Hurricane Bill passed just off-shore a few weeks ago and created some rough seas. The radar image shows how close it was:

The waves at Long Sands were not huge but still probably the biggest of the summer.

It’s always nice to get the drama of the big surf without the inconvenience of the actual storm.

Without realizing it at the time, I happened to catch a little extra drama with some shots I took of the waves near Eastern Point. See the series of three images posted on my Flickr site of a guy nearly caught by a wave breaking on the rocks.

No big deal, but a picture I submitted was chosen as the photo of the day on the thedailygreen.com’s Weird Weather page.

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy – I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
– Bertrand Russell

A couple of days can make a big difference.

Taken on August 11:

Taken on August 13:

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.     – Rachel Carson

Taken near Spring Point, South Portland on Aug. 3, 2009.

This just demonstrates how much and how often it has rained here this summer. There’s obviously no real soil up there; just the junk that the birds have brought to make the nest (plus some fertilizer, no doubt). But the constant moisture has allowed the daisies on their “front porch” to thrive.

While upgrading the WordPress software behind this blog, I somehow managed to completely wipe out all my pages and posts.  D’oh!

Fortunately, I had a copy of the main page, and I manually re-created each post and back-dated them accordingly. I was not so lucky with my other pages: Web Design, Photos, and About. I’ll just have to start over from scratch on those. I am also trying to put back or re-create all the sidebar widgets and other parts of the blog itself.

Update 8/4/09: Hooray for Google! I was actually able to find cached copies of my “Photos” and “About” pages in the Googlesphere. That saves some time.

If you want to vote for my image, you can go to http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageNavigator/NAT_TrailsPhotoContest. It’s Image #1, shown above, taken in The Narrows at Zion National Park. The deadline for voting is July 10.

July 30 Update: Oh, well. I didn’t win the contest. Click the link to see the winning shot taken at Arches National Park.

But many thanks to all who voted for my picture.

~w

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.   – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.    - Dalai Lama

I know I take this picture every year and every season, but I still like it.