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A Rude Awakening

Ya missed it. By 40 years! It is hard to hold a sense of time, and of infinity in this vast place. Here on the coast, where land now seems valued by the square inch, it’s hard to comprehend the openess even when you see it.

Abandoned bridge for sale. Well not really; it’s just sitting there. Once an engineering feat, now it is someone’s nuisance.

An abandoned railway trestle. Can you see steam locomotives chuffing across this amazing structure? The photo shows about half of it. I mentioned beautiful air-dried old growth timber. Here’s some. It looks as if the post in the foreground is propping the whole thing up. The trestle is somewhere east of Sakatoon.

Boom, boom, boom, boom. The noise came from far away. I didn’t know or care where. I just wanted to stay deep within the sleep I’d been enjoying. Then I remembered. I was on my bed in my trailer. I was on a ferry boat. Oh shit!

I’d driven from Salmon Arm, planning on stopping for the night somewhere along the way. I knew a place but drove on by, then another until finally I was in Hope. No campgrounds appealed to me. Now the gauntlet of the Fraser Valley Trans Canada Highway lay before me. I remembered the ordeal in getting out of the lower mainland. Reasoning that if it was that bad during the day, then in the morning when the whole world was rushing into the city area it would be very, very bad. Westward I went and soon enough the traffic was bumper to bumper, lurching forward up to 100kph then slamming to a stop. There were the usual idiots trying to weave in and out and the worst were the heavy trucks. Then the rain became serious. It poured. I hoped the thick layer of prairie grasshopper DNA on the trailer front was softening.

The rain continued as I boarded the ferry at Tsawassen. There was room for only one highway tractor behind me. I slipped into the trailer for a wee nap. Two hours later, boom, boom, wake up old man. The poor buggers must have been wondering what they had on their hands. I stumbled out groggily to find myself and the truck stuck behind all alone on the vast emptiness of the lower vehicle deck. There was a tribunal of unhappy deckhands standing with arms crossed. Then my key stuck in the ignition and would not turn. Finally the nightmare ended as I drove off the ferry and into the cloak of darkness. In the morning I discovered that despite nineteen feet of metal trailer to pound on, one star had decided to break a window. Collateral damage for my stupidity. The truck stuck behind behind me on the ferry passed without a friendly toot, toot. All’s well that ends.

Lenore, downtown. All of it. Typical of hundreds of small prairie towns desperately clinging to life. I was inclined to join them. There is a certain peace knowing what is not coming. Amazingly, many of these communities have memorials going back to WWI. This one had a monument flanked with genuine vintage Lewis guns.

I include a motley collection of images from my trip. In retrospect I should have continued in my meander mode and not rushed home. There were no events I could change in person, I simply needed to demonstrate that I cared. They knew that and the world turns just fine with or without me. I’d go again in a flash, the leaves were just going into their autumnal tones and a spectacular photo season is about to begin. I regret not stopping in so many places which held some great photos. I have long looked forward to exploring Drumheller for example, but the pretty town in a lovely valley seemed like a bizarre Disney effort with people swarming everywhere. The Rv campground I saw looked like a version of hell. I did not stop and dragged the trailer up the steep hill on the other side of the valley. My recently rebuilt knee did not feel like it wanted to wander far on foot.

“Son, here’s a tire gauge. Go check those tires. There’s only fifty of them.”

Here is the pusher truck hooked to the back of that trailer. I could have used it at times!

I don’t know what these enormous tanks are but I wouldn’t brake-check the trucks carrying them.

Yeah, yeah just another shot of my little rig. Now look out on the highway behind. That is one rotor for a windmill. Compare the blade’s root to the tractor carrying it. The trailer is clamped on far behind. Whoosh! That thing twirls around like a kid’s toy.
It puts things prairie in perspective.

