarerschapel.org/