Category Archives: photography

Algonquin Park

2018 Trip to Ottawa, photography

 

Algonquin Provincial Park is a provincial park located between Georgian Bay and the Ottawa River.  The park was created in 1893, the first in Canada. It is pretty big.  Currently it has about 7,653 square kilometres (2,955 sq. mi), which is about one and half times the size of Prince Edward Island or a quarter the size of Belgium. Sadly a number of highways crisscross the park.

The park is a transition between the northern coniferous forest (boreal) and the southern deciduous forest. This permits the park to sustain a wide variety of plants and animal species. The park was designated as a Historic Site in 1992.

The park has attracted many important figures over the decades including Tom Thomson and other members of the Group of Seven, an informal group of Canadian artists. Thomson did some guiding in the park and of course, painting.  Some of his famous paintings were created here including The Jack Pine and The West Wind among others.

He died under mysterious circumstances at Canoe Lake in 1917near to where we drove today.  Margot has been reading a book that attempts to explain that death.

Not all travel days are stellar

2018 Trip to Ottawa, photography

Mattawa Ontario

The fall colours were just staring to emerge in much of Northern Ontario.

After our days travel, we obtained a room at the a small motel  in South River Ontario a short drive south of North Bay Ontario. This was not the wisest choice of lodging we ever made. Our only excuse was that we were tired of driving and wanted to stop and this was the only inn in South River. This Inn gave a new meaning to the expression “modest Inn.”  If I was not a firm believer that suffering is a prerequisite for spiritual enlightenment, I might have complained. Instead I chose to suffer in silence.

The owner/concierge was a pleasant individual who was eager to secure our business. Nothing wrong with that. The office had a strongly unpleasant odor of curry. At least it was unpleasant to us. He probably liked it. The room was Spartan. No that was giving it too much credit. It had one lonely chair, as many hotel rooms do. The refrigerator had a tray of ice but no one had put water in it. And we needed a debriefing drink badly. The owners assured us that his ice-maker could make us ice cubes in 30 minutes. That proved to be a falsehood. In fact we never got ice from him. When I came to pick up the ice the owner sent his teenage boy to deliver the bad news. As a result we had to savour our drinks without ice.

The owner recommended we dine at Antonio’s Grille. Again the only restaurant in town. The ambience of this restaurant consisted in us watching trucks fill up with gasoline, as the restaurant was attached to a gas bar. We dined next to 2 elderly gentlemen who did not exchange one word during their entire meal. Chris and I both ordered Ground sirloin steak. The name was definitely misleading. It was merely hamburger steak. The vegetables looked like they had been defeated in a battle with some wet noodles.

I was deflated by the meal, but In fairness, let me point out that Chris dissents from the opinions given here. She liked the motel and the meal. Go figure.

My conclusion was that not all travel days are stellar. Now where was the enlightenment?

 

Autumn

2018 Trip to Ottawa, autumn, photography

 

Everyone should experience the magic of autumn in the Eastern deciduous forests of North America. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. The incredible variety of colors of the changing leaves is astonishing. That variety is produced by the great variety of trees in the east. In the west we are much more accustomed to the boreal forest where the trees are mainly coniferous and do not change color or shed. There are also much less varieties of trees.

Whenever I see the impossible beauty of autumn, I think of that French existentialist thinker, Albert Camus, said, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” That is probably why autumn is my favorite season. Until recently I was always a little leery of autumn. I think it was because I knew what came next–winter. I never wanted to think about that. I dreaded winter. In the last few years we have largely escaped winter by travelling to the southwestern United States where winter is much more tolerable. Again, this year I am looking forward to the dead of winter to escape it. In the meantime I want very much to enjoy autumn. On this trip we certainly did that.

Rocks and Trees

2018 Trip to Ottawa, Geology, photography, waterfall

Rocks and Trees and waterfalls in the Canadian Shield

Often when we tell people that we are headed to the east people ask, “Why would you do that?  All you will see are rocks and trees and more rocks and more tree.” Then often, they add, “Boring!”  I would say if you think Northwestern Ontario is boring that you are probably boring.

