Category: Places

Water Basin Reflections

There is a theory that all humans prefer a particular type of open landscape with a vista of trees and water. These days, we are bombarded with devastating images of too little or too much water, but I hope we do not settle for mere survival as we work to compensate for this widespread and highly destructive disruption.

Landscapes with water can do more than that and it may not take as much water as you think.

It is true that I love taking photos of large bodies of water in nature…

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and the sea has meaning for me as a metaphor.

10 Oct ME

But surprisingly, the small amount of water in my granite water basin has proven to be enough for me to feel a deep connection to nature’s flow. It captures light. Breezes move its surface as do rain drops. Creatures drink from it. On a hot day, a raccoon jumped right in. Leaves it reflects change shape and color, then fall in. After I clear them out, ice mounds up until it melts in spring. Then the caressing moss emerges once again.

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12 Dec MA

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Water Tower Magic

On September 7, 2014, a unique event took place to celebrate a local landmark (below) that was turning 90 years old. The notice I saw spoke of images of local places by both youth and adults. Each art work would be briefly projected on the substantial Arlington, MA Reservoir structure before another took its place. Curious, I took my camera and portable canvas sling bench to the classical revival water tower.

The images can only hint at what it was like to walk up the road to the top of the hill as the glowing tower came into view. I joined the crowd that had gathered there as darkness descended and the Luminarium Dance Company interpreted the images to music issuing from two large loudspeakers.

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Resonant Stone Arrangements

As children, my brother and sister and I loved to catch fire flies and release them down by a falling-apart stone structure behind our camp site in New Hampshire. Dolly Copp, an early settler to this location in the White Mountains had constructed a well-like structure to capture the water of a stream and then pipe it to her homestead downhill. Over the years as we returned to the camp site, we watched as the structure became less recognizable as it tumbled apart.

I tried to capture that structure at one stage of its existence in my own garden. I stopped moving the stones about when they seemed to “disappear” – When they had blended into the universe comfortably with no need to speak individually for themselves.

rock arngmt - version 2

Before I travelled to Japan to see its remarkable gardens, I had read about the famous Japanese garden Ryoanji with its stone groups set in raked sand that you can see in this video. I doubted that this garden would live up to all the hype, perhaps to save myself from disappointment.

We avoided the crowds by arriving at opening time, but there was no way to avoid a blaring broadcast in English. I tuned this out as best I could, until it ended with, “each person must find his or her own meaning.”

Although it was overcast, I noticed shadows on the sand cast by the surrounding wall and trees. One of my first impressions was the importance of the wall. I then became impressed by the large amount of open space; clearly, the point of this garden was not just the individual stones, although each was beautiful:

ryoan-ji

Gradually, I became aware of a low singing current passing from group to group and stone to stone. This grew in strength, zinging about. The key to this phenomenon seemed to be the specific arrangement. The intensity grew to unbelievable levels, and the stones ‘disappeared.’ It seemed like the configuration before me was a model of a vast, singing version out in space. It was full of immense power and it was beyond beautiful.

Although precious to me, my garden stone arrangement does not evoke the vast energy I experienced at Ryoanji. I sometimes think about Ryoanji’s designer and what price was paid to be able to get that particular arrangement just right.

Listening to a Special Place

Turning special places into radiant refuges requires more than understanding what creates welcome and peace. The owners who ran the Bufflehead Cove Inn supplied both in abundance with a sensitivity to the spirit of that particular place. In converting their family home on the tidal Kennebunk River into an inn, they made full use of generations of experience and memories. It was alive with what it means to be home in a way that was at once now and timeless.

Like my tea garden and tea hut, the inside and the outside were not a division but a collaboration. You could see the ducks gathering at dawn from the porch. There was the smell of wood burning in the fireplace in the evening. You would hear the slight creak of the old steps as you climbed up to your room to see reflections from the river dancing on the ceiling. Even the easy walk along the rustic road into town by ponds in the woods seemed just right.

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porch chairs

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8 lily on the porch copy

Tiny Refuges

One way to explore refuges is to create tiny ones. These can be made from shadow boxes, in a bookcase, by furnishing a doll house or even by tucking “fairy houses” made of natural materials into secret spots in the woods. The tiny rooms I made include an antique shop, a fall kitchen (I could not resist adding hoarded toilet paper), a room at an inn, a Chinese restaurant scene, a Japanese tea ceremony in progress, and a weaver’s workshop. For the last one, I experimented with placing various objects in an acrylic display cube and taking photos of the arrangement in my garden.

Antique Shop

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Room at an inn

Chinese restaurant

Japanese tea ceremony

Weavers workshop

Capturing light

When Once Is Enough

When I first came across a Morrisonite pendant, I could find very little written about the rare jasper, so I decided to write an article myself. Now photos and articles about the jasper and the site where it was mined are available online.

I bought a digital camera with super-macro capability and sought out opportunities to take photos of its incredibly diverse patterns and colors. Making friends with miners, lapidary artists and rock shop owners in the course of writing that article led to an invitation to visit the mine site, itself.

Of the seven of us on that adventure, two had mined the jasper, three had websites selling it, and one was the grandson of a rock shop owner who had known the discoverer of this spectacular stone. We took two four-wheel drive vehicles so as to have a back-up just in case. It would not do to get stuck in the desert highlands in the middle of nowhere in eastern Oregon.

On the way to the steep canyon side, we passed farms, fruit orchards, wild flowers in clumps, sage brush (nice fragrance), cattle, horses, antelope, a coyote, a hawk flying with a snake in its claws, jack rabbits, and grouse. Despite the relative dryness, the area is very fertile because of ample volcanic ash.

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The final dirt track was intentionally left rough to encourage folks to stay out. We drove very slowly jouncing over large rocks and ruts. Beyond the second switch back on the final approach, it was no longer possible to drive, so we got out and made our way down the steep track contending with loose pebbles and sand.

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While the others hiked down the steep canyon wall to the mine site, I stayed in the top area with a friend who had a bad shoulder. The weather was perfect. It was a very dreamy location to spend an afternoon largely in silence, exploring two abandoned miners’ cabins, watching the light shift on the canyon formations and looking to see if there might still be some Morrisonite left in situ that I could photograph (there was).

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I only visited the mine site that one time. However, looking at the jasper (raw unpolished specimen below), and my special relationships with those who share my passion for Morrisonite became treasured refuges.

Cropped science fiction rough

As for the mine site itself, sometimes being just once in a magical place can provide nurturance for an entire lifetime.

On the trail at M Mine 62010 This last photo by Linda Stephenson is a favorite of mine.