Hope you liked yesterday's picture, because today is exactly the same.
Blue on blue again. Absolutely clear atmosphere. On days like this, there is a tiny little island that emerges from the haze to the right of Catalina Island. It's very clear to the naked eye, but my camera is not good enough to pick it up. It's a grey blip that I have put on the middle of the horizon (that's an oil tanker or similarly sized freight ship off nearly at the left margin).
It looks like a mountain top sticking up out of the water. It is either Santa Barbara Island or San Nicolas Island. I'm pretty sure it's Santa Barbara. San Nicolas will be sitting behind it by another 20 miles or so.
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| Kind of like a UFO or Bigfoot picture isn't it? Would you stake your scientific career on something like this? |
Santa Barbara Island is part of the Channel Islands Archipelago off the coast of Southern California. Here's a photo from a blog called natureshutterbug.com. Check it out. There's a lot of interesting pictures of the place.
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| Santa Barbara Island, named so because the Spanish "they" first landed there Dec. 4, the Feast of Sta. Barbara. |
You would think that these islands would be preserves of what wild California looked like before the period of western expansion, but from what I read, not so. Apparently a lot of invasive species are there and there are attempts right now to replant these islands with native vegetation.
We talk about the California Indians as being natives (we think of this as Chumash territory), but when you think about it, they were immigrants too at one point (with ancestors from Asia just like me) albeit thousands and thousands of years ago. It makes me wonder where the generational or number-of-years dividing line is when you can start saying that you belong someplace.
When someone says derisively "You should all go back to Africa!"--uh, folks? That means ALL of us, eh? It'll be pretty crowded there in the Rift Valley, so we'll probably want to move once we get there ...
Love,
Pops
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