Shades of Green
… from two continents
It’s the last day of March and my very last opportunity to write something for this month’s challenge. There have been so many wonderful stories by other writers, on the topic of “green”, and I’ve already written one piece with a rather depressing tone.
Time to write something more positive, now.
As a lover of nature and a traveler to many places, many MANY of my pictures feature something green. As a result, it’s been a real challenge to make a selection.
Today, let’s focus on two countries and one issue.
During mid-2017, my wife and I traveled to western Canada, visiting friends in two locations, separated by an epic road trip. I’ve already written elsewhere about that trip, but for today’s story, I will focus on various green views.
High up in the mountains around Lake Louise, there were various shades of green (and greenish blue) visible below the grey rock, capped by white snow. (Yes, even in June.)
A few days later, we had entered British Columbia and spent quite a few hours in the Kootenay National Park. Branded as a land of ice and fire by Parks Canada, we experienced neither, but saw a lot of forests and waterfalls.
Our westernmost visit on this trip was to our good friends who live on Bowen Island, just outside Vancouver, BC. In a beautiful house, set in a very green garden, in the forest.
By now, you should all be suitably impressed by how green Canada is (if not by my brilliant photographic skills, ahem.)
Let’s fast forward more than 5 years, to another country, to Zambia. It’s been my base for the last 8 years or so. A country blessed with lots of greenery, as well. You may have seen samples of that in my earlier stories about this country, but let’s focus on a few very special examples:
If I remember correctly, that bird also left a little deposit, in a different shade of green, on my wife’s shirt. But I digress.
Zambia is a huge country, with many, and large National Parks, as well as surrounding Game Management Areas and other wilderness areas. If you like greenery, if you like nature, it’s the place to be.
Our son and his wife have recently taken over the Kasabushi Lodge and Campsite within the massive Kafue National Park. It’s located on the banks of the Kafue River and therefore an extremely green location. There will be another story dedicated to that venture, later. But I will leave you with two relevant images:
The National Parks are obvious targets for seeing wildlife, getting away from the hustle and bustle of the cities, etc. But it’s possible to do so without entering such a Park. My wife and I often spend a night or so at Lilayi Lodge, a little private lodge that is on the outskirts of town, just about 30 minutes drive away from our house. There is wildlife, but nothing big and dangerous, so it’s possible to take short walks through the bush, with no sign that you are only a short drive away from one of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, Lusaka.
There’s another green area that I have written about earlier, and this is the Mutinondo Wilderness, which is a few kilometers off the road to the northeast. A beautiful and wild country, characterized by “whale-back” hills that are the tops of old granite intrusions, and lots of bush, streams, and little waterfalls in between.
And now for a serious comment: We all enjoy experiencing such greenery, such unspoiled nature. But as the planet fills up with more and more people, who need more and more stuff, we need to mine more and more metals, more and more limestone, etc. The challenge for us is, how do we do that while maintaining our beautiful greenery, conserving our “pale blue dot”? Well, here is one hopeful sign:
I could have shared many more green images from Zambia, of the emeralds that are mined here, of malachite (a copper mineral), of other very green countries where I have lived, including South Africa, Ghana and the Netherlands.
But you should also look at what other Globetrotters have written on this month’s topic:
Krasi Shapkarova shows us the greenery of her childhood, in Bulgaria:
Aaron Smet waxes lyrical about the color — don’t miss his final image!
And one of our editors, Anne Bonfertwho has been spending two months driving through a very green southern Africa, also remembers another green part of the world:
