Spirit Guides

 

Camel-Eagle

Last week my friend Liz and I visited the Sonoma Botanical Garden because we wanted to see the exhibition "Spirit Guides - Fantastical Creatures from the Workshop of Jacobo and María Ángeles". It was fantastic.

The first sculpture greeted us in front of the Welcome Center, Camel-Eagle. When you stand behind the sculpture you can see the hump.

The eight monumental sculptures, made from fiberglass and painted with acrylic paint, are distributed throughout the garden, most of them along the California Oaks Trail.

The sculptures are inspired by the astrology of the Mesoamerican Zapotecs. Zapotec astrology features animals associated with birth dates. These animals can be symbolic of personality traits, but they are also believed to share a destiny and soul with their human counterparts. 

 This is Coyote-Fish. As you can see here, these are rather strange animals - coyotes with fish tails, eagles with camel humps, monkeys with iguana backs etc. Fantastical creatures indeed.

Every part of the animal is painted in great detail.

The Crane - the only animal sculpture that didn't have a part of another animal.

Jacobo and María Ángeles are a Mexican artist couple from San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca, where they operate a community workshop providing training and emplyment to hundreds of local artists. Their work blends contemporary sculpture with Mesoamerican cultural traditions and patterns found in Indigenous Mexican artwork. 

The Monkey-Iguana:

This artwork draws on Zapotec beliefs about animals that share a spiritual bond with humas. For many Zapotecs, and other Indigenous Mexican people, special animals called tonas and nahuales act as spiritual companions or guides. Assigned to each person at birth, any animal may be a spirit guide, from butterflies to jaguars to monkeys. Different people interpret the influence of these animals in different ways - guardians, shapeshifters and companions with intertwined souls and fates.

Tonas and nahuales can also embody their human counterparts' personalities. The monkey, for example, symbolizes knowledge and an affinity for the arts, while the iguana characterizes an ability to adapt and persevere.

The Armadillo-Insect:

The following sculpture was my favorite one - the Jaguar-Eagle.

Look at this beautiful and intense face!

In my humble opinion, I think the Rabbit-Deer should have the name Rabbit-Antelope. Those horns don't look like a deer antler.

The head of the rabbit was exquisite.

A close-up of the pattern at its neck. The symbol is the seed and stands for fertility.

Lastly we came upon the Deer-Butterfly.

According to the Zapotec astrological calendar the deer symbolizes agility and energy, while the butterfly represents hope and optimism.

Aren't these some wonderful faces and worthy for Nicole's Friday Face Off?

Finally Back to the Lake

 

You might remember that at the beginning of May I hurt my leg and was diagnosed with ITBS (iliotibial band syndrome). After stretching brought some relief but didn't result in healing, my GP referred me to PT. I tried to get into the PT practice that helped me after my knee surgery, but they canceled my first appointment 90 minutes before it with the reasoning that they don't accept referrals from my doctor's network anymore. As you can imagine, I was livid! Thankfully my GP referred me to a different PT which had an opening two weeks later and today, I "graduated" from 9 weeks of PT. The leg isn't 100%, but so much better. I will continue doing my home program, confident that it will further help me. 

The wonderful outcome is that I can walk again. So a couple weeks ago I went for a short, 30-minute walk at the lake - finally! 

It felt so good to put on my hiking boots again.

I chose one of my favorite trails. You can see the lake through the trees.

This is my favorite tree, an old crooked oak, overgrown with poison oak at its base.

A bird feather and an acorn on the ground.

Often there are people who fish from the pier at the boat launch.

Then I saw this little American Mink. I had never seen one before, and I first thought it was a baby otter since there are otters in the lake. But no, my research told me it's an American Mink. S/he had just caught a small crayfish.

Since I was there last, the Water Hyacinth has spread considerably. It is a very invasive, non-native plant. Its flowers look beautiful, but I wish it wasn't there.

Blackberry bushes loaded with berries lined the path along the water. These are quite invasive as well.

It had felt so good to be back again. Since then I have taken a few more walks in favorite places that I missed so much over most of the summer. More about that sometime in the future.

Chasing the Sun in Mallorca

 

We have often done spontaneous or crazy things in our little family. Therefore, it is no surprise that Kaefer did both a bit more than a week ago, when she decided "last minute" to go to Mallorca to watch the solar eclipse on August 12. Mallorca - a popular vacation destination for Germans and other Europeans for as long as I can remember - had never been on her radar until she read that the "grand finale" of this year's solar eclipse would happen right before sunset in Spain and Mallorca (which belongs to Spain). She was lucky and got a cheap flight, a couple nights in a hostel in Palma and another couple nights in a hotel in Sóller. Not easy in the middle of August, but I guess if you're that spontaneous AND crazy, luck is on your side.

This was not her first solar eclipse. When she was a teenager we drove up to Redding to watch an annular solar eclipse and in August 2017 we experienced a total solar eclipse in Oregon on the Snake River. 

The few days before the eclipse Kaefer was looking for the perfect spot and settled on a hill above the Port de Sóller. The view was wonderful, but she certainly wasn't alone there.

Her little rabbit that accompanies her on all of her adventures was watching as well.

Of course she had brought her eclipse glasses (and a headlamp for the way back).

For Nicole's Friday Face Off

After waiting the entire day, the spectacle finally started when the moon moved between the sun and our home planet.

The light slowly changed.

It's getting exciting!

And then - clouds drifted in front of the sun! They would not be able to see the corona of the sun.

But Kaefer took a video of the moon shadow when it raced across - it is fascinating to watch. She sent me a sped-up version of the video and I do recommend watching these 1½ minutes.

The sun appeared again - I'm not sure that it was this red, but it can be difficult to represent the true color in a camera.

The sunset was atmospheric and fascinating.

And then everybody went home. 

All photos are by Kaefer.