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Mesmerizing/Interesting Phenomena & Experiences Without An Eclipse

I love the sound of ice groaning and cracking and reverberating. Thanks for bring that up it definitely is one of those mesmerizing moments. Trees cracking in the extreme cold is another one of the winter wonders. Also the tinkling of what I call candle ice.
Jim
 
One clear and crisp fall night I was walking from my car to the house and heard a strange bird call that made me stop. It wasn't quite like anything I'd heard before. It was coming from the tiny marsh about 75 yards down the road from my house. It was a fairly deep call and sounded like it must be a good sized bird. The only call I could think that remotely sounded like it was the 'galoomp'ing of an American bittern but that's not what this was. It sounded like there was more than one of them.

I stood there and listened trying to rack my brain for what bird it could be. It was late fall and migration was pretty much over. What on earth would make that noise in wetland habitat? And at night even!

Curiosity finally got the better of me and I got back into the car and drove to the wetland for a better listen. My lights swung over the marsh as I pulled in and then realized what was going on. Their was a very thin skim of ice over the water that had formed that evening and about a dozen sleepy Canada geese were resting and shuffling across the surface. The noise was the ice making an odd popping/moaning noise under their weight as they moved.

Living next to the water I hear a lot of different ice noises but that's the only time I've heard this noise. On the one hand it doesn't seem like anything special but for whatever reason it's a memory that stuck and floats back to the surface now and again.

Alan
 
I was living in Moscow, Idaho when Mt St Helen’s blow, Sunday May 18th I’ll never forget it.
I was in Colorado Springs. Amazing sunset that day. Everybody noticed, and everyone went outside to watch it. My frat had roof access and I was among the first up there, but within 10 minutes pretty much the whole fraternity was up there.

And the only thing I can add to this thread was watching a Northern Goshawk fly directly towards me and just over my head on a lake near Juneau, AK. Thought it was actually coming after me.
 
Watching an enormous bird flock had me mesmerized in 2017. I couldn’t turn away.

Lake paddling in the Adirondaks in the fall did it, too. It was a perfectly still day and there were no other boats on the lake, so there was a perfect, mirror reflection of the colorful trees lining the lake. Every stroke seemed to propel the canoe as if slicing into a painting. It just felt sort of other worldly.
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I was on the shore of Lake Champlain on Grand Isle many years ago (20 or so) and thought I was having some sort of hallucinatory event. I was looking into the distance and could not dicifer where the horizon was. The water and sky were literally morphing into each other and boats appeared to be floating.

Superior mirages occur because of the weather condition known as a temperature inversion, where cold air lies close to the water with warmer air above it. Since cold air is denser than warm air, it bends light towards the eyes of someone standing on the ground or on the coast, changing how a distant object appears.

It was wild and if my buddy didn’t see the same thing I would have thought I was losing my marbles.

Bob
 
Kathleen and I paddled the Seal River in northern Manitoba in 1997. From the mouth of the Seal River on Hudson Bay, we took this image of the Seal River Lodge, 6 km (4 miles) north. Cold water below, and warming temperatures above (an inversion) produced this superior image of the lodge, which seemed to tower above the landscape, despite being a lowish building.

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Not paddling related but hiking so here goes...

We were on a trip in the Catskill mountains of NYS and far from any body of water. As I came up a hill I heard quacking ahead of me. I couldn't figure it out as there were no ducks in the woods. Eventually I reached the top of the rise and I saw a fairly large vernal pond. As I approached it, the world grew silent. I stopped where I was and stood still, waiting to see if the quacking would begin again. Very slowly, small amphibian heads broke the surface of the pond. Turns out I found an area where wood frogs were laying their eggs. When I got close to the pond, they stopped calling but if I stood still, or moved away, they came back and started up again. It's the only time I've experienced that in the woods but it was great while it lasted.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper
 
I was on a solo paddling trip this past summer in the Georgian Bay. It was early morning on a foggy day and the water was like glass. The air was heavy and the only sound was my paddle hitting the water and drops of water falling from the blade on my recovery. I could only see about 50 yards ahead of me and was staying close to shore.

Suddenly, I heard this croaking noise that changed in pitch and seemed to echo and reverberate all around me. A second croaking voice answered the first. To me it sounded like a call that I imagine some prehistoric flying dinosaur might make. I looked around, and in the distance I could just make out two very large birds strutting along a granite island. As I got closer, they took off and flew a lap around me while making the same noise. The birds were sandhill cranes, and I saw many more that trip. It was really cool to hear them calling on that eerie foggy morning. I’ll remember it forever.
 
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A fairly long posting here, for May 25, one of the very best days, as in "mesmerizing" of our entire winter sojourn.

