6. A trio of Madrones blends into the September landscape.
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7. Growing old together.
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8. Interrupting the forest flow.
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9. A song of aging in black and white.
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Leaves light up the forest but also can cling to branches long after they’ve lost their chlorophyll.
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10. Snowfall in March with Madrones.
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Little urn shaped flowers, ripe berries in the grass, unripe berries.
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11. Madrones in January are a delight to tired eyes.
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12. Muscular limbs.
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13. A singular tree.
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14. Perfection in every nook, cranny, and pore.
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15. Young Madrone at the edge of a shallow pond.
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16. The leaner.
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Madrone trees (or Arbutus, as they’re also called) range up and down the North American West coast, from lower British Columbia to California. The scientific name is Arbutus menziesii. “Arbutus” is from the Latin for strawberry tree because of the red fruits and “menziesii” is for Archibald Menzies, a Scottish Naval surgeon and naturalist who sailed around the world with George Vancouver in the 1790s and collected plant specimens to bring back to Great Britain. More information about this fascinating tree can be found online and in a detailed post I created about five years ago. This time around I wanted to focus on my feelings for Madrone trees. I know I won’t stop photographing them, so chances are good there will be more Madrone posts in the future.
Here at 48.5 degrees North, February is mostly a chilly, damp, gray month. The days may be growing noticeably longer but the lack of sunlight makes us impatient for spring. Yet close attention is rewarded with many signs of spring. Only nine days into February, the leaves of small wildflowers were already splashing green rondels across the forest floor duff. On the tenth of February I found the first small wildflower of the year hugging the ground, seemingly reluctant to test the cold air above. The first Red-flowering currant bushes bloom in February. Their sweet pink flowers are thrilling to spot in the relative gloom of the winter forest. Another late winter pleasure is the subtle sprinkle of wild cherry tree blossoms that appears along roadsides.
Still, the cold temperatures and overcast skies have seemed relentless this year. A few snowy days broke up the monotony of the weather forecasts but as pretty as snow is, sun would be preferable. So I’ve been looking for glimmers in the dark. Here’s a selection of them. In the photographs you’ll find both literal and figurative glimmers that I’ve seen at home, ten miles away, and in between. All are from February and March 2024.
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1. Wetland reflections. The taller trees died from incursions of salt water into this wetland. Change is inevitable.
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2. A lake reflection.
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3. Red alders (Alnus rubra) dangling new catkins and old cones.
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4. A beaver pond at dusk. The last glimmers of light are reflected in dark water marked with spring- green duckweed and branches scattered by winter storms.
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5. On leap day the underbrush was darkly thick but clouds scudding across a deep blue sky held promise.
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6. Cherry blossoms bloom all day; the truck is idle.
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7. A rosy harbinger of spring, Red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) braves a cold, early February day.
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8. Forest-dwelling Salal (Gaultheria shallon) leaves flooded with afternoon light arrest my gaze.
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9. Tall Douglas fir trees let in slivers of light, painting an impressionist’s dream in a puddle. A clump of Sword fern (Polystichum munitum) sucks up the moisture, banking it for the dry summer.
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10. Evening snow flurries provide unexpected glimmers of light on a dim February day.
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11. Dead trees in a beaver pond bordered by thick forest offered thin shards of light in late winter.
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12. A Valentine’s Day lily bestowed fragrant glimmers of light and love.
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13. Still submerged, Western Yellow pond-lily (Nuphar polysepala) leaves barely hint at the season to come.
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14. Breathtaking glimmers of light against the dark, Snow geese (Anser caerulescens) were flying from one field to another when I made these photographs. Once they settled down behind the trees I couldn’t see them at all.
Part I of “A Long Day in Iceland” left off just as we arrived at Jökulsárlón, the South Coast’s popular Glacier Lagoon. There, amidst rugged mountains and glacial outwash plains, a long glacial tongue descends from Iceland’s largest ice cap to a lagoon. When chunks of ice break off the glacier they slowly float across the lagoon and down a channel to the North Atlantic Ocean. Icebergs can linger for years in the deep glacial lake. One of Iceland’s “Bucket List” sights, the edge of the lagoon on that Saturday afternoon was full of tourists, the parking lot a complete zoo. My guidebook said a less well-known glacier lagoon was just ahead so we decided to try that instead.
As we crawled along the crowded bridge over the channel, I suddenly realized that we had passed the turnoff to another big South Coast attraction. Diamond Beach was behind us! Oops, the navigator (that’s me) failed. Making a U turn in traffic wasn’t easy but using his best New York taxi-driving skills, Joe turned us around with ease – and an assortment of choice words. Minutes later we made a hard right toward the shoreline, where we would just have to tolerate another crowded parking. Why? Because this was Diamond Beach!
