The Magnificence of Mother Nature

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Camping near Wierzbiny, 17-07-2001.

A bit like the tough is getting into overgear today with the temperature well into the thirties centigrade and the hilly country side offering me some steep badly mantained roads winding uphill and down again - after all...all that goes up has got to eventually go down again.

Roads lined by ancient oaks that seem to groan in extasy while I cycle underrneath them, the sounds of wind blowing through huge tree crowns responsible for the eerie sounds that bring me back in the here and now...back from far-away travels inside my own Dutch mind, wandering off to the inner sanctum sanctorum of my being, hardly noticing the ocassional tractor or ramshackle trabant ferrying day workers to fields full with golden colored crops, overtaking me and leaving in big clouds of dust.

I admire the magnificence of Mother Nature in full summer, the incredible amount of shades of the color green at this time of the year, the season of plenty that offers abundant food to those that need it, fat wurms for yellow/black tits that hop from branch to branch collecting caterpillars and moths for hungry little tits, small black rabbits having just emerged from their mother's burrow and feasting on proteine rich grass.

Red foxes with black tipped tails too have a starving litter somewhere in the forest waiting for mum to return with tasty rabbit meat, so freshly killed the poor victim is still bleeding, big red drops dripping from happy baby foxes while they devour the carcass biting at it savagely, the first signs of the emergence of the ruthless hunter Mother Nature intended this particular species to be .

Only 6 Zloty for this camping at lake Orzysz with my tent up just before the rain started in earnest...These sort of official campings - usually just the backyard of a local family - offer me the chance to see how the Polish go about their holidays. Old campers and small little Fiats whose engines make the sound of an antiquated coffee grinder - when I see these cars in the street I can hardly believe they can cram 6/7 or even 8 adults in there and a bunch of hyper-active children as well.

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Photos

The Twin Bridges...
at Stanczyki

My trip...
so far

Pope John Paul The Second
The Polish Pope