We sat outside most of the day, on the south side of the cabin, out of the north wind, feeling warm and reading in the sun. I slipped between dozing and waking, listening to the ducks splash, display and court one another. It sounded very much like a suburban, municipal, swimming pool filled with excited, strutting, diving adolescents. Scoters (i.e., Black Ducks) and scaups continued to arrive, zooming in on their jet wings. Sixteen Tundra Swans, with heavy wing beats, circled and landed like Boeing 747s. The swans usually arrived in pairs, and once on the water they faced each other, elegant necks bent forward, wings outstretched, apparently giddy with their successful arrival. This display invariably excited the other swans, all of which immediately repeated the same dance. Later in the day most of the Tundra Swans lifted up into the north wind, momentarily hung in the sky like a crib-side mobile, and then coalesced into a V heading north.


Kathleen’s diary entry for today shows her satisfaction with our current life:

I don’t think we could have a better spot to spend this time. Certainly the cabin is well made, and has everything we need in a home, but it is the location that makes our life here so very special. We sit on some of the first open water in the entire region, and we are surrounded by ducks, geese, swans and birds. It has been such fun to watch these creatures day by day, and to learn their personalities. About a week ago, a Bonaparte’s Gull ‘staked out’ a small, shallow bay as his own. From the cabin, we can easily observe his breeding behaviour, which includes yelling very loudly if any intruders, including us, ever dare to enter his territory.



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This morning I walked below the cabin, and sat down only one metre from the end of the point, which is marshy and shallow. In addition to the Bonaparte’s Gull, Mew Gulls, Greater Yellowlegs, Rusty Blackbirds, American Robins and some ducks spend a great deal of time here. I set up my camera on the tripod, and sat all morning taking pictures with the 300-mm lens. All the while the birds simply went about their business as though I wasn’t even there.


It is so wonderful just to sit here and watch. Swans with their necks in the water looking like blobs of snow. Red-necked Grebes doing their breeding dance accompanied with loud, harsh calls. Flocks of scaups arriving, sounding like jets overhead. Groups of 5 to 10 scoters diving and splashing. Barrow’s Goldeneyes and American Wigeons swimming by in the calm, joined by little piles of ice floating downstream.

I like that last part, about watching bits of ice floating downstream. When we tell people back in Vancouver that we often just sat and watched ice floaing downstream, they always look perplexed. I know they’re thinking that it can’t be interesting or exciting just to watch ice float downstream. Maybe you need to have been here since January 31 to enjoy watching ice float downstream. Or maybe you just need to live life at a slower pace, without deadlines and without ‘to-do lists.’ Watching ice floating down stream was very satisfying. (Perhaps even mesmerizing?)
 
Snapper's mention of hiking reminded me of a mesmerizing scene on Mt. Osceola, NH, a 4300' peak in the Whites. It was 2013 and we'd hiked up to spend the night. I packed Maryland micro-brew to share and we set ourselves up on the rocky outcroppings at the peak to watch the daylight fade. It had been a clear day, but as we sipped, clouds began rolling in below us. It fascinated me how much the clouds resembled a surge of water, flowing between the mountains with an occasional "wave" overtopping the peaks.

Clouds begin to flow through gaps in the mountains. The flow is left to right in these images.
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A wave "breaks" over a nearby ridge
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Clouds stream through a gap
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At nightfall, the cloud layer has settled in below us.
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Nice high elevation shots of clouds below.
Reminds me of when I was working at the USAF AMOS observatory on Maui. We could often see the 10,000' triangular shaped mountain profile projected on the ocean to the east or west as it "eclipsed" the rising or setting sun. I have a few photos stashed someplace in storage from almost 30 years ago. Good luck finding them.
 
Some lovely shots here, for sure.

Mine wasn't quite as spectacular, nor was it from a canoe. It was, however, on/near a lake.

I was hiking back a bit after dark with the help of some moonlight. The trail ran up against a small inlet in one of the local recreational lakes, and the after-dark temperature shift had set up a bit of a land breeze down the adjacent valley. There was fog forming right on the shoreline, wreathing out over the lake with the moon behind it. Small, but breathtaking.
 
