PIctures from Brazil — With Samuel and EarthLight 2005

David Thomson
   Paula's and my trip to Brazil started out with challenges, as we were sent home from the airport in Lexington because our connecting flight from Cleveland to JFK had been cancelled. Like dominoes, the flights kept eluding us, and we spent our first night, along with Patricia, in Sao Paolo instead of Iguassu. We arrived 24 hours later than planned, but were warmly welcomed.
   That evening I stepped out to the railing above the Iguassu River and discovered my camera was broken. Luckily Paula had received a nice camera for her birthday and, blessedly, she can be very generous when the chips are down. I took many more pictures than she did, but I never really got a feel for the camera, which probably shows in most of my images.
   More than any of our previous trips, I felt like we had little opportunity to see things from different vantage points. That also presented a challenge—I'm tempted to say excuse, except after seeing some of the distinctive pictures that others took I have to admit that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and fortunate is the one who can capture it in a photo.
   (By the way, when I got home and researched camera repairs, I found out it was a known problem with my Sony's sensor that would be rectified for no charge, postage paid!)

Marj White
Spending 2 weeks in the presence of such teeming nature as we saw on the Brazil trip was a wonderful opportunity to leave much of the din of civilization behind and to experience a bit of what was once life on earth in its most original form, the incredible interplay of all living diversity that allows all to function in wholeness and balance. It took only a couple of mornings of getting up early in search of colorful birds to feel that I had stepped into the living process of creation.
As I began recording all of the sunrises and sunsets and looking forward each day to the unique splendor of the next, I found myself remembering and repeating slightly paraphrased words from genesis: ‘ Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth…. Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth…. And the evening and the morning was another day.… And Source saw everything that had been made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, another day.’ Perhaps this is what the Amazonian dragon has been guarding.

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