Our world abounds in Mother Naure’s beauty, much of it in our routine living spaces where we aren’t especially prone to simply pause and feed our visual and esthetic senses. On the other hand there are occasional opportunities where beauty briefly fills our visual space and we have no option but to pause and stare in breathless wonder, thus my experience when I stepped out on the deck this evening.
Four Bucks
Upon finishing my Sunday breakfast, I stood to remove the dishes from the table and saw a handsome mature mule deer buck grazing near the corner of the south fence. Instinctively, I found my camera, checked the settings and slowly eased out onto the deck. By this time three younger male deer had come out of the timber and began crossing the meadow single file. Perhaps out of territorial anxieties, the big fellow carefully watched the younger ones as they marched before him.
Without haste, the young deer moved on across the meadow and out of sight behind the rocks and trees.
The big deer somehow became aware of my presence on the deck and looked back toward me.
He then turned in the direction taken by the younger deer, and I captured four images as he moved.
I’m posting all four images because each shows all of the deer’s hooves off the ground simultaneously in a bounding gait known as “stotting”. Gazelles exhibit this behavior also. Entertaining to watch! They can also trot and run in the usual manner.
I’m done for now!
Jack…
Long Draw Trip
In multiple ways this trip to Colorado is a feast of memories, some revisited and others to come, some emotional, and all fond. On a recent memory hunt, I trekked the Long Draw Road that branches off from Colorado 14, the Poudre Canyon Road. Long Draw doesn’t show well on either Apple or Google maps, and in Southern lingo, it’s over “yonder way” from our Red Feather home, or more precisely, an hour’s drive.
The Long Draw Road a long, winding affair that ultimately leads to the origin of the Colorado River, which at that point is a trickle in a small marsh. I last saw the river’s origin thirteen years ago when my son Galen and his son James and I walked across it. I didn’t go that far on this trip. Instead, I hiked a short distance into the Trap Park Trail.
July is wildflower month in Colorado, and along this trail I saw two state flowers in all of their radiance: Indian Paintbrush (Wyoming),
and Columbine (Colorado).
I then followed the trail past the flowers and part way up the mountain to a point where I could see a mile or two and captured this image (I occasionally REALLY like a black and white image.)
At the end of the day, after the hike, the flowers, one moose sighting and a peaceful, rainy drive back down the Poudre Canyon to home, I reminisced it all, including some older memories, with a glass of wine.
Peace and tranquility to all!
Jack…
At-One-Ment
Easter, 2015. Another Sunday, the one day out of seven when the affairs of humans seem to run a bit less frenetically. Jack was sipping his early morning coffee, gazing through the window and across the meadow in search of movement, whether wind-blown clouds, ponderosa limbs waving in the breeze, or his feathered or furry kin searching for a meal. The meadow is a visual adventure, serene and healing; its mood ever changing. It is a peaceful foreground for distant hills and still-further mountains. The grasses, crocuses and irises of late spring, the yellow carpet of summer, the brown autumn cover and perhaps a few winter and early spring blizzards mark its seasons. Jack’s wife had often sat in the same special spot during her cancer recovery, later attributing her well-being to that deeply experiential, meditative solitude. For him, this morning had no intent beyond his gazing - until the nudge.
The raccoon-like eyes of his little schnauzer partner, Maggie, were at his knee, speaking the language they shared. “I want to go out”, she was saying, a request of two possible interpretations. Checking for intent, he let her go out on the deck. Had she run into the yard, she would have had a call of Nature. Not this time! She remained, looking out through the deck balusters across the meadow, ears perked. Hike time! So Jack quickly donned his cap and coat, picked up his hiking poles, and together, off they went.
Their journey began at the base of a rough granite dome, one in a series stretching westward into the Laramie Range. It’s a huge pile of billion-plus year old stone that long ago intruded in molten form into an over-lying layer of another geologic matrix that now lies in the plains of eastern Colorado or maybe as silt in the Gulf of Mexico. He and Maggie had once climbed nearly to the highest point on this dome, halting with a sense of unease over their altitude. But from that vantage point he saw Long’s Peak southward and the plains of Wyoming to the north. Fifty or sixty miles perhaps? It was the lower levels of that dome that Jack and Maggie began their hike this Easter, a jaunt not taken since the preceding autumn.
For Jack the hike was a visual experience, for his partner, an olfactory one. She galloped and trotted, nose to the ground, but within a visual perimeter of him. If a scent momentarily drew her from his sight, a familiar whistle brought her back. They were partners, each immersed in their respective sensual experiences.
Recent high winds had left their mark of downed trees, some already dead when toppled, some alive but shallow-rooted and wind-susceptible. All were as much in the cycle of life as their erect relatives.
The ubiquitous rocks were sufficient stimulus for a lifetime of wonderment. Jack paused frequently - and wondered. There was a delicately-curved depression in one boulder, probably a safe “watering hole” for forest beings. Another huge boulder sat balanced atop a far smaller one. The scratches, fissures and breaks that in past millennia would have fitted together like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle were all around him. “How?”, he frequently asked in amazement. The question was a recurring one; it happened every time he came here. His companion continued her sniffing.
