Why I explore the rainforest? Because it is Home to me! Here we explain some images so that you may understand the forest and image contents and love them too!
Upper Sabana River Exploration
Short Bio: I am a Mathematician by education, and developer at Microsoft at the time. I started exploring forests since 1970's. I gave up driving cars a long time ago, and value YOGA and meditation as essential to life. I walk to work every day.
Once I was taken to the upper sections of El Yunque and I had a remarkable spiritual experience: For a few minutes all the place was full of shinning light - it was all pure colors - PURE BEAUTY. That is why I feel at home here. Notice how thick the forest was here - before Hurricane Maria in 2017.
Above my two sons Miguel and Jose with me on a dangerous exploration, were we actually got lost. There we huge boulders, bigger that 10 houses, due to intense erosion and rain. Eventually found an old marker in a tree and found the way back. Miguel was so scared it took a year for him to come back! I understood - it was a very dangeours place...
In the upper forest trees grow all tangled and warped -because the winds are too strong and that is how they survive.
The large Image above is in Tradewinds trail, a dead decomposing tree fell on its old neighbor, and this one is grabbing to the right another decomposing tree! So EYNF is a play of balance of Life and Death, the Ying Yang principle.
Somehow we 'humans' have lost a deep connection with Nature - the sky, sun, clouds, trees etc. These images are full of non-artificial color and life and are meant to bring the forest to your heart. I myself have over a dozen canvas at home.
Many of us mistrust salesmen, and with valid reasons. Here you are the buyer and seller, since it is only YOU than can see the fine detail we provide to make your habitat close to Nature!
Yunque.Store is a POD (print on demand) eCommerce, and any payments are automatically transferred to a large printer who manages the transacttions.
Jose Marvels at the Cloud Forest
I have spent over 40 days deep in the forest, camping out, with my camera. Here I share with YOU the marvels I saw! A few times Jose stayed with me, he was a very brave and calm child. We had so much fun at night!
This is the 'Cloud forest' (or Dwarf forest) - it exists near peaks over 2,500 feet. We have measured the humidity there - and it is 99% humidity for all day and night! It rains around 200 inches a year.
Note the abundance of moss on all the plans, red bromeliads and ferns. The trail is just mud, a slippery and dangerous slippery trail here since the real trial was destroyed by a landslide. That is why this trail - Tradewinds trail - is closed. We don't care, we use it anyway!
Recently I had a 3-day hike along the entire Rio Sabana Trail and Tradewinds - about 25km long. See the blog for some details...
Bromeliads and moss capture the fog and it brings what is called 'horizontal rain' to the forest. Over 10K rains have been counted in a year in this evergreen forest, were there is no winter as it is always about 72F. Its water feeds over 1.5M people on the nearby towns, which are also a danger as they grow more and more near its edges.
Our images are mean too to support the movements to preserve Nature and wildlands, we are them too!
Earth is truly a spaceship, like our bodies are an entity of their own. We live in harmony with waste in our bodies - if we are to keep healthy. But not on Earth - how come?
WE can consider bringing to our living spaces - home, hallways, office, rooms objects of natural art that remind us of the real life - be it forest, pets or even the universe! All these are NOT mind-made stuff reflecting OUR narrow concepts about life, people and the envirnonment.
View from Tres Picachos at 3,000 feet
If you look closely there is a lot of info in this image. Its a small peak few people know beacause its only accessible from trails deep in El Yunque peak maze of trails. But the view is awesome - of the coastline of Puerto Rico. In fact great beaches (Loiza, Luquillo) and smaller Islands (Vieques, Culebra) are near El Yunque too.
Now the leaf on top at the center is a Yagrumo tree leaf. This tree 'saves' the forest after hurricanes since it grows very fast, and now after Maria they are growing everywhere!
It's a bright white below, and when on the ground it makes a million patterns of beauty.
BEAUTY is a food we need! Our senses need to touch and see beauty, smell it, appreciate its fine details. Our canvas prints and other mediums are just ways to share the marvels we found and marvels of animals and the Universe too, It's all ONE.
Below we see some small light green spots - there are the Sierra Palms (Mountain Palms). They have very string roots, grow on steep humid areas over 2,000 feet and there are millons of them. Over 80% of them survived the 140-200 MPH winds of Hurricane Maria.
Maria had a profound and regenerative effect on EYNF. The forest is very adapted to these events after millions of years. But Maria was so powefull that it removed the canopy from most of the forest. It was closed for a year after it occurred in 9/20/17 - a day we will never forget...
Now after the trials of Maria, Puerto Rico has changed and grown. We now understand we need to keep the rain water and to conserve it, we now see the value of solar energy. And the value of simpler living closer to nature, the sun and the weather. PR is after all blessed, ideal climate, beaches, mountains and plenty of rain. What more can we want? Contentment is a fundamental virtue, leading to happiness.
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We will report on recent explorations, and the new images of the wonders we find.
Sometimes new products too.
John Muir
John Muir is known as the father of the US National Park System (NPS), of which El Yunque National Forest (EYNF) is a part for over a century. He was the founder of the Sierra Club. He was key in saving the awesome Yosemite National park.
Muir was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious beacon, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for countless individuals, making his name synonymous to the modern environmental consciousness.
He truly was a visionary, and saw the dangers coming from overdevelopment and uncontrolled greed. Originally he did not want to be in society, but friends asked him to take a part in it for the benefit of all.
Muir experienced our oneness with the earth, and did his best to save the American soul from total surrender to materialism.
We have the park system, now in peril, thanks to his efforts and books. I recommend as a must-read book this jewel:
In 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Kentucky to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf.
-- By Raul, Forest Explorer
