First published in The Study of Light, on Substack on November 18, 2026
I can’t read Japanese. So when this bowl of noodles arrived, was I surprised by the raw egg? Not at all, but the little blue eyes on each of those not-noodles, quite thrilled me. That was a good lunch. Turns out the menu said “bait fish bowl.”
One highlight of 2024 was learning that my name - Shonka - means ham in Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian. It explains a lot.
By day the Lansing Bridge that crosses the Mississippi is light blue in color. When I photographed the Northern Lights on the other side of them, I had to use a tripod and a long exposure. During that exposure a car crossed the entire bridge, from Wisconsin to Iowa, and illuminated it with its tail lights, painting it red.
Swallows flying in front of the sun as it sets over the Mississippi River. Looking more closely, the bird’s wings create a prism effect as the light shines through the feathers.
The most dangerous stairway I’ve ever seen, and during the annual ski jump, thousands of people, of all ages, sizes, abilities, climb up and down the hill on it. Coming from litigious-minded Minnesota, this feels like anarchy. In the Twin Cities, I think, even if the structure was new and safe, no one would be allowed on it. But here, missing rails, rotting stringers, three consecutive steps decayed, doesn’t stop anyone. The club is raising $$$ for a new jump. I love this place. Update: They finally closed it in 2025.
You can barely see it, but this is Venus-rise and its reflection, in Lake Superior.
“A Mother Tree,” someone called it. A massive cedar that falls in the old growth on the Olympic Peninsula, and becomes a nursery for new trees. This log was at least 100 feet long, and had hundreds of saplings growing from it.
Sometimes the light of the setting sun is caught by one cloud, but not by others.
My friend Ira probably left this sticker on the electric box here. Then someone comes and crosses out the message. I guess that’s why we need to say it — we have a few Americans who don’t believe in democracy, but they’re not very forthcoming about what they’d prefer.
Beneath the layers of shifting lake ice, at Devil’s Lake State Park, there are little well-lit worlds with calm, cool waters.
Buddha in snow at Koyasan, Japan
Sometimes in the winter we get a heavy rainfall that floods a creek or marsh. The high waters freeze on top, then recede beneath. This happened in Reedsburg in 2023. There were hundreds of acres of inch thick ice, hanging on to tree trunks, suspended above prairie grasses.