They came upon a glade, a beautiful, quiet spot. Aspens and grass. No people, no noise, all calmness. Overhead, clouds were swept along by winds in another layer of atmosphere. With the sun warming his back, Jack’s mind wandered into another realm, a mindful, Zen-like one. Here in a tiny sliver of time on a speck of galactic dust in an immeasurable expanse of time and space, a conscious being contemplated his place, a place where he and Maggie were minuscule elements of an ongoing cosmic creation. Atonement! Or as Joseph Campbell deconstructed the word, at-one-ment. A sense of being with everything around him, from the concrete to the ineffable. For Jack, there was serene peace in that moment.
In time, they began moving reluctantly beyond the glade, ultimately arriving at a precipice that they dared not descend. Below was another grassy sunlit space, and through an opening in the trees on the far side he could see snow-capped peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park. How to get down? He nearly retreated before seeing wisdom in the fine gravel - deer tracks - that pointed to a path. They took it, as did those who had been there long before his kind, and gradually came to the clearing. Following the slope that would eventually point homeward, he saw pasque flowers in every sunlit nook. They came to a huge yellow-belly ponderosa pine, an ancient and elegant forest creature, its bark smoothed and colored by age. Maggie slipped on loose bark as she crossed a downed tree, quickly recovering with some rapid back leg movement. They crossed a decades-old barbed wire fence, anchored to a tree at one end and to pitch-pine posts on the other. Finally reaching the base of the dome but still far from their entry point, they walked through a past-its-prime aspen grove and past a collapsed cabin that once rested on a foundation of individual stones. He recalled the wild rhubarb that grew nearby. Staying on animal trails, they moved along. As they rounded the last point of trees they were finally on the meadow again where this story began. At the top of the rise was the window, a dark eye peering across the landscape, where he had sat earlier and where his dear wife had healed. Slowed and fatigued, they walked and paused their way up the hill toward the house. A pair of black Abert's squirrels welcomed them, noisily scurrying up the hillside as man and dog approached. Home at last from their adventure, they imbibed much-needed water. Maggie then slept, and Jack gazed out over the meadow again. A fitting Easter finale!
Musings of a Crowded Man
Being here in Colorado isn't too bad he thought, although like parts of his home state, it's getting a bit crowded. The nearby town is filling up with shoe-box apartments and breweries are exporting beer out-of-state so that folks can pee scarce Rocky Mountain water where it won't do any good. No matter though; somebody's making money. Town folks drag their tin boxes on wheels past his place every Friday, on their way to a campground where they can park within a few feet of other tin boxes - for relaxation. Or camping. Then they pull those boxes back to town Sunday afternoon so they can help make traffic snarls on Monday. "Odd damn species, we humans", he thought.
Sometimes when he began to feel crowded the song "Western Skies" rumbled through his head, and he felt a wistful longing. It was written by Chris Ledoux, who made it big in country music but refused to trade his home, Kaycee, Wyoming, for Nashville and its plastic-hatted, costumed stars playing their Japanese guitars. The song never failed to cast a dream-like spell over him. The space! No crowds! Nobody sharing their car radio with the world! He gave up television seven years ago, never to miss it and its demeaning commercials. So, a little less of civilization seemed appealing at times. The prairie life might not be too bad he would think - until his septuagenarian reality rose up before him. "Oh well", as a friend would say. Forget that! Too old for such a move. He still loved "Western Skies" though:
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The Nashville friends think I'm strange to make my home out on the range
Think it's nothin' but a God forsaken land
Why don't you bring your guitar and family, move on down to Tennessee
Well, I just smile because they don't understand
But if they ever saw a sunrise on a mountain mornin'
Watched those cotton candy clouds roll by
They'd know why I live beneath these western skies
I got peace of mind and elbow room I love the smell of sage in bloom
Catch a rainbow on my fishin' line
We got county fairs and rodeos, ain't a better place for my kids to grow
Just turn 'em loose in the western summer time
And if you ever held your woman on a summer's evening
While the prairie moon was blazin' in her eyes
You'd know why I live beneath these western skies
You ain't lived until you've watched those northern lights
Set around the campfire and hear the coyotes call at night
Makes you feel alright
So guess I'll stay right where I'm at, wear my boots and my cowboy hat
But I'll come and see ya once in a while
I'll bring my guitar and sing my songs, sorry if I don't stay too long
I love Tennessee but ya know it's just not my style
I gotta be where I can see those rocky mountains
Ride my horse and watch an eagle fly
I gotta live my life and write my songs beneath these western skies
When I die you can bury me beneath these western skies, yippee
Songwriter: CHRIS LEDOUX
© THE BICYCLE MUSIC COMPANY
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The lyrics were reality for Ledoux the cowboy; for Ledoux' fans they were a colorful fantasy, the myth of the West as someone called it.
So, when things felt a bit close he'd get his little canine partner in the Jeep and they'd ride for awhile - maybe over to the Cherokee Park Road to the Sand Creek Road, past Lyle Van Waning’s place, and then head on up past Chimney Rock on the Wyoming border, all on pock-marked dirt roads. And after some dust and some bumps, some aspen groves, lots of sage brush, and miles of fence wire, there before them lay the great spaces! Openness - and nobody within hollering distance. Gentle rolling countryside and distant mountains offering a sense of mystery about what is beyond! Ranchers and a few part-time city refugees scattered themselves across this vastness without serious disturbance of the land. A trait of folks living in this country is a feeling of claustrophobia if they can't see seven miles in every direction. Driving along slowly, he related to that feeling.
