A Year on the Boreal Landscape: The Book. Finally.

I haven’t been around much, I know. In fact I haven’t been seriously photographing much; haven’t even been out walking much compared to usual. I’m all wrapped up in my other (work, family) life, flicking my shoulder to knock off the devil who’s telling me I want all that to go away. I don’t. But I do wish I could find a happy medium..i.e. do it all!

Anyway, I’m just back from spring break during which I’ve been ticking a few things off my list (flicking my shoulder to knock off the devil who was constantly nagging me to get in to the library while it was quiet to catch up on some book cataloging). The thing I’m most just relieved about at the moment, because I’ve been picking away at it since January, is the completion of a photo book.

I couldn't get the widget to work, so this is a screen shot that you can click on to go to the book's preview on Blurb

I haven’t really printed any of my work for years and I wanted to see what it would look like. I’m also hoping to make my hobby pay just a little bit for itself by placing a few copies at the local tourist booth this summer. A friend (ex-Mayor!) has also suggested that the town council might buy a few for gifts to visitors. They apparently like to give local work where ever possible. I’ve bit the bullet and ordered a few to peddle.

I downloaded Blurb’s bookmaking tools, used my year end post, added a few more photos, and Voila! (If only it were quite that simple, but it will be easier next time.

Wish me luck!

 

A Walk in Winter Woods

I took a long walk in the woods the other day. The sun was shining with an irresistible invitation. Unseasonably warm weather made gloves optional (of course I brought them as well as a spare pair of mitts) and the lack of snow made me feel that skis (which I own and love) or snow-shoes (which I unfortunately don’t own) would not be worth the necessity of packing them across the open spaces. I have not been out in the woods as much as usual this winter and, well, I was wrong about the snow.

It would have been fine had I stuck to the sun-baked, wind-swept south side of the coulee I chose to follow. Snow has barely accumulated to my knees in the open, moss-covered under-story beneath towering conifers, where the first of two ruffed grouse that day startled me when it broke its “I’m a stump” cover and thundered high up into the sheltering branches of an old spruce tree.

But an old trail tempted me down into the deep, familiar place where hare hide under drooping boughs and tangled willow and alder entwine their branches to build protective arbors over tiny waterways, that in spring carve their courses with melted snow, deep into the soft and giving ravine floor.

There, after making my way down the overgrown trail, steeply into the flat-bottomed defile, where the bordering slopes capture the snow and tame the wind, and the blizzard is broken and forced to unload its arsenal, I found myself negotiating the tangled maze in a thigh-deep layer. In such a place, each step must be taken with great care in summer; water carves beneath deceptively solid moss ceilings and covers suspended branches. So much more hidden are these treacherous obstacles in the winter under the serene, pristine quilt.

I had three choices once I realized that this part of my hike was going to be more challenging than usual and possibly somewhat unsafe. After all, if I did not sprain an ankle (or have a heart attack from the physical effort), I was more vulnerable than usual to any predator that happened to be close by and hungry. I could return up the trail I came down on, or make my way the short distance across the ravine and climb a steeper and more deeply laden hill on the far side, or I could follow the curving wash to a snowmobile trail that I knew cut across it perhaps a quarter of a kilometer away. I chose the last option because I love this place.

I could worry about wolves, cougar, lynx and even black and grizzly bears, although bears are unlikely to be straying very far from their dens this time of year. I could even worry about coyotes but I think they would have to be extremely hungry before attacking a human. They are too smart. They have learned about people and big sticks. I don’t worry though. Not usually. I see their tracks and I beg to get a glimpse of their lives of basic survival that I can only imagine. I know well that they avoid me. I am the enemy. I am the creature to avoid.

Deep in the ravine, slowly lifting one foot high after the other like a stalking lizard, making my way over and under grasping branches, I would be easy prey. It was very unlikely, however that any large predator would be nearby. I was not far from the industrial part of town; occasionally the echoes of heedless grumbling and gnashing sounds reached down into the hollow. I could tell by the tracks, that ungulates, the more likely prey, were no longer attempting to use the little valley as a path, the snow was much more dense and shallow on the open plateaus and hillsides. My more likely companions there were the masters of the snow. Snowshoe hare and their nemesis, the lynx are night creatures though; their dramas written on the landscape for me to read in the sunshine.

