Category: Nature

Pictures are Better than Words

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With Fall around the corner, it is time to revisit a few friends. One of the less traveled trails in Shades State Park is the loop #2 in the eastern part of the park (but still west of Pine Hills Nature Preserve).

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It begins with a steep descend to Sugar Creek (using stairs).

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One can wade through the creek westwards about 100 yards to get a view of Silver Cascades Falls

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and then turn back

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in order to continue upwards into Pearl Ravine.

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This is again steep and sometimes very wet. After some minor obstacles

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one reaches the Maidenhair Falls.

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They are small but pretty.

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From there, it goes up and out.

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The Quarry

The quarry is an interesting design pattern. Our daily lives need nurture, and while some of the nutrients are free or at least easily available, there are some that require hard work: Seek out the sources, mine them with skills and stamina, and transport and transform the goods into desired place and shape.

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We all should have our own personal quarries (which is why I declared them a design pattern, not for computer science but for the architecture of our own lives). My personal quarries, in a pre-internet life, used to be bookstores. They had their own personality that you needed to get acquainted with, invited into, so to speak. There were unforgettable moments, for instance, when I went into one of these quarries in Marseille, found Marcel Béalu’s L’Expérience de la nuit, and was told by the wise person at the cash register c’est une très beau livre. Indeed it is.

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Another key experience was my visit to a museum book store in a city I hadn’t been before. I was instantly struck by a déjà vu experience next to none: I had been in this bookstore before. To prove this to myself, I went straight to a shelf in a particular aisle and retrieved the book I knew was there. I don’t believe in these things, and they don’t happen to me.

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It took me a few hours to remember that I had been to a another museum a few years back, and visited their museum store, which had the exact same layout as the one that caused my déjà vu. This was long ago, and in Europe, and I was not familiar with the fact that store owners had discovered design patterns and used them for cheap and successful replication.

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Since then, times have changed again. Not only are my book quarries mostly gone, but even the chains of near identical book stores have largely disappeared, replaced by electronic online retailers. I don’t object the internet (how could I). But I believe that we need to resist the total commercialization of our lives. We can do so by creating little quarries for others. Maybe.

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The pictures here are from the Old State House Quarry in McCormick’s Creek State Park. Southern Indiana is limestone country, and the lime stone from this particular quarry was quarried in the late 19th century.

Bending but not Breaking

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When I first saw this nicely bent tree in McCormick’s Creek State Park in the fall of 2008, I did not expect to see it again.

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Arch like trees have become something like an archetype for me, or rather, as I am not so fond of C.G. Jung, a pattern, as in pattern language. They serve the (purely symbolic, of course) dual purpose of creating a connection between two sides and signaling a passage through, and all this under the apparent duress of being bent to the verge of breaking. In any case, this arch was still there in winter, the next summer,

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and the following years.

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Is it still there? I leave it to you to decide whether this year’s image shows he same tree again.

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It does not matter. Thomas Mann explains in his tetralogy Joseph und seine Brüder his concept of time: Events, or motifs for stories, or patterns, reoccur or are at least thought to reappear over and over, with no hope to trace their origin or future repurposing.

There will always be trees ready to bend, even after countless others have been broken.

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In Memoriam, Orlando 6-12-2016

Storm Watching (Point Reyes II)

My second visit to Point Reyes National Seashore was later in 1993, when the weather forecast promised high coastal winds, and Bryce suggested to go storm watching.

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Above we are on our way to the Lighthouse, and below are the first storm clouds.

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It got a little bit more dramatic,

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but we stayed dry and took pretty silhouette pictures.

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At the end, the colors returned.

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Gourmet Trip 1993 (Point Reyes I)

My first visit to Point Reyes National Seashore was on the occasion of the CHAOS Fall Gourmet Trip 1993. The rules for these trips are simple: Dress up and bring good food.

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On the way to the camp site you were also supposed to help carry supplementary items like pieces of a portable hot tub.

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After pitching the tents and admiring each other’s costumes, more serious activities would commence.

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There were also opportunities to hunt for more food.

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Which was obviously rather tasty.

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The Canadian Rockies

The prospect of the US elections this fall makes me (like many of my US friends) think about Canada.

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I went hiking there for two weeks with friends from California (sort of – one was from Britain, one from the US, and the third from Australia) in the summer of 1995. We hit two weeks of rain except for one day where it also hailed. Our planned week long backpacking trip needed major revisions. We tried to do overnighters on the trail, but it is not much fun to spend long nights in a tent while it rains all night (and morning).

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After that, we went for day hikes in the area during brief respites. Whenever the rain stopped, I got my camera out.

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At night, we mostly car camped under a tarp and spent hours discussing the problem in what positions one can move a given rectangular tarp by tying it to four given trees with ropes.

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It turned out that most of our arguments were wrong. Neither the weather nor the endless mathematical disputes had any negative impact on our friendship.

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A likely cause was the excellent Canadian wine.

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So maybe there is hope, after all. Next summer?

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Trillium Luteum

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The Trillium luteum is a yellow variant of the red Trillium Sessile. Like the sessile, the flower sits right on top of the three symmetric bracts at the end of the scape.

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These pictures were taken in 2005 and 2006 in McCormick Creek’s State Park. In April one can find there mostly the Trillium Sessile, the Snow Trillium and the drooping trillium.

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Back then, I had just started taking pictures of the local wildflowers, and took pictures of everything that didn’t appear too common. Sadly enough, I have never seen a yellow trillium again in Indiana.

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Out of Focus

For several years, I have toyed with the idea to get one of Lensbaby’s odd experimental lenses. Against good advice, I have purchased the Velvet 56. This is a full frame 56mm lens, with maximal aperture 1.6. It is my most specialized lens by far. It excels at not being sharp.

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Even when stepped down, it is blurry near the edges of the frame. I decided to take it to its other extreme, and use it wide open. Then, the shallow depth of field and the radial decay of sharpness join forces. There are other artifacts, too. The glow around edges for instance is possibly caused by drastically exaggerated chromatic aberration. People have claimed that all this can easily be achieved in Photoshop.

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Maybe so. The images have a strange depth that might be hard to achieve. But even if somebody comes up with a Velvet 56 filter, this is not the point.

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For me, the most exciting aspect about photography is the moment when I take the picture. I transforms what I see and feel at this moment into a rather selective image that I hope will represent what I have seen and felt in some way. Improving the outcome in post processing is of secondary importance.

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The Velvet 56 is the most limiting lens I have used. No filter will make these images sharp. Some might view this as a fundamental flaw. I view this as a creative challenge. You have been warned.

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Balance (Zion National Park)

Every symmetry needs to be broken.

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The tree up above stands on a pass that separates the Upper East Canyon in Zion National Park from the area south of it that eventually drops into Parunuweap Canyon. The casual tourist driving on route 9 will not wonder what else there is beyond the magnificent scenery that is accessible from the road. We did. The symmetric tree on the pass is not an indication what to expect.

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The way up through the sometimes narrow Checkerboard Mesa canyon is not difficult, and the view back from the pass is already rewarding.

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Turning around, the landscape opens up. We are on top of an intermediate mesa, and can stroll around, even climb some minor peaks.

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Few people come here, we had all this for ourselves. Still, there are regions higher up, not (yet) revealing their secrets to us.

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Then, this rock, put by chance upon much smaller support that did not erode away like everything else, and kept it in balance.

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So this is what we seek: Broken symmetry, but still balance.