With the Snowy Range and Medicine Bow Peak on the horizon and miles between, he stopped and killed the Jeep's engine so he could listen to and feel the wind and smell the sage. As vast as the ocean and as quiet as a hardwood forest! He wondered if people might have to be a little bit crazy to live out here. Maybe! But they don't shoot each other as quickly as their more crowded urban brethren. Humans are usually pretty close to each other when they pull the trigger, so open prairie crazy might be different from close-in urban crazy in a nice sort of way. Maybe just different!
After a long reflective pause while drinking his fill of these western skies and all beneath them, he at last cranked the Jeep and followed the winding road past the ranch houses, past the long row of community mail boxes and on out to the highway. Like Odysseus bound to the ship's mast, he slipped away from the sirens' call of the prairie and headed back to home and reality. It was a good trip! His friend was sleeping.
Tribute to Peggy
We lost Peggy, my dear wife and partner of 58 years, and mother to our four children, November 26, 2023. The following images were taken from a PowerPoint tribute that was shown at the Celebration of Life held in her honor. Time doesn’t heal this kind of pain.
"Scene" No Longer Redux
Machines: 1
Bluebirds: 0
Self-Reliance
There is an old horse barn on our property, about a hundred and fifty yards from the hard surface (paved road) and adjacent to the driveway leading to the house. Like the wood snow fence alluded to in an earlier post, the barn is a local landmark. We have known of people driving onto the property to photograph this barn. Technically, they were trespassing, but some folks know no boundaries.
Structurally, there are two stalls in the front half and three in the back with a tack and feed room between. Both sets of stalls open onto small corrals. There is electricity, but based on the wiring I suspect that it is a much more recent addition. This lantern is a remnant from the pre-electricity era. You can also see that the internal timbers are of a rough cut.
The surface structure is in poor condition, but the barn is still functional. The previous owner’s daughter brings her horse to our place periodically, so there is a familiar, pungent, horse scent in the barn. However, we don’t have horses, and there is otherwise little-to-no economic incentive to update it. Even in its current state though, the barn has character, especially in the textural and colouring patterns of the outside boards, a subject that I will cover separately.
I don’t know the barn’s age, but it is old as is obviously by its condition; however, there are other age-related clues that suggest that it was built in the WWII era or earlier. My conclusion is based in part on the way self-reliant farmers and ranchers of my father’s generation worked, often fashioning or machining parts with their own tools and devices rather than driving on unpaved roads to a hardware store to purchase a hinge or a latch – if there was a hardware store. Another indicator is that there was a small shop on the property with an oil change pit and bench spaces. With that in mind I’ll show some examples of what I interpret as self-reliance in the form of home-engineered devices.
Self-Reliance Example 1. Here is a very simple one-way door lock with a rough-cut wooden bar and a simple metal catch.
The catch was probably shaped by heating it in a forge and shaping it on an anvil with a hammer. Or the hot metal could have been held in a vice and shaped with a hammer. The holes had to be created in a drill press. My father used these or similar resources, so I would surmise that the person who built this barn and made these objects had access to similar tools.
Note: As a one-way lock, there’s no exit from the other side.
Self-Reliance Example 2. Here is another door latch system, and excepting the spring, it would have been 100% home-made - with the addition of another shop tool, a welder. Again, there are heat-moulded pieces and drilled holes. The mechanism allows the spring-retained, door-mounted piece, to ride up the the slanted frame-mounted catch and drop into the slot. The slanted surface on the catch shows a “bead” created by a welder for the purpose of hardening the surface of the catch. This is a two-sided latch; it can be opened from either side of the door.
Self-Reliance Example 3. While making this hinge would probably be beyond the skill-set of a home shop the over-size hinge pin is definitely a home-added piece, probably pulled from a bucket of items discarded from other projects. The empty bolt hole, paint job and rust indicate the passage of some years too.
Self-Reliance Example 4. Maybe this one is not so much a “made” solution as it is a creative use of an every-day object. It’s not recycling in the modern sense, but it is at least “repurposing” of tin can lids. So what is being covered? Knotholes! The outside surface boards of the barn were cut from ponderosa pines that had an abundance of limbs growing out from the trunks. Limb remnants in the sawn boards are knots, and knots in untreated boards eventually dry and maybe fall out, leaving knotholes. So, what better way to cover a knothole than to nail a tin can lid over it?
There are other oddities in the barn, including horse-gnawed stall dividers, coat hangers in strange places, and other items, but for now I’ll let such trivia lie. With these examples of the barn’s hardware, suggestive of some degree of long-ago, before Lowe’s, owner self-reliance, I’ll close this segment of “barn-ology” and return later with another piece on the barn’s wood beauty.
