Local World Class Photographer Michael Powers’s Last Photo of His 79th Year

HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Michael Powers turned 80, recently. Living in Miramar since the 1960s, Michael has seen the Coastside change.

Yes, the beach used to roll up right to his door in Miramar, by the Medio (Miramar) Bridge, in the 1960s.  The US Army Corp of Engineers has admitted that the Jetty Breakwater is the cause of erosion for the Miramar bluffs, south of the Jetty.

More Michael:  www.wildinspirit.com

Dear family & friends,

A collision last week with an out-of-control mountain biker on Mt. Montara left me with a profusely bleeding hand, but it also got me thinking. Since I believe that everything that happens has some greater purpose and meaning, I could not accept this “accident” as anything less than a divine revelation. I wondered, was this yet another message from the Great Spirit?

Then the startling news came from Alaska that a passenger on the UnCruise ship where my daughter Marika was a guide had been found infected with the Covid 19  virus. Both these incidents happening so close together showed me what a scary and unpredictable world that we live in, and put a totally new spin on the 80^th birthday letter I was trying to write. I came to realize that it was very important not to just speak about myself, but about, and for, all of us.

By all of us, I mean my family and friends of course. Yet this pandemic has succeeded in uniting not just us, but the entire human population of the earth in a common spirit of unknowing. Still, I would like to believe the spiritual pundits who claim the Covid19 epidemic is really a great and powerful medicine that has come to bring healing to our planet. At least I sense its presence among us is no accident, and it definitely brings some deeper meaning and purpose to us all.

So the coming of my 80^th birthday has reminded me, perhaps more powerfully than ever before, just how precious life is… and how having beautiful companions like you with whom to share this great adventure really is. My dear family & friends, I truly love you greatly and feel you love me too. Let’s just do our very best now, to stay healthy and take good care of each other.

Sincerely, Michael

Back in 1955, my friend Galen said it pretty well too…

Bio:
The Tsunami Rangers are an ‘extreme condition’ sea kayaking team based in Northern California. They have been featured in numerous books, magazine articles, and television productions, including National Geographic, ESPN’s Expedition Earth (circumnavigating Easter Island by kayak), and Discovery Channel adventure specials. The Rangers have also produced their own action-packed paddling adventure videos, and literally wrote the book on extreme sea kayaking.

Tsunami Ranger Commander Michael Powers, the face of the Tsunami Rangers AE Ambassador Team, is a photojournalist and filmmaker whose efforts for the past 20 years have been directed increasingly towards sea kayaking expeditions around the world with a larger purpose. In 2005 Michael co-founded Ocean Studio, an alliance of adventure photographers, writers and filmmakers, working together to nurture a deeper understanding and empathy for the natural world.

His stories and photographs have been published in Sea Kayaker, Paddler, Canoe & Kayak, Outside Magazine, National Geographic Adventure and other major outdoor adventure publications. He and fellow Tsunami Ranger Eric Soares co-authored the book, EXTREME SEA KAYAKING, published by McGraw-Hill. More recently he published the coffee table format book WILD IN SPIRIT, featuring his kayaking & mountain climbing adventures around the world. www.wildinspirit.com

Michael is currently planning sea kayaking expeditions to Costa Rica and Cuba and will be capitalizing on the portability and performance of our AdvancedFrame kayaks for his expeditions.

You can learn more about the Tsunami Rangers at www.tsunamirangers.com

You can learn more about Michael Powers and his publications at www.wildinspirit.com and Ocean Studio at www.oceanstudios.net

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