The western white pine has become my favorite tree at least for now. It also happens to be Idaho’s state tree which I learned only after my decision to elevate to the lofty esteem that I currently hold it in. My position on the tree is its sheer beauty.
Pine Street Woods
In the local woods where Mollie and I walk, the trees are dropping cones. It seemed to start with the Grand Fir but has now moved through the Douglas fir and Western White pine. (The Lodgepoles hold on more preciously to their cones.) Now Ponderosa is getting into the act.
books
These are a matched set in many ways. I got them both through random browsing at Bonner's Books in Bonner's Ferry Idaho. They are also from roughly about the Meiji Era of Japan (1868–1912). The Meiji era is a fascinating period of Japanese history as
Newsletter
Here I will collect my bird photos...
Idaho
Human culture and isolation
GF500 f5.6
Wilderness culture
poetry
Got a call today and he is gone I didn’t know him well but liked him A year younger than me We spoke on the phone two days ago And he is gone As suddenly as when I met him Like a bolt on a clear blue day Whoever
Landscape Photography (film and digital) and Stories (true and otherwise)
Warning this is technical post... Hopefully some will find it helpful.
A re-post from Notes from North Idaho
Summer camping on Lake Pend d’Oreille
In the Hopi creation myth a swallow was created out of clay by the medicine men as the first messenger or emissary sent from the third world to look above the sky for a better world to live in. The third world, where they lived, had become corrupt because the
Richard Whetherill tends to get the credit for ‘discovering’ in the European settler sense, Mesa Verde. It was of course known by the native Ute Indians in the area who considered the cliff dwellings sacred. There is another person who perhaps should have the title the Wetherills have assumed and
The best times to travel the West are in the late spring/early summer. Late April to mid-June I would say. Too early and the passes may still hold snow and not be open. Too late and the freshness of spring and the wildflowers will have dried up. Because the
There can be something bewitching about pictographs or rock art. They exist all over the West. Some are more recent bordering on the historical while others reach back 10,000 years or more. The older ones are the most beguiling, at least to me. They all have this invitation to
The heart that beats at night is blind It sees not out through open conscious eyes It sees the fragments the mind creates in its dreamings The madness, the fears, the pain, sorrow, joy, and happiness It beats to the sense of flying It flutters at the sensation of falling
The desert’s silence is a multitude. That is the first thought on returning to the desert this evening from my mountain home. Mollie and I walk through the scattered sage in the high desert of southern Wyoming. The distance and silence seems to envelope every sound and draw it
Ambition
Some time back I purchased a rather absurd lens; a 500mm f5.6 monster. Obstensively, to add a new angle to my landscape photography. I shoot a lot of intimate landscape and that lends itself to a longer lens. Some time ago asked what focal length one would shoot for
This reminded me of when I lived in San Diego. We had a pair of sharp shinned hawks in the neighborhood. Their were small dense trees in our backyard the sparrows would congregate in. They would chatter excitedly when the hawks were around. The hawks had this perfect teamwork. The