A Deal With the Devil
There is fencing around the entire perimeter of our property with the exception of the entry gate where there is a cattle guard that wildlife and senior humans avoid crossing. Most of the fencing is wire of the smooth/twisted variety and ancient, rusty barbed kind. There is one section along the western side of the property comprised of wooden posts supporting horizontal stringers that, in turn, support vertical slats (see two images below). In addition to containing/blocking large animal movements the wooden fence prevents blowing snow fall from piling up on the driveway. All of this fencing was present when we purchased the property.
I spent several days during our last visit repairing one section of the wire fence that runs along the inside edge of the forest west of the house. As I said in that story, the job was not easy, compounded by black flies, mosquitos, uneven terrain, damaged posts, broken wire and geriatric joints that hindered my decades-ago nimbleness.
Upon completing the repair of the wire fence my mind was on recuperation. But alas, it was not to be! Two old horizontal stringers on the snow fence broke during a windy storm, leaving a blight on what was actually a landmark along the Red Feather Road. We were leaving in a few days, and I questioned whether I could squeeze the repair in. But I didn’t feel up to it! However, a voice urged me to go for it, saying that this job would be easier than the wire fence repair and that my discomfort would be only minimally incremental.
Yeah, sure! I should have known better! That voice has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. Anyway, I fixed the fence, removing the slats and pulling big nails to remove the broken stringers, putting new 2x12 stringers in place and re-attaching the slats. But wow! For a few days I was eating Tylenol and Advil to ease the cumulative aches. New ones too! In my finger joints! Ankles! Arches! Yep, the snow fence looks good again, but methinks I need to find a real fence repairman for any future jobs! At least this repair job won’t be waiting!
Who Needs TV?
The size of this image might leave smartphone viewers with their smaller screens at a disadvantage here.
In May of 2015 I was searching for a suitable panoramic scene to be posted in the Red Feather Lakes Community Library as a part of their renovation project. After fruitlessly framing compositions at several locations I finally shot this scene from a peak across the road from our house. A neighbour was kind enough to allow me to park in his yard, from which I hiked up to a higher elevation, camera and tripod in tow. And there is was - exactly the scene I had been searching for! Winds were pushing the clouds about, thus rapidly altering the elements in the scene, and I had to work quickly.
As for the elements of the scene, the light green foreground is part of the Boy Scout Ranch, and the dirt road is, of course, the Boy Scout Road even though it is state-maintained. Our house is immediately to the right of the picture where we overlook much of what you see here. However, we cannot see the mountains without hiking a short distance toward the Boy Scout Road. The two dark layers, green and blue, are the hilly walls of the Poudre River Canyon. The 2012 High Park fire burned some of that dark green area, and Maggie, my mini-schnauzer companion, and I were the next to be evacuated had the fire advanced further. Although we endured a lot of smoke, we weren't evacuated. The snow-covered peaks are the Mummy Range, the northernmost mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park. That snow pack and its run-off feed the Colorado River running westward and the Poudre River heading eastward. I have hiked to the origin of the Colorado River at the base of the Mummies and stepped across it. Snowpack of that amount is no more.
We printed a four foot long metal triptych for the library where it still hangs. Liking that printing so much we ordered another, each section being 24” wide and 36” tall. IOW, the picture is six feet long. It hangs on the west wall of our den. I can sit in our recliner and stare through the window toward the forest and move my eyes a few degrees rightward and gaze at this.
Who needs TV?
Horses and a Rainbow
“There’s a storm across the valley, clouds are rolling in” as the words go in John Denver’s song. It’s fascinating that different elements can come together to create a scene worthy of recording, and here the clouds, mountains, horses, the meadow and a rainbow all collude to offer a photographic symphony. There are four layers: three ground layers and the sky, each distinct with unique textures and lighting. The rainbow appears to descend between the distant mountains and the nearer hills while the horses graze in the foreground.
So much for a “lesson” in composition and opportunistic photography. Maybe verbal fluff too! Otherwise, simply enjoy the picture for its uniqueness.
A Trip To Wyoming
Several years ago I came across a delightful 2009 essay by a Cleveland sports writer, Tony Pluto, in which he described a trip into southeastern Wyoming the day prior to his coverage of a Browns-Bronco game in Denver. His intent and his writing style were different from mine, so I have simply borrowed the elements from his story that match my observations and which evoke fond memories of our own Wyoming experiences.
For a bit of background about Wyoming, many would say that it is still an untamed land, where the mountains are ever on the horizon and the prairies and grasslands are vast. Mr. Pluto said, “I have been to Wyoming at least a dozen times. On each visit, I think how the land is not tamed by man. Some mountains are too high, some rivers too wild, some storms too fierce.” Good description!
Nearly half of Wyoming is federally-owned. Cattle ranching is big, and cowboys don’t dress like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Mineral extraction and tourism are the primary sources of revenue. There are boom towns like the coal city of Gillette, as well as the once-boom-town-now-ghost town, Jeffrey City, built on uranium mining wealth. Wyoming is a mix of ranchers and billionaires, and the first state to grant women the right to vote. Don’t get the idea, though, that the Equal Rights Amendment is smiled upon in Wyoming; voting women in Wyoming were the wives of voting ranchers.
