Bedazzled

 

I have photographed crocuses many times in the past. I have hundreds of crocus photographs.  I can’t seem to get enough of them. Every year in spring—it is almost the first sign of spring for me—around Easter time I get the urge to go again.  I must be obsessive compulsive.

Why do I do that? Well, I always think I can get a better shot. It is always possible to get better images. I see other images and I want to contribute too. There are always other conditions in which I could photograph crocuses.

For example, this year when I went out the flowers were covered with gorgeous huge water droplets!  I had never seen that before to that extent. I was bedazzled. As a result, they were unlike any I had seen before.

Moreover, this year I had a newer better camera when mine died last year. Perhaps this would help me to get better images? I thought so.

 

Of course, it is always important not to be overwhelmed by the technology. Never let the technicalities get in the way of the photograph. Ultimately, the technology is not important. The photographer is important. The subject is more important.

 

 

The brilliant English poet, William Blake got it right:

 

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

         And heaven in a wild flower,

         Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

         And eternity in an hour.”

That sums it up. There is a heaven in a wild flower. Every flower is a piece of heaven.

I find heaven down here on earth. I find it in flowers. And birds. And trees. And skies. Heaven is everywhere. I find heaven in forest, on the plains, and even in mosquito infested bogs. If you don’t see it you are not looking. Or you are taking bad advice.

 A Crocus Hunt

 

 

Today I went out on my first wild flower expedition in Manitoba this year. I went to Sandilands Provincial Forest, a very special place.  The day was cool and cloudy, but not very windy.  The light overcast skies were perfect for photography. Enough light to avoid a gray world but no shadows that create light that is too contrasty.  Modern cameras are a marvel but they can’t  handle a large contrast between dark and light areas in a photograph. A light overcast is perfect, and that is what I had. They really bring out the colours of the flowers.

 

Those droplets were sparkling like the crown jewels. Not only that. They were huge. I have never seen them so large. This was intriguing.

I also noticed that though most of the flowers were lying down, no doubt to stay away from the wind, or perhaps had been piled on by snow that had disappeared, as a result were not at their best. However, there were some adventurous specimens that stuck their lovely flowers toward the light grey skies sky. Most of the flowers enveloped their yellow feathery centres  like doting helicopter parents.

 

Yet a few adventurous flowers shyly opened up to the very cool sun, searching desperately for light while inviting insects. But largely the yellow centre were hidden. What a pity. This was disappointing but the sparkles were the exchange. I will just have to go back again on a warmer day.

This was a strange but stunning day of searching for flowers. These flowers were gems of colour.

 

The Prairie Crocus, which is what these flowers are called in Manitoba are not really crocuses at all. Just like that sensational bird, the Red Knot, is not red.  My grandson Nolan loves that fact. Well, the Prairie Crocus is not a crocus. It is an anemone.

Just yesterday I learned from Nature Norm that there are no Prairie Crocuses in the Tall Grass Prairie. That shocked me. It  is sort of like going to KFC and finding they don’t have any chicken. I think that might be because so much of the Tall Grass Prairie has vanished.  Less than 1% of it remains in Manitoba. And even at that some people think the The Nature Conservancy of Canada has acquired too much Tall Grass Prairie. I think it also might be because they like disturbed areas as they evolved with prairie fires and heaby grazers–bison.

 

The flower has 5 or up to 7 sepals.  Sometimes these parts are blue and other times tending to white. But it has no petals. The petal is a  separate part of the corolla or inner ring which is often brightly coloured Those are the lovely purple parts of the flower.

 

It is also interesting to me that they seem to prefer disturbed areas.  They like Manitoba ditches. Go figure. Even the infernal ATVs can’t scare them off.

And like so much beauty, these flower come with danger. They should not be touched let alone eaten. Their sap is downright nasty. It can cause skin to blister, and cause vomiting, tremors and even collapse. Don’t tangle with this beautiful flower! Some have used it to colour their easter eggs. Hence their scientific name, Anemone Patens.  It helps that they usually flower around Easter.