Shortly after heading east down the Trans-Canada Highway we saw evidence of something that intrigues me.  That is the Canadian Shield. I kept thinking about this as I travelled east.  I love to see it, but my viewing pleasure is enhanced by what I have learned about this astonishing Canadian Shield.

We experienced snow on day 1 and 2 of our trip to the east

When I was at the Grand Canyon we were amazed that the oldest rocks at the bottom of the canyon  were 1.7 billion years old. That seemed like a lot, but those rocks are youngsters compared to the rocks in the Canadian Shield!

The shield contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet.  Many are 2 billion years old. Some are nearly 4 billion years old! The Shield goes well beyond Canada’s borders. Nearly 2/3 of North America is part of the shield.  It stretches from the Arctic to Mexico.

To geologists rocks seem to be alive since they tell us so much about where we and our world came from.  The earliest mountains on our planet are about 3.9 billion years old. The continents of our planet  have always been migratory. They travel like rafts on the surface of the earth. This is part of the system of tectonic plates. When continental plates collide parts of one plate can be added to the other. This is referred to as continental accretion. The plate tectonic process began soon after the earth was created. The Shield was assembled over billions of years. Since then many successive mountain ranges have been created and worn down over deep time. As a result geologists often look for ghosts of ancient mountain ranges. The Shield is one of these ghosts–the worn down stumps of very old mountains.

Colliding continents created immense volcanic activity which in turn created many rocks including  gneiss.  Gneiss is a highly metamorphosed rock that is composed of distinct bands of alternating pinkish granitic rock and darker more iron rich rock. It is very common in Canada. This rock shows the intense deformation of rock that occurred at great depths under the surface of the planet when crustal rocks collided to create the crustal mosaic that constitutes the oldest part of our country.  Where it is now exposed at the surface over large parts of the country these rocks are evidence of deep erosion of mountains and the removal of vast volumes of rock over the millions of years that followed these collisions creating a relatively flat Shield surface with which we are familiar.  The rocks we see are often the very deep roots of what were at one time very high mountains.  Contemplating such immense erosion gives one a profound sense of the power of time.

Gneiss is produced when 2 plates squeeze against each other and the igneous rocks are heated to extreme temperatures as a result of the friction and the pressures are enough to create mountains. The rock at that point is as soft as toothpaste.  The heat is so intense and so extreme that rocks are dehydrated  and produce water streaming from a burning rock.  The rock that is forced out is mineralized water.

Even though the Canadian Shield contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet, from time to time sojourner rocks have arrived from far off places. Some of these have even arrived from other worlds. For example, at Sudbury about 1.8 billion years ago a meteorite rocked the earth, digging deep beneath the surface at that time to create what we now call the Sudbury Basin.  The Basin is so deep it can be seen from space.

The force of that blow was awesome.  In fact it exceeded the force of all of our nuclear weapons combined!  The Sudbury Basin close to where we travelled is the second largest known impact crater on our planet. It is 62 km long and 30 km and 15 km deep.  To consider the force that created such an impact is a humbling task. Railway engineers who were constructing the Canadian Pacific Railway discovered it accidentally in 1885.   Another surprise meteoric visitor from outer space created the crater that later filled with rock. We now call that crater West Hawk Lake.

The last two million years in the Shield have produced great fluctuations in climate. From time to time, this generated massive continental ice sheets that came and went over the continent wearing down mountains, depositing rock materials, and retreating again, only to arise again later.  The changes created by these forces were also awesome.  These ice sheets were HUGE.  Imagine ice sheets 2 km. deep above where we were driving. It really was difficult to comprehend.

I love these little islands of rocks and trees

         My friends probably think I’m nuts, but I was thinking about such things as we drove through the Shield. It is much more than rocks and trees.

Travel Sluts

2018 Trip to Ottawa, Family, photography, Waterfalls

There is little doubt that Chris and I are travel sluts. We have already traveled this year from Arizona to Manitoba by way of Utah, Iceland, and now to Ottawa. After the last trip, we were so tired we thought we would not travel again for quite a while. Well, it is less than 3 months since we got home and we are off again. Yes, we are travel sluts.