The outskirts of Calgary are a sprawling urban mess with mega houses (Note I don’t say homes) up long lanes behind hideous gates. If it is an impression they’re trying to make, they did and it wasn’t positive. Banff has become a hideous neo-faux attempt at a glossy Western theme with waves of tourists wandering everywhere and sipping sexy little coffees in outdoor bistros and wondering what in hell they paid so much for. At a gas station there, I discovered a bidet. In a gas station! Imagine going to the attendant and complaining that the bidet was malfunctioning. “fired me right up against the ceiling!” I also remember being stuck in rush-hour traffic on the “Circle Drive” around Saskatoon. It was hot and the air reeked of hydroponic marijuana smoke. Not a stereotypical home prairie moment. Well, maybe these days it is!

Ya missed it. By 40 years! It is hard to hold a sense of time, and of infinity in this vast place. Here at home on the coast, where land now seems valued by the square inch, it’s hard to comprehend the openess.

Much of the old prairie has disappeared. Old homestead buildings and machinery are mostly gone. I’m told they are often simply buried. Whole little towns are gone or going until at times there is only a name board left on the roadside. Train stations and the metal rails have vanished and the nostalgia days of the prairie pioneers are forgotten. One lady, whom I flagged down for directions, know nothing of the old Miner Creek school. It turns out that her house was built on the exact same site of the historic one-room school building.

Agriculture has become an industrial monster which sits in the same show circle as mining, oil/gas, transportation, neo energy. The romance of any of it is lost. It is an industry. Art has become science. Soon the entire Trans Canada Highway will all be a four-lane hurtle-shute and with our modern vehicles, folks won’t even need to look out their windows.

The bright lights of Manyberries. An old stock yard, a few houses, no post office, corner store or gas pump. The wind whistles through it. The station is now someone’s house but nobody was home.

On the broad lawn of the Orthodox church near Smuts, thousands of these beauties sat in the grass and trembled in the wind.

There were copious motorcycles on nearly every road. It seemed that black-clad riders sat on bellowing black Harley Davidsons and rocketed along in small groups. It looked glorious. I did wonder at the riders with no face protection and what taking a grasshopper in the eye, at ninety miles an hour, was like. It must certainly deplete one’s testosterone level. I repeat that if you find the prairies flat and boring, you are flat and boring. The nuances and visual dramas are everywhere and the beauty is overwhelming. I can also say I met no-one I disliked.

Due South. We can fly, the grader’s just been by. He’s a smooth operator.

It’s amazing how buildings begin to crumble once they’re abandoned.

The ubiqitous prairie slough. If only you had one of these! Can we call this waterfront property?

1″ clear cedar tongue and groove in the ceiling! You cannot find lumber like that anymore.

Despite all the work, the dreams, the suffering, all things eventually return to the earth.

A bee falls in lust with its reflection in a screw head on my kayak.

A public school. Can you smell the dusty books?

Smoke, heat , dust and wind, It was a prairie summer day.

Isn’t it amazing how this all works? These grain cars will probably end up in Vancouver and their cargo will go on around the world.

A small private grain elevator. Could it make an interesting house? Good views!

Another token of the prairies. Horsehead oil wells bob their heads in herds all over the prairies. The arrangements are complicated. Don’t assume the farmers are making a high return from having these on their land.

There are thousands of prairie sloughs, small and large, natural and man-made. With all the grain fields it is heaven for waterfowl… and, for hunters.

Are you drinking enough? That was the sign above the toilet in the tire shop at Tisdale SK. Bemused I discovered a colour chart which showed what your urine should like if you consume an adequate amount of water. Humour, don’t leave home without it, it helps keep you alive no matter where you are.

If your dog runs away you’ll be able to see it for the next three days.

All’s well that ends. I’m home again on Fraggle Rock, with twenty-five miles of Pacific Ocean separating me from the motherland. Vancouver Island is a wonderful place to live but I ache to be on the road again.

Wow! After weeks on the prairie mountains are especially breath-taking.

A bridge in the Kicking horse Pass. I thought it was brilliant. Look at the constant grade it joins.