In my opinion it is one of the most beautiful flowers of Manitoba and a worthy choice for Manitoba’s provincial flower.  I also like the fact that it is tough. Its flowers can sometimes poke through the snow. Yet they are also extremely delicate.

 

This was a great day in nature. Life is good.

 

Wabi-Sabi: Rebirth and Renewal

 

Wabi-sabi is a gentle Japanese philosophy that seeks and sometimes finds, beauty in imperfection, in impermanence, and in nature. It encourages appreciating the beauty of things as they are, without embellishment, rather than striving for perfection. It recognizes that such striving can be harmful as anyone who how looks around can easily see. Instead, practitioners of Wabi-Sabi celebrate the notion that life is a cycle and is in a state if constant flux. Life is an endless cycle of change and growth. And, of course, that cycle ends in death. The particles of the body can be reborn however. Not in heaven as far as I can tell, but in new organisms.  Our bodies get reborn in new creatures and plants.  Really, that is the only type of rebirth that makes sense to me.

 

Wabi-Sabi favors the beauty of aging rather than the vigor of youth. It acknowledges that  the passage of time can bring wisdom provided we remain humble and modest and open to thoughts from others. Impermanence is good enough. There is beauty in transience and we need not despair that we will not love forever. We can enjoy what we are given to enjoy without lusting for more.

 

Like Leonard Cohen we recognize that flaws, cracks, and imperfection allow beauty and light to permeate our souls. Both of them can soak in gently and yet with power. Wabi-Sabi declines excessive ornamentation or conspicuous consumption. Wabi-Sabi helps us to accept ourselves as we are even with our obvious failings. Such an attitude helps to find beauty in the natural world even far from the spectacular scenic highlights. Such an attitude can help us to accept the moment as the crowning achievement of life.

 

Here are some of the core concepts of Wabi-Sabi:

Great beauty, wisdom, and pleasure can be found in the simple life amidst simple things. Such are things that can lead to quiet and tranquility rather than hustle and bustle. This of course is closely related to humility.  Proponents of Wabi-Sabi favor the quiet and gentle unlike the loud self-serving shouting of the boisterous MAGA crowd. Only the humble qualify. Donald Trump would be the first person impeached from the movement. Or better, yet would not be accepted as a member without sincere correction of character. Braggarts are not welcome unless they genuinely reform. Modesty is much more congenial to Wabi-Sabi than brash boasting.

 

Wabi-Sabi favors the beauty of aging rather than the vigor of youth. It acknowledges that  the passage of time can bring wisdom provided we remain humble and modest and open to thoughts from others. Impermanence is good enough. There is beauty in transience and we need not despair that we will not love forever. We can enjoy what we are given to enjoy without lusting for more.

Like Leonard Cohen we recognize that flaws, cracks, and imperfection allow beauty and light to permeate our souls. Both of them can soak in gently and yet with power. Wabi-Sabi declines excessive ornamentation or conspicuous consumption. Wabi-Sabi helps us to accept ourselves as we are even with our obvious failings. Such an attitude helps to find beauty in the natural world even far from the spectacular scenic highlights. Such an attitude can help us to accept the moment as the crowning achievement of life.

The essence of Wabi-Sabi is a way of seeing, understanding, and living that embraces the beauty of the imperfect, the transient, the marred, and the natural world.  It is a philosophy of life in which we are encouraged to find peace and even joy in the simple things of life.

 

Really, I consider Wabi-Sabi the spirit of autumn.  The time when decay sets in but often with great beauty.

St. Mary River, Nova Scotia

 

This is a panorama shot of the St. Mary river consisting of about 8 images merged into one.

The St. Mary’s River in Nova Scotia was a delight I discovered about 10 to 15 years ago.  I was surprised by the beauty. So today I was not surprised.  I was confirmed in my high expectations. This is an area of simple, yet great, beauty. After all, it’s a river in a forest. What can be special about that?