You may have guessed that the diamonds are glittering pieces of ice. What you might not realize is that the number of ice chunks at any given time and how prettily they sparkle depends on the tides, weather, and other uncontrollable factors. Battling crowds was worth it. The sun was peaking out and in Iceland, there’s no guarantee of clear skies tomorrow.
We made our way to a black sand-and-pebble beach that was a bit like Hvalnes, where swan feathers and seaweed decorated the sand. There were no feathers here – just shiny bits and pieces of ice in fantastical shapes teetering on the waves. The pieces were breaking off the large chunks of ice floating off shore. In my initial excitement, all I could do was gape at a van-sized turquoise and white iceberg silently bobbing in the surf like a ghost ship. Off it went, carried away by the current. I wish I had photographed it – it was the biggest one I saw that afternoon. But no matter! I quickly zeroed in on the ever-changing jumble of ice diamonds drifting back to the shoreline. Ever one for details, I gravitated to the magical sight of strangely shaped mini ice boats resting in the sun and dazzling the eye for moment before being snatched away by another wave.
People were running around with their smart phones, eager to post their finds on Instagram. Tuning them out wasn’t so hard in the presence of such beauty. My eyes jumped around, focusing on each little evanescent ice sculpture. Shards of sunlight broke through the clouds every few minutes, throwing late afternoon light across ice, sand, and stones. I picked up a handful of fine, black sand and let it fall through my frigid fingers. As fine as sugar! Windblown sand grains accumulated in the shallows of wave-smoothed rocks. The glacier and ocean were working magic together, producing big bergs that drifted in the distance and small chips that ornamented the shore. As I write this months later, I wonder how far the water released from the ice I saw that day has traveled. Is it somewhere off the coast of Norway? Suspended deep in a Greenland fjord? Swirling around in the Arctic Sea? Or perhaps the water was ingested by a marine mammal and incorporated into her body…
Do a google search for Diamond Beach in Iceland and you’ll find a plethora of images captured on perfect days with perfect cameras by perfect photographers. You won’t find that here but you will find a slideshow of things that absorbed me at Diamond Beach.
Precious jewels from the South Coast:
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The air was cold at the water’s edge and the clock was ticking – it was after 4:00 pm. We’d seen so much that day, from mountains and fjords in East Iceland to the pretty harbor at Djúpivogur and wild Whooper swans at Hvalnes. Our hotel was an hour and a half away. One more sight stood between us and rest – Fjallsárón, the smaller, quieter glacier lagoon recommended by my guidebook. As at Jökulsárlón, commercial boat tours will take you closer to the glacier (the tours began at Jökulsárlón after a 1985 James Bond movie made the site popular). We didn’t have time for a boat tour. Never having been in proximity to a glacier, we knew we’d be happy to just sit and stare (OK, and I wanted to photograph it).
On the way to Fjallsárón I photographed another massive glacial tongue grinding its way down to the water. The ice disappeared in the distance, looming pale and moody in misty skies that had been blue a moment ago.
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1. A passenger seat view of a roadside attraction, Iceland-style.
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We found our turn, parked in a rough lot, and hiked over a hill to the lagoon. It always adds to the excitement when your destination is hidden behind a hill. Mounting the top, we saw a giant swirl of ice pouring down the rocks into a frigid lagoon. The scene was like something from science fiction. Making our way down the steep slope, we joined a handful of people who were as spellbound as we were. But for the faint buzz of a tour boat’s motor, all was quiet. At the far edge of the lagoon a few people waited for the boat to return. As we picked our way gingerly across a rough boulder field I was surprised to find clumps of bright yellow flowers adding a spot of cheer to the somber, magnificent scene.
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2. Fjallsjökull, one of many tongues of Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull. At its base is the glacial lagoon, Fjallsárón. Jökull means glacier in Icelandic; lón means lagoon. Fjall is mountain, Vatna is water. The language may look strange to my American eyes but eventually I saw a straightforward logic in it that my own language lacks. Could it be that in a place with such harsh weather, so many extreme landscapes, and the constant threat of volcanoes, a practical language is best?
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3. Waiting for the next boat.
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4. Tiny in relation to the glacial tongue, a tour boat (lower left) motors toward the edge of the ice.
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6. According to Wikipedia, “Icebergs are generally white because they are covered in snow…Seawater, algae and lack of air bubbles in the ice can create diverse colors. Sediment can create the dirty black coloration present in some icebergs.”
