Saturday, October 29, 2011

I am a lucky girl to be in Colorado!

A few months ago CBS Sunday Morning announced that Boulder, Colorado has the highest well being of any metropolitan area in the USA. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index says so. Gallup, those famous polling folks have gathered 55 aspects of well being from over 1 million people since 2008.
I am happy to live and work in Boulder.  Boulderites exercise and eat well. We live in a beautiful environment and there is very little crime here. I look out of my office window and see the flat irons - the rock formations that make Boulder distinct. I see the Rocky Mountains rising up in the west from our bedroom window snow-peaked even in the summertime. I know I am very fortunate indeed.  
The first picture is my friend Sonya at Chautauqua Park which is in Boulder - the flatirons - behind her. Great hiking and backing is less than an hour away. The second picture is the Indian Peaks Wilderness at Lake Isabelle from an August hike and and later that month we went backpacking in the James Peak Wilderness - the next two images. My husband Walt is trying out our new Hilleberg tent. 
In our research we found a great resource in the University of Montana's website called Wilderness.net which is a public wilderness information website formed in 1996 through a collaborative partnership between the Arthur Carhart National Wilderness Training Center and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute--the federal government's wilderness training and research arms, respectively--and the College of Forestry and Conservation's Wilderness Institute at the University of Montana. Check it out to learn more about our wilderness heritage and the 109,512,959 acres of wilderness lands that are located in 44 states (not just the west!) and Puerto Rico. Most wilderness areas are managed by the Forest Service









Sunday, October 23, 2011

50 Greatest Photographs of National Geographic Magazine

When I opened the mailbox today there was a package from National Geographic and inside was the print edition of the 50 Greatest Pictures from the pages of National Geographic Magazine. The ipad version was launched in March of this year and I was beyond thrilled to have an image included – and # 1 in the upper left hand corner no less! My image of the mother and child sleeping in Mali in their tent is an image I am very proud of. In the 50 greatest National Geographic included many of my most favorite photographs from it’s pages: David Alan Harvey’s  sudsy party at Ibiza,  Bill Allard’s portrait of a cattle rancher, Sam Abell’s iconic pears lined up on a windowsill in Moscow in the light of the afternoon sun and of course Steve McCurry’s famous image of the girl with the haunting green eyes from Afghanistan. There are many more, images by editor Chris Johns and naturalist Jim Brandenburg and Randy Olson. There are too many photographers - well all 50 - that I admire so much. I can’t quite believe I am in this company. If you have an ipad check out the app and learn the stories behind these striking images.