For much of an hour then, I plunged each heavy boot onto unknown footing; one careful probing through powdery drift after the other. It was not a hardship. Time was suspended and for long moments, I stopped to take in the beauty around me. Snow cloaked the landscape, pillowing on branches and wrapping around boughs. Dainty footprints of birds and rodents marked the fragile surface with staccato landings and percussive marches. Golden swaths of sunlight streamed across the gully in broken ribbons, gilding the suspended skeletons of alder leaves and setting the pine aglow. Chickadees chirped and a pine grosbeak softly sang; no, it was no hardship, just a long-overdue reminder that I am alive and living is grand.

*Please forgive the run-on sentences, but I’ve been reading Dickens again…

 

Landscapes of a Calendar Year on the Hills

January 1 as the beginning of the calendar year seems to have been an arbitrary decision. Adopted before the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar, it seems to have been chosen for no particular reason. If they had to choose a religious festival, Easter would make more sense to me. Rebirth, rejuvenation, the awakening of nature in spring – about mid-April in my part of the world – that’s when I feel like celebrating. The Buddhist Theravada New Year would have been perfect, celebrating for three days from the first full moon in April.

April, when the snow, rotted and pebbly, or frozen in slabs in the crevasses of roots and rocks, is clearly losing the battle against the sun, having quietly risen high enough on its arc to touch sleeping nature.

April is when the year should begin. Since it is barely a fraction into the long six-or-seven-month winter, January One is merely a tease. Nothing is beginning; the earth is in deep dormancy, not even aware enough to scoff at our restrained hope that soon another cycle of nature will begin.

Nevertheless, we do mark the change of numerals; the exchange of twelve-page, humourously, gaudily or artfully illustrated calendars in kitchen and office. Treating the impending date less as a deadline and more as a fresh start, we chronicle the year in Christmas letters and put the paperwork in order. The impulse to record the past is strong, for future reference or to merely put it behind us. Despite my disapproval of the particular date chosen, I too am compelled to comply and so offer a record of 2011 in Swan Hills landscapes, (each clickable for better resolution).

Another year…that begins, and ends, with winter.

January, and the year begins. But as flora and fauna are deeply settled into their winter routine, they are unlikely to note the occasion. The hare and mink blend into the white blanket; the surface downy or crusty. Voles and the crowns of plants stay below in survivalist activity or quiet repose. Squirrels dwell aloft among crepitating and thickly needled branches, following their aerial circuits to sustaining caches of pine and spruce cones. Moose dig for nourishment, or plunder the shrubs, bending the branches to reach the softest growth.

February is a short but obdurate month that could just as well be the end of January and the beginning of March. Winds will blow, snow may accumulate, but by holding the earth in limbo, it doesn't distinguish itself from its line-mates so barely deserves its own name.

Despite the dictum of the constellations, Leo is unlikely to be inclined to give way to Aries through the vernal equinox to the end of March. Aries will rise but may be as quiet as a lamb while the wanton lion continues to rampage across the landscape throughout the month. Lethargy yields to dolorous impatience and the bravado of endurance wanes.

Ah April! Softly gliding in as March lets go its hold, gently touching earth carrying promises, not of April showers or even May flowers, but of colour nonetheless: reflecting the deep blue of the sky on a skim of water; drawing the reds and yellows to willow branches and enriching the greens of the conifers.

As the ground thaws, slowly releasing the long-trapped moisture, buds begin to swell and sap to rise. May can be a dangerous month. No longer covered with snow, last year's exposed vegetation dries quickly in the wind. Still dormant, dry and brittle branches, waiting for sap to rise from still frozen roots, are most vulnerable this month to the catastrophic but crucial effects of fire.