The climate is semi-arid, and the forever winds can and do overturn tractor trailers. Big snow fences are common along strategic roadside sites and Union Pacific railways, and highway gates are used to close roads prior to blizzards.
Mr. Pluto described driving down roads under high skies and huge clouds that seemed to rise up to the heavens. He drove down roads through miles of open “pastures", roads where his cellphone was long out of range.
Any Verizon towers out here?
Mr. Pluto drove down roads where he saw more pronghorn antelope than cars and people. Yep! There are more antelope than people in Wyoming.
And there are loners too! These critters can hit 55 mph in a dead run. Speculation is that they evolved the speed to elude the now-extinct North American cheetah. However, they are not true antelope; instead, they are related to giraffes. Kinda like Spanish moss and pineapples being relatives.
Tony described driving Wyoming Highway 130 into the Snowy (Range) Mountains without mentioning this piece of history, a marker for the Overland Trail where pioneers trekked this open space between the years 1862 to 1868. The wagon ruts were still present a hundred years afterward. Another cement post marker can be seen immediately to the right of the dark fence post and slightly below the horizon. Brave, crazy or desperate? Who knows? Twenty miles a day through the territory of people who didn’t want them on their land. Hardships unimaginable to us!
A bit further along Highway 130 there is the Centennial Valley and the Snowy Range Mountains in the distance. The green area in the left side of the image hides the Little Laramie River which ultimately ends up in the Missouri River system. We had a similar view of the Snowy Range every morning from our third floor apartment in Laramie in 1967-68.
The Snowy Range Road is opened sometime around Memorial Day after the winter snows have been cleared, and June and July visitors can discover a plethora of lakes, small streams and wild flowers such as this turk’s cap.
I mentioned in a previous entry that I had photographed white columbines. Here is an example of that delicate beauty!
Finally, there is Medicine Bow Peak, elevation 12,014 feet, and Lake Marie. I’ve hiked around this peak but never to the top. Our daughter, Mary Beth and her two boys have achieved that honour though. A tragedy occurred here on October 6, 1955 when United Airlines Flight 409 crashed into the face of the peak, killing all 66 people aboard. Details in Wikipedia!
The Pluto essay skipped from his mention of Highway 130 to his spotting of a moose, omitting the peak, the flowers and the streams. As with his moose spotting, I saw this big fellow on my way down the Snowy Range, munching on the local shrubbery. Pretty they’re not, but majestic, yes. And they jump our fence in Colorado in order to eat the choke cherry twigs, leaving their markings in the driveway. Oh well, most of our Colorado neighbours have four legs, and we welcome their presence.
Mr. Pluto ends his story with the idea that his trip to Wyoming had given him a glimpse of heaven, a place that he occasionally thought about with the hope of a permanent address. Here’s a bit of news for him! Many people, especially urban folk who are accustomed to neon lights and street lamps are uncomfortable in the open, unlit spaces of Wyoming. Those whom we've accompanied into a Wyoming prairie night are too frightened of that empty space to think of it as an eternal residence. On a more practical level, a rancher's grocery trips are to buy supplies, not simply some plastic-wrapped chicken tenders. The Schwann and UPS trucks are harbingers of the outside world, and mailboxes can be miles from the ranch house. It’s that openness that drew us in, that first view of Laramie and the surrounding plains as we descended the Lincoln Highway, now I-80, in 1967. Our entire time there was an adventure, physically, intellectually and spiritually, one not easily forgotten. Tony Pluto found his view of heaven; maybe we found ours.
Sunrise Grazing
Lenswork magazine, a premier photography journal, free of advertisements and over-sharpened images of iconic sites, sponsors an annual book with different themes. For several years the book was titled “Seeing in Sixes” which focussed (no pun) on project-based photography. That series was followed by “Our Magnificent Planet” in which I had two images published, and last year the theme was trilogies. This year’s theme is “glorious light” with an emphasis on strongly lighted subjects or light filtering through scenes or objects, etc. That idea became fixed in my little brain and caused me to mentally frame subjects in ways that I might not ordinarily see them. “Mentally frame” is key here. Sir Don McCullin, the UK war photographer, “framed” the leafless winter trees on his property as “etchings” which lead me to photograph the winter trees of Fearrington and tone the images in a cold blue shade to reflect their nakedness in the cold of winter. With glorious light in mind, I awoke one recent morning to see the horses grazing in the rising sunlight and immediately grabbed a camera and ventured onto the deck to record the event as they moved along the fence. This is one image of many that I recorded that morning. The interplay of subject and light is reflected in the lightness of the animal’s rear half and the shadows created by its shoulder and the shadows on the grass. So, this image is way more than one of a horse munching grass; it’s a mood, an emotion. This image also reflects the mystery of the meadow, a piece of uneven ground whose botanical cover changes with rainfall and season and whose appearance is determined by light. We don’t walk past a window without a glance or a gaze in its direction. Sometimes we see horses too.
