The Joy of Hiking The Rainforest

The locals and expats who live on the island of Saba often cite the Sandy Cruz trail as their favorite. Sandy Cruz traverses the north side of the island across several guts, and does so almost entirely under the cooling canopy of rainforest flora, excepting one short breakout strip that has a 180 degree vantage point to the wide Caribbean.

The other thing about hiking the trails of Saba other than Mt Scenery is that they are more often than not lightly traveled; its possible to spend a couple hours out and see no one, just the chirping of tropical birds, the wind in the giant leaves, the chatter of occasional rain onto the canopy above. On Sandy Cruz, there’s very few biting insects as well and it tends to be cooler, so it’s all the benefits of a jungle atmosphere to love without the mosquito kill slaps to the neck.

If you’ve read my Saba blogposts, I rarely have people as part of my landscape photos, but I caught my visiting brother Michael looking up as we were crossing one particular gut; reminding me not concentrate so hard on the trail that I forget to look up in the rainforest. Some gorgeous interplay of giant ferns, elephant ears and some of the amazing trees on Saba make for a beautiful canopy. You also get a sense of scale in this wet, wonderful wilderness.

In post processing for this picture,I desaturated the overwhelming green of the rainforest to get the red browns of the trail and the swinging vines to pop out around my brother. Michael is an exceptional photographer himself–check out his photos here–and we both dug the result, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Novel Update

Forty pages in and a plot line bubble sheet that resembles the doodle drawings of an asylum patient, the book effort continues to form as I forge forward each morning, getting my 500-1000 words in before heading outside for the day. I try not to re-read what I’ve written too much so as to avoid the infinite editing loop and/or get discouraged…this is still the precious draft period, so gotta get it all out of the muse first.

Have a glorious day, folks! It’s back to the ocean depths for my bro and I today.