Now the earth is animated. June's energy is contagious. In a rush to complete botanical cycles, plants take advantage of the long hours of daylight. The vitality of accelerated transformations is palpable. The forest seems sentient and embracing. The irony of the summer solstice, just as growth gets going, is not lost on the human inhabitants, who while rejoicing in the reassuring scent of summer to come are grounded by the subtly shortening days.

Perhaps a few degrees of warmth below the average, July here is nevertheless a classically salubrious summer month of wooly clouds, warmth and wildflowers in bloom. Sedulous nature slows its pace as vegetation languidly draws in sunlight and suitable nutrients. The canopy is quiet as, after the cacophony of mating, songbirds settle in to raise their broods, although through the late sunset you may still hear the sonorous call of the white-throated sparrow: 'Dear sweet Canada, Canada, Canada'.

By the middle of August, the shorter days have given their message to the plant and animal kingdoms. Many species of waterfowl begin to gather in local wetlands in preparation for migration; other birds have already begun their long journeys. Assisting the escaping sun, the sky itself seems to convey the message of warning with diabolic displays and vigorous storms.

By the beginning of September, the message is clear. Winter will come again. Blossoms have fallen and berries are ripe and have sweetened under the first frosts. A lucky glimpse will reveal the buds of soon-to-be magnificent antlers on handsome ungulates preparing for the rut. Low shrubs turn orange, red and yellow and the uniquely deciduous tamarack changes into a blazingly golden cloak before dropping its needles.

October is a capricious month. Warm, soft breezes or arctic winds may lift the drying carpet of leaves on any given October day. Layers of outerwear are donned and doffed between and within the indecisive days. More often than not, this month will give way to winter before its days are out and we rush to finish yard cleanup and ensure that Halloween costumes will fit over the children's snowsuits.

The low-slung November sun holds the stars to earth on billowy clouds of snow throughout the shortening day. Shadowy indentations of hoof and claw reveal the nocturnal activities of predator and prey. Conifers hoard the pretty, protective mass, testing the strength of laden branches; the weaker ones will hug the earth, providing shelter for animals and eventually sustenance for the next generation in the soil.

It is a very unusual Christmas that is not a white one in these hills, which seem to stand in the way of storms driven from the north, knocking precipitation from them. Unusually mild temperatures brought wet snow, falling here in this middle-aged timber plantation where no tracks of hare or weasel crisscrossed its shelterless understory.

Weather may not control life any more – we go on about our business regardless, considering the sky only when donning our outdoor apparel – but it does continually transform the landscape. While an abundance of snow sculpted a brilliant winter wonderland last year, this winter has been unusually mild and windy, slopping muddied white paints unevenly across a lusterless undercoat of browns and grays. The calendar notwithstanding, nature’s year will not begin for some months yet and however un-photogenic the rest of the winter may prove to be, I will wait patiently, striving to embrace rather than endure the coming months.

An interesting article in Scientific America discusses the commercial time-management advantages to overhauling the Gregorian Calendar. While they’re at it, they really should make sure the year starts in spring. Oh wait – whose spring? Yours or mine?

When ever your spring might be, I wish you the best of all twelve months to come. Happy New Year and I sincerely thank you all those who stop by here for your continued support and encouragement.

 

Back Alley Walk ~ Jasper, Alberta

The town of Jasper is world famous as a tourist resort. It is a special town. An 1813 fur-trade outpost became a railway siding in 1911, four years after Jasper National Park was established. Eventually its beautiful Rocky Mountain setting at the confluence of the Miette and Athabasca Rivers began to attract skiers, hikers and sight-seers. Because it is in the park, development is limited but always under threat. The possibilities are limitless. Opulent resorts, hotels and tourism retail support a steady permanent population of over 4,000 people and attract another 500 or so seasonal workers.

Although it is not far from me, about a three-hour drive, I seldom go in summer when the population doubles with tourists. I do like to down-hill ski though and Marmot Basin Ski Resort is a spectacular experience. The valley affords the town itself a relatively mild climate and in the spring, even when the mountains are deep in snow, the town can be bare and dry as it was in March of 2010 when I took a walk down a back alley behind the retail strip.