The St. Mary’s River runs for about 250 km. (160 mi.) and drains an area of approximately 1,350 sq. km. it has 4 branches with 130 lakes. The river was named Rivère Isle Verte by one Canada’s premier explorers, Samuel de Champlain.  A fort in the area was also called Fort Sainte Marie when the French built it in the 17th century, but it was later taken over the English who changed the name of the fort and the river to English versions of the old French names. Sort of like Donald Trump who wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.  Little minds do things like that.

The river is one of the many east coast rivers that contain the extremely interesting northern Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) species.  This is the 3rd largest of the members of Salmonidae family behind the Pacific Chinook and Siberian taimen salmons. Sadly, it is now an endangered species. Most populations of salmon of are anadromous, meaning that they return up river to spawn where the offspring  hatch in natal streams and rivers but move out to the oceans when they grow older and mature. The adults then move seasonally upstream again to spawn.

But interestingly some populations only migrate to lakes and become “landlocked” and spend all of their lives in freshwater. So iot is not true that they must return to salt water. Some of them just choose to do so.  When the mature fish return to rivers and streams they change colour and appearance.

Unlike the Pacific salmon species, the Atlantic salmon can survive spawning and return to the sea to repeat the process again in another year. About 5-10% of them do exactly that, returning to the sea to spawn again. Such individuals grow to extremely large size.

The life stages of Atlantic salmon are the following: alevin, fry, parr and smolt. The first stage is the alevin stage when the fish stay in their breeding grounds and use the nutrients from their yolk sac. During this stage their gills develop and they become hunters. The next stage is called fry, where the grow and then leave their breeding ground looking for foodk so they move where more food is available. During this stage in freshwater they develop into parr where they start preparing for their trek to salt water.

 

 

Young salmon spend from 1 to 4 years in their natal rivers and when they are large enough they smoltify, which means their skins change colours from colours adapted to streams to colours adapted to the oceans. They also are subjected to endocrinological changes to adapt to the differences in fresh water to ocean water. When smoltification is finished, the young fish (parr) learn to swim with the current instead of against it. That behavioral change  allows the fish to follow ocean currents and find prey such as plankton or fry from other species of fish such as herring. Apparently during their time at sea they can sense changes in the Earth’s magnetic fields. Nature never ceases to astound

After a year of strong growth, they will move to those sea surface currents that lead the fish back to their natal rivers. It is believed by some scientists that they use their sense of smell to detect the “right” rivers as well. They don’t move thousands of kilometres as many have suggested, instead scientists have learned that they “surf” through sea currents. Only 5% of the salmon go up the “wrong” river. As a result, it is more likely that they stay close to the rivers where they were born when they are out to sea and swim in circular paths to do that.

Atlantic salmon have been severely affected by humans as a result of heavy recreational and commercial fishing as well as habitat destruction, all of which have affected their numbers. As a result serious efforts have been made to conserve including aquacultural methods, though those have also been criticized by environmentalists. 50% of farmed Atlantic salmon now come from Norway where the aquaculture has been most effective.

The natural breeding grounds of the Atlantic salmon are rivers in Europe and northeastern coast of North America in both the United States and Canada. In Europe they can be found as far south as Spain and as far north as Russia. Sport-fishing in Europe has been so popular that some of the species in Europe southern populations have been growing smaller. The distribution of Atlantic salmon is strongly influenced by changes in freshwater habitat and climate, particularly changes in water temperatures, which of course are affected by climate change.

When the salmon leave their natal streams they experience very fast growth during the 1 to 4 years that they live in the ocean. In the ocean they must face an ocean of predators including seals, Greenland sharks, skate, cod, halibut, and of course humans. Dolphins have been seen “playing” with salmon but it is not clear that they eat them.

