Mother Earth is in Labor Day Weekend

There are so many ironies in the Labor Day holiday in this year of 2012 in America that to try to enumerate them would just bore all of us silly, so I'm not going to do that.

"The Labor Day holiday as we know it grew out of the efforts of labor unions over a century ago. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, records indicate the holiday was first proposed in the late 19th century. Two men are credited with the original idea: Peter J. McGuire, a co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, and Matthew Maguire, a machinist and secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York.

The purpose of the holiday was, in McGuire's words, to celebrate those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold." - from FactMonster 

I'm not exactly sure what that means, Mr. McGuire, because it sort of sounds like a slap in the face gesture of thanks. I guess maybe it's about those people who get/got their hands really dirty in the process of erecting monuments to the profits of those people who didn't have to get their hands dirty, which would make sense, because it's pretty much the same now, except there are a whole lot more hands that need to get dirty and those other hands have bravely and patriotically sent off the dirty hand jobs to countries where there is even more rude nature, willing to work for pennies on the dollars that would have to be paid in America. Yes. Oops. I wasn't going to do this. 

BECAUSE!!!

Here in the great northwest and I'm counting where I am, there is a coastline that, for a dedicated coastal addict (give me your tired, your poor...coasts, any coast), continues to stun me in its ruggedness, richness, strangeness. Strangeness? Hey, if home is gently washed - most of the time - white sands against a background of palm trees, this is primevally strange. And wonderful. 

So today, I hope, or maybe tomorrow, we are heading up to Petrolia and beyond, , mainly beyond, to check out a bit of the Lost Coast hike. One year we'll do at least half of it, but this year we've once again pulled back our intentions to do that to at least to some of it. In that particular area. Because I want to meet a guy who carves amazing sculptures, who has lived off grid in his cabin for a few decades. I wanted to do this last year, but now I've had a whole year to look forward to it. Sometimes, delayed gratification is a good thing. Really.

This is one example of John's work.  It's already been sold.
Check out his website to see what's new and incredibly beautiful. 

The photos below are from last year or the year before. Hopefully there will be more this year too!! I might  have coaxed/babied/cajoled/banged myself into a working camera (shhhh, it's about 50% right now, but that's better than the 0%), which would be so nice...

They have deer on the beach here, so do we! 

They have huge mountains and black sand/rocks on the beach here, so do...ok. 

Here is more of what is here. Right here, not on the coast, 15 minutes away...(phone camera and it ain't no apple, so)

Did I mention the apple trees are loaded?

Baby pine cones...and tree fluff.

This is what happens when you take a photo of the blue moon with your pretty crappy phone camera and then start to play with it. Those are pine trees. And stars. And the true blue moon. Funny, that!

Have a saturated Saturday. Do something silly.