A bird flew through this scene too,
“Scene” No Longer
Time changes everything as the old Bill Monroe tune says. And so it goes with our idyllic setting in Fearrington. No, the parks, trails, the stately oaks and the general nature of the Village aren’t changing, but the visual reminder of an earlier time, of an agrarian life, the last bit of if, when the land was worked and produced goods, is disappearing. Trees are being cut, and the big yellow machines have begun their scraping, digging and mounding, altering the face of the Weathersfield pasture. No, this is not a rant against “progress” as the quest for money is often characterized; it’s more like a sigh. I’m a farm boy derivative, a small-farm boy. I’ve seen the little family farms of my youth become mega-farms and the larger family cattle and wheat ranches of the American West become corporate entities. And the local grocery store and the the book mobile became Wall Mart and Amazon. So, what’s my point? Maybe my eighth decade taints my attitude, especially about some small things. So, for me, an unobstructed view of a sunset scene across the Weathersfield pasture, once part of a farm, will be a memory. The bluebirds will probably abandon the nesting boxes along the fence because the “neighborhood” will lose the openness they need. And the old ranch gate with its cross-wire support posts, relics of another time, won’t fit the modernized scenery. “Oh well” as my friend in Fort Collins says. Time changes everything, including me. I’m a bit slow at it though.
So, I’ll finish this with a few soon-to-be-memories.
Posted 5/23/23
An evening view across the Weathersfield pasture.
A neighbourhood crow amongst the Weathersfield bluebird boxes, calling his chums.
Late afternoon at the Weathersfield gate.
Tree Etchings
The British photojournalist, Sir Don Mccullin, described the winter deciduous trees on his property as looking like etchings, bare and black, silhouetted against the cold grey sky. Upon reflection, his description yielded a different mental framing for that which I had all too often passed off simply as bleak nakedness, or images befitting an Edgar Allen Poe story. With McCullin’s perspective in mind, the etchings metaphor now reveals different shapes for different species, the nests, squirrels, birds, parasites, symbionts and occasional cold weather adornments. Etchings need not be black against a grey sky; aspen and birch trees being exceptions, and the background need not be sky. And questions! Why do twigs and limbs branch off in a certain direction? How does a white oak “know” to build support for an increasingly-heavy horizontal limb, a limb that might not be seen by a casual gaze at a leafed tree? How is a tree structure so wind-flexible yet wind-stable? However, answers are not nearly so necessary as is “wonder” about a tree, whose every carbon atom comes from the atmosphere, a being who, unlike us, gives back to Earth - in spades. I’ve tried to capture some of that wonder in a separate gallery by the same name as this blog post on this site, all toned to create a mood of winter’s coldness, as in the example below.
Camden Park gnarled white oak against cloudy winter sky.
What Is The Next Note And Why?
What I want in heaven is for words to be notes and conversations to be symphonies. Tina Turner
I haven’t updated this blog or this site’s images in a too long a while. Perhaps I can clarify the issue beginning with the title of this essay. A bit of a funky title for a photography blog? Maybe, but let’s see where it goes, and I’ll begin by rephrasing the title’s question: How does an improvisational pianist select her next note? And why that note? The same could apply to the birth and execution of many if not most creative endeavors. In some cases, the next note could be the first note. The musician Sting, who claims to have J.S. Bach as his music teacher, said that if he didn’t realize a surprise within the first eight bars of a composition, he stopped listening. Beethoven accomplished the surprise in the first four notes of his fifth symphony. He knew his next note and why he wanted it. With respect to my creative endeavors, I don’t, and therein lies my problem.
A month before my 79th birthday I purchased a Fender Stratocaster. An American made one at that. A few more clams than an Indonesian model, but I figured that a lack of music knowledge need not be complicated by possible quality issues. Seems a bit late, right? In truth, I wanted to learn about guitar and acquire some proficiency, but not necessarily to become a guitarist. Music had long been an interest and the guitar seemed to be a good entry point, especially given its versatility, which Segovia equated to a small orchestra. The further I’ve gotten into learning the instrument, the more I realise Segovia’s observation as truth, and the more connected I feel to art in general.
My other hobby, photography, was in decline, in the dumps, so to speak, and I needed another creative outlet. I’ve been down the usual path with picture-taking: teenage twin-lens Kodak, 35mm film later, SLR, light and electron microscopy, in my career, and finally the digital world and its accoutrements, books and YouTube. I had no professional aspirations, especially upon shooting two weddings for friends. Publish a book? Nope! My work is not project-based. I simply wanted to be good at photography and art-making! So, why the funk? I still love a great image, and plan to make a few more. However, I don’t travel out as much, for non-geriatric reasons, and the on-line image world has become a saturated blur to the point of BOREDOM. Pretty and impressive pictures? Even some orgasmographs as Brooks Jensen calls them! Yes, and lots or them. But there’s a world of difference between a pretty photograph and one that I would deem as artwork or display-worthy. Besides, they would have to match my wife’s décor, which is not likely! Furthermore, “Likes” and “Next” arrows aren’t the stuff of artistic discernment. And most of the artwork I’ve seen in homes amounts to complimentary color splotches or a reproduction of a Gainsborough landscape, but not photographs. Cynical? Yep! So, it all comes down to “art”, stuff that has some lasting value, even if it is only for the artist’s family.