Once the salmon are large enough to undergo the tough track back upstream to their natal streams, the stop eating entirely prior to spawning. It is believed by some scientists that odour allows them to sense when they are again in their natal streams.

 

You will not be surprised to learn that Atlantic salmon populations were significantly reduced in the United States and Canada after European settlement. Rivers were degraded by the activities of humans in the fur trade, timber harvesting, logging mills and the spread of modern agriculture. As a result, the carrying capacity of most North American rivers and streams was also degraded as the fish habitat declined. The historian D.W. Dunfield claimed in 1985 already that “over half of the historical Atlantic salmon runs had been lost in North America by 1850.” In Canada a bill was presented to the Canadian Parliament that called for the protection of salmon in Lake Ontario. In the Gulf region of Nova Scotia where we have been travelling 31 of 35 salmon streams and rivers were blocked off by lumber dams and as a result many watersheds lost all of their salmon.

Where humans come damage often follows.  Then when damage occurs humans learn to regret the error of their ways and sometimes make heroic efforts at great cost to change things back to the way they were. Could there be a better way?

Despite all of that such rivers are flanked by the incredible variety of trees of the eastern forest as shown by the incredible variety of the autumn colours.

 

A Good Place to Reflect: Liscomb Nova Scotia

 

We spent a night at Liscomb Lodge and Conference Centre  in Liscomb Mills Nova Scotia. It seemed to be the main attraction in the area. Chris and I sat on our tiny little deck overlooking the lovely little cove shaded by red and sugar maples interspersed with birch trees. I was hooked.

It was Thanksgiving weekend so we were lucky to get a place to stay. There was no other place where we could dine. It appeared to be a nature resort and conference centre for busy executives from Halifax.

Sitting on the deck enjoying a drink and the view on a lovely autumn day with my lovely wife, I began to think I had arrived in heaven. Until I realized that of course I did not qualify. At least this was a little slice of heaven. I got that much and it felt fine.

I took a brief stroll down to the water where a fine dock offered an opportunity to watch an Asia family canoeing and to admire the reflections in the water. The colours were sensational. A Kaleidoscope of colour.

Later that night we met a very odd guy.  He was an accountant. Accountants are usually not odd. They’re usually boring. Do you know the difference between a lawyer and an accountant? The lawyer has a personality.

We met this one who definitely had a personality. He was there for the weekend  with his wife and like us they were going to the dining room in for dinner.  I did not realize he had talked to Chris as we were going in and he came up to me as if we were long lost friends. Calling me by name, he told me it was great to see me. And I didn’t have a clue who he was. That was the point. He just wanted to bewilder me for a bit. We enjoyed a lovely dinner and chat together.

East Shore Marine Drive

 

After leaving the South Shore of Nova Scotia we headed out past Halifax, which we avoided. We have been to Halifax many times and wanted to concentrate this time instead on the countryside.

 

I insisted on stopping to photograph some old buildings and old boats. Both were beside the East Shore Marine drive we travelled along. This is not the wealthiest part of Nova Scotia, but I sure like it.

The boats were in a boat graveyard. I don’t know what they did to deserve their fate, but I have a strange attraction to the old and dilapidated. I’m not sure I have this affliction. I just know I do. They did seem to be corpses along Marine Drive. The Japanese have a philosophy for weird old guys like me. They call it Wabi-Sabi. I like it.

Sheet Harbour: Sweet Waters

 

Sometimes, meandering is just plain fun. This day was one of those. We were leaving the area around Lunenberg that included Mahone, Bay, Chester and Peggy’s Cove and started heading north east of Halifax along the shore. It is called The Eastern Shore or Marine Scenic Tour.

We stopped to admire and photograph the lovely falls and autumn foliage at Sheet Harbour. That is a pretty good combination. The Roman poet, Ovid said it well: “There is no small pleasure in sweet waters.” I think that is a perfect description of this day.” The water here sure looked sweet.

