Wild Wilder

My favorite walk, possibly in the world, is along the coast at Wilder State Park in Santa Cruz, California. I live in Santa Cruz for the first three months of the new year, and always make the most of the natural beauty of the area. There are lots of stacks, like this one, and arches as well along the eroded coastline. I don’t know their names, but I call this one the Smokestack Stack because from this angle it looks like the smokestack of an old ship.

Stepped Wells

Step wells are common throughout India, many of them built by rulers near religious sites. Their basic function was to hold water, filling during the rainy monsoon months and acting as reservoirs through the rest of the year and through India’s hot summers. The Abhaneri Step Well (more properly called the Chand Baori), pictured here, looks like it was designed by Escher, with its cascade of steps and staircases leading all the way down to the bottom, so that as the reservoir dried up one could go down to the lowest levels. It was constructed about 850 CE and has around 3500 steps in total.