In a lunch time conversation yesterday two of my friends revealed that they appreciate when I explain what I think about the images I put up, as I did with the image of the dam a few days ago. I am not keen on explaining as I think everybody sees something different in a visual. This image here for example, I took many years ago, when I didn’t even know how to take a decent photo. I called it: We are not alone. Why? …Many reasons.

The image was taken in one of my favourite places, the Karangahake Gorge at the south end of the Coromandel Ranges. It shows the reamains of a stone battery, another reminder of  the people who were here before us. At the same time it reminds me of antennas that might send out signals into outer space :).

One time when we were sailing around Waiheke Island (an island in the Hauraki Gulf not far from Auckland), we anchored at Hooks Bay, an isolated area at the back end of the island. When we stretched our legs we came across the remains of an old villa and next to it a tiny grave yard with two or three graves. I wondered how crowded this place would be if all the people who had ever set foot on this piece of remote land would be there at the same time. So clearly I could feel the presence of the spirits that have been. But it didn’t feel crowded… Which reminds me of a very interesting graph I once saw in the German Museum in Munich. It was a timeline showing the world pouplation since the very beginnings of human life. It was flat, flat, flat, flat, flat and then a sudden, very steep rise in the last century. It said that currently more people are alive than have ever died. I don’t know if this still holds true, but this graph really stuck in my mind.