Even a special town is still a town. Goods must be got and consumed. Waste must be managed. Structures must be built from locally found or delivered materials; they then must be maintained. Electric light, heating and water must be provided where families settle and their children are raised.

 

The MUSHroom

Maybe it was the word itself: mush-room.Hardly appealing.My early lust for language must have taken immediate offence.

Mush: what you might have to eat if your mum couldn’t cook, or your family was too poor to buy real food; a sticky gooey grainy lumpy clump of clay-coloured gruel in the bottom of a plastic bowl.

Okay, so it’s cornmeal, but I didn’t know that. Luckily, I had not had to eat it. I am sure I would have refused.

All I knew is that it squeaked when you bit into it like it was hurting or even teasing. It was not dead.

Imagine how much better I felt about them when I learned that they were a fungus! Yay! Genetic studies have shown that fungi are more closely related to animals, but they are neither fauna nor flora.They are aliens! Do vegetarians know this?

Mush: an order barked by whip-wielding, face-hidden men taking joy rides on the rungs of a sleigh at the pleasure of poor, harnessed, enslaved beasts. (Learning that the dogs often enjoy the work has not improved
my perspective on the word.)

Mush: the sexy stuff on TV that I wasn’t allowed to watch. It mushed have been bad for me.

Just think of the rhymes. Flush (ick). Brush (get that thing away from me!) Gush (ick). Lush. Rush. Hush.

And where are they rumoured to grow best? You got it. Mega-Ick!

I mean, really. Is it actually normal to like mushrooms? Who is the normal one here? It’s not like they’re sweet, or juicy, or even crunchy. They are rubbery. They taste like – well – again: where do they grow?

It’s a joke you know. They are actually all supposed to be poisonous. “Humans are a gas,” Mother Nature chortled to the sun. “They want everything they think they can’t have. Watch this,” she croaked as she waved her magic wand on a species or two and leaning on a fluffy cloud doubled over in glee as the first humans choked them down and pounded their hairy chests.

One lucky Neanderthal danced around and grunted the first ever rock ballad! He was immediately promoted to medicine man. Another got all mushy and became the mother of all politicians.

I’m surprised you don’t hear more about mushrooms being used as murder weapons. You would think it would be so easy. Bring him home, cook him a fancy meal – he’ll rave about the exotic mushrooms – and then. Poof! He’s a gonner.

Mushrooms.You can’t pick them until you’ve been certified by a trained professional who will show you a confusing array of signs to distinguish between the edible and poisonous ones and then smuggly walk away
knowing that you won’t be any competition for his harvest.

Mushrooms are sneaky. They hide underground for thousands of years spreading out hundreds of miles before they sense their prey above and suddenly spring up in the dark with the stealth of a lynx and begin to
chow down on their victim. Luckily, it’s already dead.

Mushrooms are good for you. They contain no fats or cholesterol and little calories, carbohydrates or sodium. Sound tasty? Not.

Mushrooms are good for the climate when they dry out in the soil, so we should leave them there. If you pick them, how are the scientists going to be able to do their globally beneficial experiments?

So mushrooms do have their good qualities. There are things you can do with them.

Just don’t make me eat them.

 

Pursuing Light’s Pigments

“There are two kinds of light – the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.”
~James Thurber

Prickly Rose – Early Morning – After Rain. July 7, 2011. 6:50 a.m. Camera settings: 1/500 sec @ f/9, -0.3EV, 55mm, ISO 400, Auto focus, RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Cropped in and exported via Picasa.

It is all about the light: that whimsical, ever changing, shadow-shifting, colour defying element; as indefinable, as ungovernable, as illusive as a deity; at once bewitching and unnoticed.

Shasta Daisy – Early Morning. July 15, 2011. 6:51 a.m. Camera settings: 1/160 sec @ f/11, -0.3EV, 55mm, ISO 200, Auto focus. RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Exported via Picasa.