So what is a travel slut? It is a person who is promiscuous about his or her travel desires and is willing to travel without a lot of courtship or foreplay. We took this trip without much forethought. The opportunity arose and we took. Surely that is a travel slut.

I had a narrow 2-week window of opportunity between teaching engagements with the Manitoba Real Estate Association. That was a window that had to be filled. Hence here we are meandering toward the nation’s capital in the autumn. Ready for the best and the worst.

 

 

 

An invasive Orchid

Orchids of Manitoba, photography

 

 

We are accustomed to seeing invasive species as nasty. They  tend to outcompete their more timid local species that we like and may spend a lot of time and money to eradicate them. We never think of orchids as invasive species. Even though they are one of the largest families of wild flowers in the world, no where are they dominant or threaten dominance. They are like Canadians. Nice guys.

But just a couple of years ago a new orchid was discovered in Manitoba in St. Vital park. it is the Broad-leaved Helleborine orchid (Epipactus helleborine). This photograph does not really do it justice as it shows the flower just starting to emerge from the bud, but frankly it is a pretty plain orchid anyway. I got there too early to see it in bloom.

Wabi-Sabi Revisited

art, Philosophy/Ideas, photography, Wabi-Sabi

This is one of my favourite old buildings. It is located near Beausejour Manitoba.  A number of months ago I wrote about a new philosophy I had discovered.  Well to me it was new, but it was really an old philosophy. The philosophy is called Wabi-Sabi and it has found a congenial home in Japan, the same country that brought us forest bathing. More on that another time. Wabi-Sabi is a philosophy of genuine conservatism—not the shallow rancid kind practiced by some modern politicians of the right. Wabi-Sabi cherishes what has stood the test of time, even though it is already decaying. Nothing lasts forever, but we should embrace the good while it lasts and then give it up with regret, but understanding.

Wabi-Sabi is a philosophy that accepts impermanence and even celebrates it. Like buildings that are collapsing into decay. Or old vehicles or other instruments.  Even old people are embraced and appreciated for what they can bring, even when it is less than they could bring at one time.

Wabi-Sabi rejects the current relentless pursuit of the new in favor of cherishing instead the old, which is still valuable. Like all good art Wabi-Sabi finds and then celebrates the extraordinary that can be found in the ordinary, provided one has the eyes to see. Or has the mind to see. Common everyday things can have a startling beauty if one is alert. One must be alert for the marvellous as otherwise it might pass one by.

 

I think Wabi-Sabi fits in well with my search for moral humility. One can forsake the hyper-beautiful in favor of a quiet beauty that stills the soul rather than puffing up the chest. It is modest or humble.

Early on in photography, I saw images by photographers who found beauty in the mundane even if they had never heard of the philosophy of the Wabi-Sabi. Freeman Patterson is one of my favorite photographers and I think he exemplified this approach. I remember the first time I saw his photographs of collapsing buildings in South Africa and was amazed at the beauty he found there.  I am nowhere near the photographer that Patterson is, but I have caught on to the beauty in the ordinary even if I fail to match his skill in displaying it. But I try. And, of course, I am not perfect, and never will be. The perfect is the enemy of the good and sometimes even of the one who strives for beauty.

 

One artist who appreciated the beauty of the flawed was Leonard Cohen. Remember the line from his song,

 

Ring the bells that still can ring,

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

 

Too often who seek perfection are continually dissatisfied with the good. What a pity. The good is good enough.

Life is always frayed and if you don’t like the untidy ends you don’t love life. You love death instead.  The art, the photography, I am interested in sees beauty and truth in such rough timber, for as Shakespeare said, we are made of such rough timber. Art that is perfect is too often lifeless.  By definition the ideal is not alive. The ideal can inspire us, but it does not keep company with us. This is the art of the rough.

Recently on the radio I heard a Broadway musical star talk about her “dream home” that she had bought in the country.  She said she loved that it was 100 years older than she was.  It was more than 150 years old. Not old for Europe where such homes are appreciated, but very old here in North America. She also loved that it had its original floors. She said she loved to walk barefoot on that floor, especially on the “uneven floor.”  She loved the flaws. I love flaws. Of course, some say I love flaws because I am so deeply flawed. Maybe they are right.