Walking my dog over the hills of Laguna Niguel provides me with much inspiration from nature…as much as can be gleaned from an urban environment.
Fragile and sometimes translucent empty snail shells of many colors became a near obsession once I noticed them. They are everywhere….whole graveyards of them I found, especially under withered wild artichoke plants.
The Colinas Bluff Trail which overlooks San Juan Capistrano hold many wild things…cholla cactus, wild gourd and artichoke, coyotes, quail, snakes (saw a baby rattlesnake a few weeks ago), and a roadrunner.
The ancient spiral from a primitive and ephemeral life form such as the common garden snail (cornu aspersum) reminds me of our own very short time on the Earth. One minute the garden snail is gobbling up everything in sight, then finding a mate to reproduce its many babies; then creating abstract slime trails, and eventually, to die and become a paper thin white-boned shell which ends with only the spiral….a chance existence?
Earth Dissolving
Water Dissolving
Dharmata : Red