My greeter. This Pileated Woodpecker dropped by to say hello where I stopped in Salmon Arm. He’s about 18″ long. You never know who or what is just around the corner.

Marcel Proust

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Nooks Overlooked

It is a time of social isolation. Even the snails are doubling their shells. I’d stopped to photograph lilies below and found this character hiding out.

The rabbits are already expert at avoiding Covid creatures.

I watched a presentation about flying a home-built gyro plane in the Florida Everglades. It was dream-like. This blog’s quote is something the pilot said in that video. I think it is profound as a metaphor about life, perhaps especially in these times of being forced to travel low and slow which as any pilot will tell you, is dangerous. There’s really not much to add to what has already been said. All the angles have been examined. Every possibility has been covered, many so dark and ludicrous as to be boggling. But then the ludicrous has become normal, even boring.

Something new. I assumed they were fawn lilies. It turns out they are yellow glacier lilies, usually found high in the mountains. These grow beside a stream beside a ditch beside an old railway siding, about 40 feet above the sea shore. How’d they get here?

Spock Blossoms. I’ve forgotten the proper name of these weirdly wonderful alien flowers.

Dogwood time again.
There’s plenty of pollen in the air. And it’s not a time to be sneezing around out there.

It is clear and calm this morning. If you listen, you can hear the dickey birds breaking wind. No, that was a squirrel! It is absolutely quiet out there. Not one distant blatting motorcycle, no vehicles of any sort. Once again, that Omega man feeling. Then comes the twitter of song sparrows and a chorus of cooing from the mourning doves. Ahhhh!

I found myself thinking “In like a lion out like a…. nope, that was March! Today is the last day of April. How’d that happen?” How time, despite the tedium, has whizzed us to here is amazing. A third of the year is gone! I know it’s Thursday, the neighbours have set their trash out. So, time to get my stuff together. Garbage day is not a great way to mark the passage of your life!

Hot Wheels. “How was work today honey?” No-one was hurt. My videos made it onto the evening news. The truck’s trailer was empty but wouldn’t it have been fun if it were full of popping corn?

The Border from the “other” side. This spring has been spectacular for its flowers everywhere.

Bird orchard beside the tracks. These feral apples were planted by the birds or…were apple cores thrown from a train window back in the day when we still had a passenger service.

Jack and I continue to explore local nooks we’ve overlooked and sometimes I’m stunned to realize how this or that have gone unseen by me for years. And I arrogantly consider myself to be observant compared to most folks. What don’t they see? Off we go again to wonder as we wander.

Please turn your head and cough into your elbow. I’m delicate, and trying to hide in social isolation.

“If you can’t smell the flowers you’re flying too high.”

Click

Morning. In the bedroom an hour ago. Mobile phone, simple subjects. Lighting and composition, that’s all.

The chill overcast of early morning gave way to a warm calm. I began imagining that I could hear the budding leaves emerging. Jack and I went off to one of our mutually favourite wandering spots, the old Swallowfield Farm. I set up to take a shot along the mud road beneath a canopy of blossoms and chlorophyll green with a background of bird songs. A helicopter buzzed overhead, from another corner the scrape and bang of heavy machinery echoed across the fields. Now an old WWII fighter plane clattered by, a Yak attack. I know and love that particular airplane but gimme a break, I’m trying to shot some video here! It was joined in a chorus by some goon on a mufflerless Fartley Davidson. Geez Louise! Part of the art of making videos is often the accompanying sound track and my amateur skill level does not know much about erasing and over-dubbing or applying any of the wobble-quavers which the pros can do.

The shot in question. Can you hear airplanes?

That in turn got me thinking about how I’ve arrived at this point in my experience as a photographer. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve become a snapshot artist instead of the fully involved disciple of the medium format film camera and the dark room. I used to spend long hours working in a tiny, chemical-saturated space producing the perfect print, both black and white, colour and cibachrome (Printing from colour slides. It was especially toxic.) I even started a business printing folk’s personal photos, but circumstances prevailed that moved me on. How was I to know that digital photography was coming and monster companies like Eastman Kodak were to become a memory? Finding darkroom equipment, paper and chemicals has now become an expensive challenge. I’d love to go back to it again, appreciating it as the wonderful art it is.