The light of moist air shot through with birthing sunshine is the twinkle in the eye of a just-awakened sky; the light of mid-day: hard, judgmental, revealing; the light of evening, casting silken coral softness on flesh and feather. Then there are the lights allowed to pass through leaden skies and those drifting among the mists of a summer afternoon.

Prickly Rose Through the Fog. July 12, 2011. 8:50 a.m. Camera settings: 1/125 sec @ f/5.6, -3.xEV, 55mm, ISO 400, Auto focus RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Cropped in and exported via Picasa.

If you have travelled, you may have noticed the varying character of light on different continents. Many years ago in Australia I tried to paint the soft, almost touchable light of Australia. I’ve tried to photograph the romantic light coming through a lace-covered window in early evening and daydreamed under the cozy light pushing past gently dancing leaves and through the canvas of a tent.

Poppy through Wispy Cloud. July 15, 2011. 10:25 a.m. Camera settings: 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6, 0EV, 55mm, ISO 100, Manual focus. RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Cropped in and exported via Picasa.

I heard about it. I read about it. I saw it and knew it, and yet it alludes me. Nathaniel Hawthorne is to have said that sunlight is painting. It seems to me that sunlight’s palette is limitless, and its canvas is constantly being overlaid with new and finer dabs of pigment. Define the colour of a white poppy. See it in the morning when the clouds are painted pink. Look again when storm clouds have gathered and its stony opacity defies the delicacy of its blossom. Look at it from beneath when the sky is so blue in mid-afternoon that the orange and yellow candy of a bumblebee can be seen through the petals.

Geranium. July 8, 2011. 8:21 a.m. Camera settings: 1/100 sec @ f/5.6, -0.7EV, 55mm, ISO 100, Auto focus. RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Cropped in and exported via Picasa.

Over and over again, I read the mantra of the landscape photographer. “Shoot when the sun is low, just after sunrise and just before sunset.” And yet I carry my camera in the middle of the day, trying to pull details from shadows and sun-washed highlights. I thought they were talking about shooting the ethereal colours of the clouds when the sky sings the aria of dawn and the ballad of the dusk.

Allium. July 8, 2011. 8:22 a.m. Camera settings: 1/100 sec @ f/8, -0.7EV, 55mm, ISO 100, Auto focus RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Cropped in and exported via Picasa.

But they were not. These wise advisors were talking about colour and the softness of shadows. They knew about the frisky light that crouches down and peeks under the skirts of draping branches, the light that reveals through the translucency of petals and leaves, and that exposes the spider’s deadly designs.

Orb Web on Foggy Morning. July 14, 2010. 7:22 a.m. Camera settings: 1/320 sec @ f/5.6, -3.xEV, 55mm, ISO 1600, Manual focus. RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Exported via Picasa.

I will still carry my camera through the woods and around my garden in the middle of the day because it records for me the treasures I find. But if I can surprise one of these jewels when it has not yet dried its face after the morning dew has washed it, or visit it again when the sun is telling it its bedtime story, then I am all the more excited by its brilliance, its delicacy, its beauty and its, and our silent and crucial connection to the cycle of earth’s rotation.

Potentilla. July 9, 2011. 8:22 a.m. Camera settings: 1/320 sec @ f/8, -0.7EV, 55mm, ISO 100, Auto focus. RAW file corrected for exposure, colour and sharpness, and converted to TIF in Nikon’s View NX. Cropped in and exported via Picasa.

As you can see, I have decided to take a page from Bob Zeller and include my EXIF data under the pictures here. I seem to only be able to learn one thing at a time and in the almost two years that I have had my DSLR, I’ve so far I believe I understand aperture and shutter speed. I am starting to remember to consider my ISO and am currently experimenting with exposure compensation (EV).