This community is located on edge of the 100 Wild Islands. We photographed the river and falls near the bridge across the highway. Nova Scotia is laced with lovely drives. Since the first time Christiane and I travelled to Nova Scotia, about 40 years ago, we have used those scenic routes as our guideposts.  I remember that first year, we actually met the young lady who had written the book for Nova Scotia Tourism. We were really blessed.

Only about 800 people live in the area around Sheet Harbour. Like most places in the Maritimes it was originally settled by the Mi’kmaq First Nation who have inspired me so much. The Mi’kmaq called the place Weijooik which means “flowing wildly.”  I guess that is why the surrounding islands are called the Wild Islands. Currently, West of Sheet Harbour lies Sheet Harbour 36 a small Mi’kmaq Reserve.

In 1773, nearly exactly 100 years before Mennonites arrived in Manitoba to settle the prairies, the first European settlers here were Loyalist refugees who fled the United States, much like refugees who show up on American borders today.  But these were welcomed by the British who wanted British settlers. They settled this area together with British veterans of the American Revolution and they called it Port North. That name was used until 1805. After that, it was called Sheet Harbour on account of a rock at the entrance of the harbour which resembled a sheet. This became a prosperous lumber area and its sawmill became a hub. The sawmill was built about 1863.

It was lovely. No sweet.

 

Self-Sabotage

 

While we stayed at our B & B outside of Chester, Nova Scotia, we suffered a power failure, and I reluctantly went to bed at 10 o’clock one night at our lovely B & B in Chester Nova Scotia. After that I did not miss the sunrise in the morning as I often do. John Lennon, that great English philosopher, once wrote, “The sunrise every morning is a beautiful spectacle, and yet most of the audience still sleeps.” It was not a great sunrise though. Too many clouds covering the beatify. That was a pity. Or as the British would say, a dreadful pity.

 

I must admit I am guilty of missing the vast majority of sunrises. I have called myself an inspector of sunsets, but confess I have missed many sunrises, which are really just as good.

 

I did enjoy reading this morning in the lavish rooms of an outstanding B & B. . I got back to my book on the fur trade, finally. I had been too busy to read now for some time. That is another of my serious moral failings. Today though I enjoyed the quite morning.

 

After reading awhile, I noticed a lovely band of pale orange/red slipping through the blinds of the living room from my upstairs lounge vantage point. It took me too long to realize I should be photographing it. My bad. A bad photographer, distracted by an interesting book. Oh well that was good too. Our host Jackie was not so slack. She captured a wonderful image. By the time I got there the picture was lame. In photography the prize often goes to the fleet of foot, not the malingerer.

 

 

A little later in Mahone Bay I saw this cormorant soaking up the sun in its face.  It did not miss the sun rise. It was not a malingerer.

 

Yet I thought of what legendary Canadian photographer, Freeman Paterson said. I had watched a documentary on him on Gem recently. Many years ago, Paterson presented an outstanding slide show in Steinbach. Who said Steinbach is a cultural desert?

 

Paterson knows a thing or two about beauty. Even how to create or capture it in distinctive images. He said in a recent newsletter, “I’ve long observed that most of the people sacrifice the pursuit of beauty—natural or otherwise—on the altar of perceived necessity. There always seems to be more important things to do. Life gets in the way. Yet the day will come when we no longer have the opportunity to have experiences, nor to create the enriching, sustaining memories that come with them. One might call it, self-sabotage.” It’s like missing the sunrise. Same thing. Self-sabotage.

Aspotogan Peninsula

Sometimes I think I photographed nearly every islet in Canada. I liked the flag and eyes on this one

We spent one dreary rainy day circling the Aspotogan Peninsula.  It is a lovely area but the rain and gray clouds were depressing. This is the eastern part of Lunenburg County and separates St. Margarets Bay in the east from Mahone Bay in the west. The original inhabitants here were, of course, the Mi’kmaq First Nation.  These people were primarily nomadic. Now not so much. For example, they could be found in North West Cove, the village of Aspotogan and East River. They lived on the coast in summer and moved inland during the winter. They lived here until 1939 when the Second World War began. I am not sure why they left. Maybe, they became nomadic again.