One particularly memorable paddling experience was a few years ago at Chicot State Park when I had set out for an afternoon paddle but ended up not getting back to the landing before sunset. I usually have at least one light with me when paddling but this time I didn't and in the dark ended up paddling past the landing. By the time I realized where I was and turned around to head back to find the landing, dusk had faded into a dark clear moonless night. Fortunately there was no boat traffic. Neither was there any breeze. The lake was like a mirror reflecting the starry sky. Seeing a carpet of stars spread out ahead of me, I could almost imagine I was on the starship Enterprise. The striking thing to me was how disorienting it was to seem to be paddling across a carpet of stars. I had a really strong sensation of being about to fall into an abyss and had to consciously force myself to keep paddling forward. The visual cues of looking ahead and seeing stars in front of my canoe and not just up in the sky sure gave me the feeling that I was about to fall off of a cliff even though I knew that I was on a flat lake where falling off of a cliff was not possible.

I've paddled after dark many times but that is the only time I experienced the sensation of paddling across a star field.
 
I've paddled after dark many times but that is the only time I experienced the sensation of paddling across a star field.
The official annual Adirondack 90-mile canoe race every September is a daytime staged race lasting over three days, which I have raced nearly 30 times. But my Yukon race team and a few others like to paddle what we call the "Cannonball-90", paddling the entire classic original 90-mile route from Old Forge to Saranac Lake, completing all within a single day period. Some of us having paddled it a dozen times so far. It takes about 18 hours of continuous comfortable training speed paddling to complete, which is the same time period we are allowed to paddle (for safety reasons) each day on the Yukon-1000-mile race.

Unlike the 24-hour always bright sky experience on the Yukon River, in order to finish the Cannonball while still within daylight, we like to begin paddling at the start in Old Forge at the exact stroke of midnight on or near longest daylight of the summer solstice. That puts us on the first few Fulton Chain of lakes and portages in complete darkness.

During our favorite nights under a clear moonless sky, we are floating with as many stars visible on the normally calm flat lake surfaces as there are in the sky. We know the exact route track well, so to preserve our night vision, no artificial lighting is allowed. Truly a feeling of “floating” in space. I tell my stern paddler to steer toward the low near horizon stars of Cassiopeia as Capella rises in the darkness ahead to keep us on track.

At 3:30 AM a pink sky appears over the final night time portages just before we enter the narrow winding Brown's Tract, with barely enough light for us to negotiate the chutes or carry over a number of beaver dams still in partial darkness. Then sunrise greets us as we enter large wide Raquette Lake around 5:00 AM, still calm water at that hour before the daily wind picks up.
 
During a collaborative business trip to the Australian Defense Department in Canberra, while fighting severe 12 hours of jet lag, I went out for an early morning jog from my hotel. I headed through the public grounds of Parliament nearby. A truck hauling a large trailer and a small bus pulled up to an open field near me. The trailer contained a very large hot air balloon. My brother was an early modern hot air balloon pilot in the 1960’s and 1970s, and was official leader of the 41-balloon ascent during the 1980 Olympics opening ceremony in Lake Placid. I was ground crew follower of that event, and for tethered flight launches of celebrities in my brother’s official Olympic balloon during the duration of the Olympic period.

So, I was very familiar with how to set up and inflate a balloon. I introduced myself to the Australian pilot and offered to help, which he accepted and I did my best to do it right as I knew how. He must have been impressed. After the 10 passengers boarded the gondola, the pilot invited me to join onboard. Even knowing I would be late for my meeting I climbed aboard. Up, up and away we flew, over the city and the wide waterway below. I noted what looked like large voyageur canoes paddling far below as they headed toward the beach near my hotel. We then flew over embassy row, with the caution to that we were not allowed to overfly over one particular embassy, that of the USA. Changing altitude, we found a different wind direction and drifted away before landing in a large open field and celebrated with the traditional champagne breakfast at the hotel. I hoped I would not get into trouble by being late for my meeting. All was good.

After my meetings I headed over to the beach by my hotel to find not voyageur canoes, but the Australian National Dragon Boat Team in afternoon practice session. I met the head coach and told him who I was and that I had recently finished a Yukon River race where an Australian canoe team he knew had also raced. He told me that they were training for an upcoming Asian regional Dragon boat race event, a most important race against the Chinese national team.

One dragon boat had an empty seat (of a total of 22 seats) and the coach offered me a paddle. It was a strange experience, with very military-like commands shouted from the coxswain. “paddles up”, “paddles in”, “stroke”, etc., but easy to catch on. Unlike the long distance marathon canoe races I am much more familiar with, dragon boat races are typically short distance fast sprints, covering only 2000 meters or so, over and over again in practice.

Afterward, to complete the most interesting travel day for work I have ever had, I decided to walk the grounds of Parliament and found myself at the security entrance with an open door. As I peered in, a security officer invited me in to pass through the scanner. He told me that both houses of Parliament were in session that evening, and if I would like to be escorted to the gallery to observe and listen to law making in progress? Of course. I visited both, but I must say each session was covering incredibly boring topics.
 
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