Back to the music! I dabbled earlier in acoustic guitar and bluegrass banjo for quite a while, even to the level of a few public appearances with the banjo. None of it was creative though, just copying. No music theory, scales, or chord structure! More recently, I stumbled on the PBS tribute to the blues man Buddy Guy and became entranced by the plethora of guitar-isms, the connectivity to other music genres, originality, skill, etc. In the frustration accompanying my present photographic malaise, I bought the Stratocaster. That was more than a year ago, and I’m still trying - daily. Minor pentatonic scale! Major pentatonic scale! Linking scales! Movable scales! Intervals! Triads! Sevenths chords! Chord tones! The list is longer, but I’ll stop by saying that learning and practicing music theory and overcoming octogenarian fingers are a helluva lot more difficult than anything I’ve encountered in photography. Hands down! No contest! End of story! However, the bright side is that my labored practice has led me deeply appreciate many genres of music, from Bach to Julian Lage and many between. No heavy metal though! Seriously, how did Brahms conjure those two piano concertos? What led Beethoven to challenge symphonic tradition with his third symphony? How does composition occur? Counterpoint? And all with twelve Pythagorean tones! Mind-boggling! However, it all comes down to creativity, and creativity stems from ideas. Sting, again, says that the notes come from an idea or a short riff, and he sees structure, be it people, actions, or words. He even alludes to being in a state of grace in which the music flows and writes itself. His next note appears!
OK, let’s sort this out. First, this is not a turn from photography to music; both are creative endeavors, of which there are many. I like both and admire others! My personal concerns are probably more brain-related; my brain, in fact. What is the next note? My progress and even my interest seem to have faltered. Yes, I can frame a good landscape composition per Sam Abel and process it along multiple paths. I can light paint an image. Intentional camera movement too. I can determine the key in which a guitar solo is played and copy the basic melody. But in neither case is that creativity. Therein is my funk! The next note! The step toward artwork. Upon reflection, however, most accomplished musicians began early in life, and perhaps creativity is akin to learning another language or developing perfect pitch: the earlier the better. Conversely, the older the more difficult, which is where I am. Creativity was not an emphasis of my youth. And the plethora of books and YouTube videos that hold the deepest secrets of expression and creativity haven’t seemed to tickle my brain. So perhaps I should simply continue to plug along my present dual path and enjoy the adventure, that of continuing to grow in appreciation of creativity and art. And here I must admit that the Buddy Guys, Eric Claptons, Edward Hoppers, Daniel Barenboims, J.S. Bachs, and many other creative spirits pull me in every day.
I’ll close with this thought: Hobbies are damned important, and I have two, music and photography, neither of which will lead me to stardom. The guitar is one device for entry into the world of music, and the camera is likewise for the visual arts. Beyond the entry point though is a path to be enjoyed, no matter the degree of accomplishment and even if the paths are bumpy for the hobby! The more important issue though is where the hobby leads you in the larger world of art. That could be the next note!
And finally, a diversion from this erudite discussion about personal frustration and art, my absolute favorite photography sage, Sean Tucker, says that the real beauty of photography is to capture and freeze time. With that in mind, we would do well by taking snapshots of our loved ones. As he said, there are two deaths, the cessation of a heartbeat and the eventual loss of a name or a picture of the deceased. Perhaps that is a next note that supersedes all the petty ones.
And on that note, say “Goodnight” Gracie!
A Labor of Love
Our present location offers ample opportunities for “street” photography, especially during the early morning hours when many of the residents are walking about, often briskly for exercise, sometimes with their dogs. I recently came upon this scene that did not fit the usual mould, one that was a self-contained story. I shot it from a distance for the sake her anonymity and to emphasize the scope of the story. I’ll leave it for you to interpret.
My Favorite Photographer
I see this question occasionally. My answer: I don’t have one! If that seems a tad odd, let’s examine the issue. I like what I do photographically; otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I don’t envy anyone else’s work, so maybe I’m my favorite photographer. Now, before launching into my perceived arrogance, please note that conversations about this topic usually refer to image-makers, and for landscapers the thoughts often go back to Adams, Weston and other photographers that pepper ancient history, with a few contemporaries thrown in the mix. However, I do like the images of many photographers and follow some of them on the “intertoobz”. I learn from them and even communicate with a few of them. No favorites though! But not having one or more favorites has not always been the case for me. In fact, an earlier iteration of my Bio listed a few. No more! OK, what changed?
I did! I finally realized that I’m pretty good at what I do, and I’m not competing with anyone, past or present. So, let’s change direction here and discuss artistic influencers rather than image makers, thinkers and inspirers who might also photograph but perhaps not.
Brooks Jensen, the editor of Lenswork Magazine, is producing a series of podcasts, “Those Who Inspire Me and Why”, commentaries about art and artists that I eagerly await to come online. In fact, Brooks himself is one of my inspirers. He’s widely read, thoughtful and articulate on a variety of topics other than photography. He, probably more than anyone else, has led me into other artistic arenas including classical music, jazz, poetry and the painted arts.
Who else?