The name Aspotogan is a derived from the world Ashmutogun or Ukpudeskakun which means either “block the passageway” or “where the seals go in and out” depending on whom you believe. I like the reference to seals. The land on the coast here was fairly high compared to others on the south coast of Nova Scotia so it was used as a marker for sailors coming from Europe or the West Indies on their way to Halifax.

 

In addition to the Mi’Kmaq the next immigrants to this region were first Newfoundland Irish in the 1750s and next New England Planters who arrived from Chester in the 1760s. After that French Protestants came from French village, not far away. After that Germans arrived on the west side. Around 1762 there were 62 English living here as well. They had been invited to help assimilate the Acadians who the British feared might be disloyal to the British crown. Between 1750 and 1753, 2,500 “Foreign Protestants” arrived to settle. Lunenburg was built for them.

Although Acadians never lived on the peninsula, they had a strong influence on it. Even 40 years after their arrival, 10,000 of them lived in Nova Scotia and they dominated the region. As the Americans are now finding, expulsion is not as easy as it looks, even without pesky courts. The English were more ruthless than modern Americans, even under Trump, and they couldn’t accomplish it. We’ll see how Trump does.

During the American Revolution (1776 to 1783) Americans plundered Lunenburg, burning buildings and taking prisoners. The Americans at that time were terrorists in other words.  And they came here from their country to terrorize the locals.

Naturally the Germans exported sauerkraut until the end of the 20th century. Fishing was an important enterprise for European settlers as well as industries that supported fishing, such as shipbuilding.

Besides the Jesse Stone shows that were filmed in the area, many other Hollywood and CBC films were made here including the CBC series Black Harbour and Blackfly as well as Hollywood films High Tide at Noon in 1957, which was shot at Northwest Cove. The outstanding film based on an outstanding book, The Shipping News starring Kevin Spacey was filmed here rather than Newfoundland. I don’t know why. Probably they got some government breaks. Kirsten Dunst and Lynn Redgrave were in the film Deeply that was also shot here.

 

Do Public Service Workers Deserve Respect?

 

It is always difficult to see the water in which we swim. It is so natural we just don’t see it. For decades our minds have been poisoned by the poisonous little people that haunt the dark places on the right. And we have been poisoned by lies and false assumptions to believe that most public employees are parasites on society. Such criticism is so common and so prevalent that we just don’t see it any more. I heard it so often I believed it must be true.

I remember as a young lawyer my principal (boss)  asked me to attend each week at the Land Titles Office to go and try to correct mistakes our office had made on Land Titles documents in order to correct them to avoid the time and extra expense of a rejection, for  that meant we would have to start over.  It was great experience for a young lawyer to see all the mistakes law firms could make on legal documents. After all, we all make mistakes. What really impressed me was how the employees at the Land Titles Office were diligent about reviewing our documents to make sure their office did not accept documents which for various reasons were unacceptable and if accepted would make the system worse and less reliable. And they were always eager to make it better. They did not do it to make our job harder. They just did it to make our work better for the benefit of all who worked in the land titles system. It opened my eyes, which badly needed opening.

The shallow common assumptions held by so many, that public workers are lazy, unreasonable, and incompetent are frequently wide of the mark.

The author Michael Lewis was interviewed recently  on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He talked about civil servants whom he had recently written about in his new book. He pointed out that many of them could make more money in the private world, but they were actually devoted to public service. They did it because they wanted to do some good and that gave them great satisfaction and they are often under-appreciated for that. He said, “The fact that we have allowed these government workers to be demonized says a lot about the state of our souls.”

I would add, and the fact that we have allowed public servants to be defamed by the likes of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, tells us even more about the state of our souls.