From the darkroom. Cheung Chau Harbour, January 1986. A moment long gone yet saved forever.

There’s something about black and white photos which is elemental for indelible images. This beautiful wistful girl is now a beautiful, sensitive middle-aged woman.

A third product from my darkroom. Simplicity always works and if in doubt, crop, crop , crop.

I watched a biography about Ansel Adams recently. If you don’t know who he was, you’re just not interested in photography but you’ll know some of his work. He photographed landscapes and is famous for his work in Yosemite Park and the High Sierras. He lugged cumbersome box cameras with their glass plate negatives to mountain tops and developed stunning prints which captivated the world. A master of light, composition, depth of field and opportune timing he was also a chemist, perfecting solutions for what was needed to maximize his images. He always used only natural light so far as I know. His work inspired the founding of National Parks yet his work was a simple portrayal of a beautiful world so many of us look at but never see. Portraits, abstracts, wildlife photos were not what he was known for. He inspired me as much as the thousands of other spellbound photographers. He was a landscape artist.

I first took a serious interest in photography as a boy. My camera was a ubiquitous Kodak Brownie, crude, battered and abused as it was. I would carefully load of roll of 120 format, 12 frame film in and tape up the worn case latches to prevent any light leaking in. I can still recall the first photo which thrilled me. It was of a herd of cows resting beneath a spreading elm tree on a hot summer afternoon. By accident I’d caught the light and composition almost perfectly. I’d love to see that little square print again. Time and technology have moved on.

While laying among the lilies, videoing them swaying in the breeze, look what I found right in front of me! Allo, allo!

Spider and snake. It is amazing what you can see if you become still and let the world come to you.

Years later I took up serious photography using manual cameras which required every shot be manually calibrated for correct exposure, shutter speed, depth of field, contrast and any necessary filtration. Then it was off to the darkroom. I recall photography with a darkroom being described as having a leash without a puppy. I was never a gadget collector and take pride in doing good work with simple equipment. That of course is product of having limited finances, but no camera, no matter how exotic, can produce a good frame without a skilled person to utilize it. And no camera, no matter how inexpensive, has been maximized by anyone. Modern mobile phones are now sold for their photographic capabilities. Gidgets, gadgets and other toys are extolled as absolutely requisite to make good photographs. Photo magazines are filled with ads admonishing that you won’t get your ultimate shot without yet another product. All I’ll say to all of that is simply: Bullshit! Keep it simple, stick with basics.

Keep it simple. A good image needs impact to catch the eye and depth to hold the eye. Can you find Brio and Jessie in this view?

I am deeply offended when someone says “Your photos are awesome, you must have really good cameras.” No damnit!

Do you want to be an equipment collector or make good photos? You can either peer through some multi-thousand dollar telephoto lens or you can learn the habitat and habits of your subject and get up close for a splendid photograph with an affordable piece of equipment along with all that you experience gained in the process. I recently watched another documentary on the work of Indian photographer Raghu Rai. Thousands of dollars worth of Nikon equipment dangled on straps from his neck while he shot projects with his mobile phone.

The photographer’s dog. Jack enjoys the sun as he waits on me and surveys his kingdom.

Ansel Adams did not have the equipment to machine gun his subjects and then go to his computer photo programs to determine and manipulate a best shot. Each exposure had to count. In any case, a day out with any camera is still a way to maintain contact with whatever view of the world is important to you. Photography is the simple, yet long-learned art of seeing and then sharing your vision with others. In these days of social isolation it is a wonderful endeavour, even if you don’t want to share what you see. And try as you might, it is an art you’ll never master as much as you’d like. There’s the challenge.

Fawn Lily perfection. This is the shot I set out to make. Everything else happened along the way. (Walk softly and carry a big click.)

“Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”
– Peter Adams