Let’s go to the “Fort Collins Threesome” plus one. In one of our Barnes & Nobles hot air sessions a few years ago my friend Mike Norton halted our conversation, sauntered back to the photography section and returned with a copy of Bruce Barnbaum’s “The Art of Photography”. I ultimately read it three times, and I still flip through it occasionally, reviewing my yellow highlights and marginal asterisks. So thanks to Mike for introducing me to Barnbaum (the “plus one alluded to above)! Note the word “art” in the title. It’s crucial to my story. Next, Dwight Lutsey, a close friend who continued to encourage me while holding his nose and perhaps his breath at some of the stupid stuff I did. Rounding out the Awesome Three is Cole Thompson (he actually lives in LaPorte, a “suburb” of Fort Collins). I first heard Cole speak at a Loveland Photographic Society meeting wherein he addressed photographic art, vision, why black and white, and other topics, all of which left me wondering about him. At the time I was more interested in the club’s monthly competition which, by the way, I did quite well in, rising from Intermediate level to Master in thirteen months. In other words, my effort was was on pretty images, not art. But Cole’s philosophy gradually grew on me, and I now have the greatest respect for him as an inspiration. His images are OK too :-).
Others? There’s Guy Tal, a superb writer and photographic artist residing on the edge of the Colorado Plateau. We happen to share a love of Edward Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire”. Tal photographs the high desert’s beauty and Abbey uses the art of writing to paint eloquent pictures of it. Tal’s book, “More Than a Rock”, as well as his on-going blog and essays in “On Landscape” and “Lenswork are all thought resources for me. Nathan Wirth is also a wisdom collector and disseminator. I’m still working on “reading assignments” that he shared with me.
Finally, there’s Peggy, my lovely wife and partner who inspires me in so many ways.
That’s about it! Others come and go, depending on the current trendy topic, but the aforementioned “elites” are my on-going favorite inspirers. They helped me realize that what I do is art and it’s OK for me to think of myself an artist - who uses a camera. I’m comfortable with that!
Red Feather Lakes I
We had the privilege of living in northern Colorado for a few years, and although circumstances brought us back to North Carolina, our home state, we would go west again in a New York minute if it were possible. Our place was located near Red Feather Lakes, a quaint village northwest of Fort Collins, Colorado, that serves as a hub of activity for an eclectic mix of ranchers, artists, commuters, retirees and visitors. It is surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery, lakes and the Roosevelt National Forest. While there are no hitching rails for horses, the streets are still unpaved; hopefully they will remain in that state. There are several businesses, a post office, a fire station, a superb little library, a gallery, a veterinarian and lots of charm.
I photographed the Red Feather Trading Post and adjacent buildings, the business hub of the village, on several occasions. These two images were evening and morning shots, respectively.
Evening in the Business District, was captured after sunset while the Trading Post and Post Office lights were illuminating their environs.
The second, Morning in the Business District, was captured as the early morning sun illuminated the sky, making the scene a bit more colorful that the first. Confession: No, the original image was not the same as the one shown here, and yes, I did enhance the colors a bit to achieve this image. I would posit that image adjustments are as much a part of photographic art as brush selection is in painting. But for any photography purists among you, those who view image manipulation as artistic heresy, I suggest that you take your issue up with my “fixer”, a burly guy named Dwight who resides in Fort Collins. Good Luck :-)!!
Finally, there is much more lore and color around Red Feather Lakes, some of which I will attempt to portray in future posts. Thanks for reading!
Updated Website
July 12, 2020
Light Etchings has undergone an update, a revision, from what I sensed as a scatter-shot approach to my art. The path to change has been cleared in part by paying more attention to the current vogue of personal expressive photography, the writings of Guy Tal, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder and others, message exchanges with Nathan Wirth, and serene images by the likes of William Neill and Margaret Soraya. However, I doubt any of these experiences would have much of an artistic impact without my basic love of and closeness to Nature. I don’t need a camera in order to go outside on a summer night and listen to chirping insects or be still and hear the cacophony of morning bird calls. Not many days pass without my admiring a tree and being in awe of its energy flows, its communications and its strength. The vast openness of the Wyoming plains still calls to me. It’s a state of being and wonder. However, I cannot discount a general growth into the arena of art and creativity as well. You will note the Levi-Strauss-attributed comment on my Home page: Arts are the wilderness areas in the imagination, surviving like national parks in the midst of civilized minds. Finding and exploring the wild areas remains a challenge, perhaps akin to musicians exploring counterpoint and improvisation in pursuit of a composition, and will hopefully be reflected in the future of Light Etchings. At this point there has been a reframing of gallery topics, a reduced emphasis on place and hopefully a more personal expressiveness with a goal of greater artistic closeness to Nature. Furthermore, I will periodically rotate my displayed images while keeping the overall presentation uncluttered. As an aside, It is easy to lament that this process arrives in late septuagenerism (I created that word), but better late than never as the aphorism goes. Change will be an on-going growth process as the personal comes into sharper focus. Fortunately, I’m an INFP and an iconoclast too, so change is inevitable.
Perhaps to my detriment I will not be posting on Facebook; my split with Mr Zuckerberg is permanent. I will occasionally post on Instagram. Yes, I know who owns that platform, but I am yet to see the level of discourse that plagues Mr. Z’s other behemoth. I said “occasionally” because I’ve learned the hard way that images should incubate awhile before being presented on social media - or on one’s website.