Adrift in Time and Space

© May '12   photo by smck

This is one of the most appealing - to me - photos that I have taken.  There is no artifice except for some judicious cropping to emphasize the ethereal quality of the scene.

Reflections on Blue

© November '11   photo by smck

Water Lilly - Below Loch Lomond

© August '11   photo by smck

On our way down river we investigated a small quiet back-water and this bit of the day's beauty awaited my camera.

(looked for a good water lily poem but they were too few and too over-burdened with 'meaning' so if I let my sub-conscious work on it I might put a bit of doggerel up later) 

The Breakers

© September '08   photo by smck

In the far distance is the old homestead known for some long time now as "The Breakers".  The trusty hikers are standing on yet another fast eroding drumlin cleared generations ago for the free ranging sheep that roamed hill and dale most of the year, only returning to the farm in late fall for winter's feed. (Though on second thought I think the visible house and barn are the Robinson's place).  In the '70's  before the coyote had moved into the area in the numbers that they now maintain, Kenny Angus, the last of the free range sheep farmers in this area, had a large band roaming for miles up and down the shore-land , eating shore grass, kelp and whatever greenery and eatery  they could find.  Generation of such sheep had riddled the miles of stunted shore-spruce thickets with sheep-worn warrens of passages into which they gathered in times of storm and cold wind and in which lambs without number had been born in early arctic-like spring.   John had shown me these warrens back then (late 70s) and they were amazingly wind proof giving great protection from the bitter chill of on shore wind.  We would often cozy-up in them when long winter shore hikes would get us to numbs edge as we trudged the hoar ice shore in icy gusts of wind.  Fencing sheep in home pastures was beginning when I moved here but in general most places only fenced to keep sheep out - and same was often true for cattle also. 

Da-Neils-Bridge

© July '10   photo by smck

© July '10   photo by smck

© July '10   photo by smck

© July '10   photo by smck

One of the nice swimming holes (and in the brighter days of salmon fishing also a great salmon pool) this stretch of the river was known since these many years as Da-Neils-Bridge, i.e. Dan Neil's Bridge.   When I first lived in Grand River in the later half of the 70s my great friend George took me here and showed me where as a boy he had walked across a stout and sturdy bridge to Dan Neil's place to have tea.  In the 70s there were large boulder supports in place and the remains of spruce (probably Black Spruce) logs making a crib-work which could stand up to spring flooding and winters ice.  Today you have to look intently to fasten your imagination on that old bridge which had been built by hard labor of man and beast.  On this particular day the water is 'up' and flowing strongly with the pool itself probably about six to seven feet deep.  In picture one my son is going into the river just above the pool, in the third he is idling against the current before trying to best the current where the river's running full as it comes into the pool.   I'll revisit this post another day to go into that Gaelic compounding of given names that baffled me for several years when I first arrived.