Unless I know I want to try to catch or stop movement I always shoot in aperture priority and I have not even tried to learn about focus modes, metering and the dozens of other things I could adjust on my camera. I have one camera – a Nikon D60 with the kit 18-55mm lens. Sometimes I remember to use the lens hood (and to reverse it when I don’t need it) and occasionally I go out with my (broken) tripod to take bracketed exposures (manually – my camera doesn’t do it automatically) to blend. I use the wireless remote that came with the camera. I don’t have any flash units other than what is on the camera and I seldom use it.

So, if you can learn anything from the shooting information, even if it’s what not to do, that’s great, but if you see how I might have improved the shot by doing something differently, that’s even better and please jump in with your advice to help me, and possibly others who stop in, to learn.

 

The Story of an Unnamed Creek

The geographical elevation of any location plays a pivotal role in all of life. Here, at 1200 metres, as a factor in our climate and growing season (fewer frost-free days, cooler nights), and our weather (warm air aloft can be a good thing), the elevation determines what plants can grow here and thus what animals will survive.

Beyond climate though, and only as a matter of physics, elevation determines the relative size of watercourses. So much of the mighty rivers and so the oceans begin on the tops of the hills. What falls as rain and snow percolates through the flora, and what excess runs through the mosses and seeps below the roots trickles above and below ground, gathering in the low places and gaining volume and momentum as the slope declines. What we call a creek here, at the apex of a high ridge, others might consider a mere trickle; our rivers would barely qualify as streams at lower elevations.

My little creek meanders along and down a natural ravine along the eastern side of Swan Hills: my town. It starts underground, gathering water by the droplet from oozing seepage and dribbling rivulets along and between hillside spurs. It appears and disappears. It divides and reforms. It gushes after the rains and glides during dry spells. It spreads through marshes and fens tangled with willows and swamp spruce, continually filtering its pristine waters through the mosses. In the deepest places it clears away the thin soil and peat and tumbles over fallen branches and the smooth, round rocks that line the subsurface. In the steepest places it cascades over these rocks playfully splashing and gurgling.

Though deserving it may be, my little creek has no name. Humbly nourishing a myriad of plant life including orchids and currants, it pullulates placidly southward where it quietly joins another unnamed course. This stream comes from a slightly higher elevation to the north and east, and it flows west, emptying into the Morse River east of Highway 32. The Morse gushes southeast until it discharges into Freeman River directly south of the second southward crossing on Highway 33 between Trapper Lea’s Cabin and the Centre of Alberta Natural Area. The oxbow-rich and debris-ridden Freeman, with a beautiful shimmer of nutrient rich green, then joins the dark glacier waters of the mighty Athabasca at Fort Assiniboine.

The peaceful shush and gurgle of the waters of my little creek have now been transformed. Each droplet that has not been drunk by a moose or the thirsty roots of a balsam fir or returned to the clouds by evaporation is now in the company of the melted snow and ice from the Athabasca Glacier. They are now part of one of the most ecologically and historically important rivers in Canada, which played an essential part in the early fur trade and the opening up of the north to Europeans. So long before that, the Athabasca River would presumably have been a factor in the distribution of First Nations people after the last Ice Age.

These droplets now travel at breakneck speeds as they race northeast to join with another important river: the historically named Peace, in the Peace-Athabasca Delta. The Slave River is formed from the melded waters and courses north into the Great Slave Lake, where the water from my little creek may rest a while before continuing the northward course as the mighty Mackenzie River. Eventually and finally, barring an earlier loop in the water cycle they may reach every creek’s destination – the ocean. Here, in the Arctic Ocean, our little droplets may circulate year-round under the surface for a while, and then they may rise to the surface to kiss the shores with the tides and to freeze and thaw, evaporate and return to the earth at another place as the seasons dictate.

I sit humbly on the trunk of a fallen spruce beside my little creek on a early June afternoon. It’s barely a stride wide at this point. Tall poplar, spruce and thick willows are all around me, the willow leaves just beginning to unfold; their catkins attracting a few early flies and wasps. I’ve avoided sitting too close to the prickles of a small gooseberry bush and the tiny blossoms of a delicate violet. I can barely hear a fat furry bee as it visits the little yellow anemones abloom all around me.

Nearby in the shade of a circle of pines a fern is teasingly unrolling its fronds. Across the creek I know there’s a lone and vulnerable orchid: a Venus’ Slipper, dancing a quiet, sultry ballet in the breeze. Tenacious horsetails spring up through the mud where the little creek had overflowed its tenuous banks with the snowmelt just weeks before. Above it I drink in the rich greens of the many species of moss that cover the hillside under the towering pine and spruce, pale lichens shining among them. I wonder at the astounding variety and beauty of the plant life around me and I listen to the cheerful melodies of the water and of the birds that are attracted to the stream-sustained deciduous trees. A squirrel chirps from amid a thick fir, possibly concerned that I am a potential danger. And possibly, I am.

Contemplating the awe-inspiring journey of a little drop of rain or melted snowflake I am deeply aware of my dependence on this little trickle of water that I meditate beside and of all those like it. I am struck by the importance and the fragility of their ecosystems. I wonder and worry about what I can do to ensure that this system, this incredibly intricate network of life will endure for my dear grandchildren, and for theirs.

Addendum: Just discovered this great interactive website from the Canadian Geograpic – Explore Canada’s Ocean Watersheds.

 

Stoop and See the Flowers

Thirty metres below the raven, krawking from the wind-battered tips of lofty lodgepole pine, lies a world in miniature. Once the snow disappears, to the distracted mind focused at eye-level, the forest floor is a mottled shag of rusty needles and diminutive greenery. A red squirrel might chatter a warning from a scruffy branch as you pass beneath, while an invisible Northern flicker commands attention with his most fetching love song in the distance. Listen!

Sun has warmed the sap flowing up through the conifers and thawed the earth below, releasing the tender scents of spring.  It is impossible to resist the impulse to close your eyes and fill your body with the redolence of buds swelling into new life and the pungent perfume of last summer’s foliage, ever so slowly transforming into nourishing loam.

Sink now onto a mound of feathery evergreen moss, just beginning to sprout tendrils of new growth and from your new vantage point, look around.

Coyly raising its face from the crisp carpet through which it has recently emerged, the ruffled petals of the kidney-leaved violet barely reach beyond their circlet of dew-catching leaves.

Violets herald the spring. Rhizomes spread the blossoms discreetly among emerging later-blooming forbs; their vibrant faces are confirmation of the promise of summer. The bog violet's rich blue is a true gem among the leaf litter.

In the rich loam collected by a fallen sentinel, a thick carpet of soft, lacy green nearly conceals the delicate cluster of miniscule flowers on the rare, musky-scented moschatel.

The buds of the lingonberry glow from the tips of lilliputian evergreen boughs, bringing the first pink to the woods.

In the moist ravine, flamboyant yellow anemones sparkle above still brown, snow-flattened ground.

The iconic fuzz of the pussy willow catkin has blossomed into an explosive array of alluring pollen-rich bristles.

An inflorescence of minute flowers cloaks a pendulant green-alder catkin.

My once 20-20 vision, now aided by reading and magnifying glasses, is challenged to take in the unfolding of spring’s miniature world of wonder. Each gem that I find, though, feels like a monumental discovery and I want to show the world. Without a macro lens, my skills are also challenged in capturing these constantly changing gems to share. But I implore the reader to look down; to get down; to see the abundance, the rich variety of minute miracles underfoot by the path. Take a child in hand and together be the explorers; be the discoverers. Richness is all around. It is good for the soul.

 

One Shining Day: A Journey Into Spring in the Hills

It begins in March. You would not dare dream about the end of winter in February but March usually presents a rare radiant day whose brilliance plumbs beneath insulating layers of patience and insidiously nudges sleeping desires. It invites you to imagine the treasures lying beneath their own thick, albescent cover that must be sharing that awakening, sensing the tingle of dividing cells, sipping hints of nourishment. Weather, the quintessential, ever available topic of casual social encounters dominates all conversation. Analyses of local climate and comparisons of current conditions to past and foreign Marches are argued among and between the old-timers. Memories are suspect; predictions scorned.

Eventually March gives way to April and prods once-steadfast sufferance with taunting images of spring from distances. Schoolbooks taught us that April is synonymous with the promising season, but the strength of winter is bolstered here by latitude and altitude. Patience is tested. Sometimes March, but this year April has brought teasing promises like the sudden appearance of velvety catkins swelling beneath shining sheaths. They decorate the glistening willow at the moist bottoms of sunny slopes.

Squirrels, who through the long winter endure because of their humble industriousness, filling secret middens with the nourishing cones of pine and spruce, in April, ascend the bare poplar whose buds are only just beginning to swell.

Still the cold, though weakened, perseveres and battles the inevitable assault from the ever-rising arc of the sun through changing days. Water that trickled to deepen a crevasse in the now compacting snow, cycles through its physical states. The hare, who must have read from the same schoolbooks, begins to shed its concealing white coat and must hide even more stealthily as brown fur replaces it. A barely visible songbird serenades from the top of a lofty pine tree in the sunshine and Dark-eyed Juncos are discovered gleaning tidbits under a tangle of shrubs at the edge of a ravine.

At first, it is only at night that you hear them. Canada Geese, Snow Geese, Sandhill and possibly Whooping Cranes, Tundra and less likely, Trumpeter Swans fly high overhead, their calls joining with the stars as a processional to spring. Then, if you’re lucky, on a rare warm day, you’ll watch as flock after flock of cranes join above the hill to circle as they ride a thermal to gain altitude: a spiral tower of ever fading specks and cacophonous calls, disappearing into the atmosphere above you. Throughout April and May, the energy-efficient V’s of migrating birds adorn the sky. The gargling gar-ooo’s of the cranes and the familiar honking of the geese are often the only way to identify the specks appearing and disappearing among the clouds. In the sunshine, black wingtips give away the snow goose, but the usually quieter and reserved swans, often flying lower over the hill, are unmistakable: black bill and feet starkly punctuating their graceful, huge-winged, long-necked, pure white bodies.

One shining day, I find dry purchase on a bed of moss and pine needles along a south-facing hill of mature pines. The liquid shine of a small pond below me promises the possibility of a visit from ducks or geese. Soon, a pair of Mallards is drawn to the submerged vegetation revealed through the clear water. Shy and skittish, they flush at the slightest sound or movement. The tentative approach of another species with whistling wings provokes the male into the air after them, the chase ending at the edge of the pond, where the Mallard skims the surface as he lands. The intruders continue their search for a resting place as the colourful drake silently floats back toward the sound of his relentlessly calling mate.

I stand among the pines, still and silent. Yet as if through a language I could not understand the female has given away my presence, the drake turns a graceful circle in front of me before suddenly taking to the air once again to alight beside his mate further down the pond. The next day dense clouds unload a thickness of heavy slush. Water on the cusp of freezing floats the snow that the Mallard couple must push aside as they trail across the surface, constantly seeking the pondweed seeds they need to survive. They will persevere and perhaps raise a brood on this little ravine pond as winter gives way to spring, and spring blossoms into summer in the hills.

 

Please help me make a decision by Sunday

The always encouraging Bob Zeller has convinced me to enter my first photography contest but I’m finding it incredibly difficult to choose which image(s) to enter. I found some guidelines to follow, but there is something wrong with every picture I think I might use so I’m hoping I can enlist some help from my blogging friends (and strangers too!). Please let me know which of these you think might be good enough for this challenge. I only have 2 days left to decide. You can click on any of them to open a larger gallery.

#1 Autumn Writes the Memoirs

#2 Sunrise Christmas Eve

#3 Don’t Go Yet

#4 Guarded Memories

#5 Bedtime Snack

#6 Goodnight Old Year

#7 Home on the Horizon

#8 Silent Power

#9 Pinned in the Air

#10 Paddock Morning

#11 To Long Life

#12 Unheard

#13 Dressed Up