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7. Yellow saxifrage (Saxifraga aizoides) prefers well-drained, rocky places and can be found in North America and Europe. In Iceland it’s limited to the South Coast and the East.
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The cold was seeping into our bones once again. As mesmerizing as the lagoon was, we needed to be on our way. The last stretch of Þjóðvegur (National road, aka Ring Road) would take us around the cold base of ice-cloaked Hvannadalshnúkur, the highest peak in the country. We would pass the Skeiðará Bridge Monument, a twisted pile of metal left after a 1996 volcanic eruption flung house-sized ice boulders and a fierce river of water down the mountain, tearing up the longest bridge in Iceland. It seems like every mile of road reveals more breathtaking scenery in Iceland, especially on the South Coast. But we had another day and a half to explore the area. A little discipline was needed! Joe was happy, if not eager to provide it, since he was driving. Sights like Svartifoss, a waterfall that plunges down a raft of extraordinary hexagonal basalt columns, would have to wait.
Our hotel was outside the little village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, a name that had our tongues tied in knots. By that time I knew “Kirk” means church so that was a clue. Anyway, we had our iPhones and Iceland has good coverage so we weren’t worried about finding our way. We were happy to see that the road to the hotel was at a traffic circle with a gas station and convenience store. Gas stations in Iceland are known for their hot dogs, a staple of Iceland road trips. Our Norwegian crispbread and Icelandic cheese combined with gas station hot dogs meant we could dine like royalty. (Seriously though, we also had plenty of fresh vegies, fruit, and skyr).
Here are the last passenger seat views of the day:
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11. Water rushes across outwash plains, mountains rear up, and glacial tongues lick down the slopes. It’s all typical South Coast scenery.
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12. This cropped photo was made two minutes before the one above.
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13. We’re going backwards – this photo was made ten minutes before the one above. A glacier can be seen to the right of the jagged peaks.
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14. The South Coast doesn’t have many sheltered harbors and is more sparsely inhabited than other regions on Iceland’s coast. But still, a few snug homes are tucked under the mountainsides, often with slender waterfalls behind them.
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15. I don’t mind the pylons in the distance here – like the ubiquitous sheep grazing in the fields, they’re signs of human activity in a place that, unlike so many other places on our planet, is not yet overrun by humans. It was well after 6pm by the time I made this photo. Our hotel was just down the road. A long day in Iceland was coming to an end.
It was our twelfth day on the road ’round Iceland and we were as far from Reykjavik as we would get. The day ahead promised to be a long one; 258mi (451km) of two-lane highway stretched between us and the hotel where we would hang our hats that night. I was excited to see the south coast, where some of the country’s most extraordinary scenery is found. With the car more or less organized, we settled into our respective seats – Joe would rather drive than be a passenger and I like to navigate. Besides, being in the passenger seat means I can photograph the landscape as it rolls by. If I’m prepared I use my camera, otherwise the phone is available if there’s only a second to snap. The phone photo below was taken two days before, after a long, rainy drive across the fumarole-studded plains, hills and valleys of North Iceland. An hour later, we rolled into Reyðarfjörður, our East Iceland “base of operations.”
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1. Snow drapes the mountaintops, shadows chill the valleys in East Iceland.
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Over two days in East Iceland we explored a snug little fishing village on a dead-end road and hiked to Páskahellir, the Easter Cave at Neskaupstaður Nature Reserve. Supposedly it’s a place to view the sun on Easter but on that autumn day we were happy to just clamber over the rocks and watch Kittiwakes soar overhead. At a second nature reserve we found ripe bilberries rubbing shoulders with budding field gentians – in September! We regretted not having more time to explore the east coast, where the crowds thin out and mountains plunge straight to the sea.
East Iceland is essentially a series of dramatic fjords dotted with occasional fishing villages; big towns are few and far between. If you ever watched the TV series Fortitude, you’ve seen Reyðarfjörður, where we stayed. The slideshow below will give you a taste of it. Walking around the little village, we admired a tidy white church with a red steeple, a depiction of a man wielding a harpoon painted on a warehouse wall, and a fine, 70-meter-long fishing vessel tied up at a dock. A google search revealed the ship’s owner was Eskja, a 70-year-old pelagic fishing company based in nearby Eskifjörður. They fish for cod and haddock off South Iceland in the first half of the year and herring and mackerel off East Iceland the rest of the year. You or I may have eaten their products – after all, fish is still the backbone of Iceland’s economy (though tourism is gaining fast). And countries where many readers of this blog live, like the U.S., England, and Germany, are major trading partners.
But I digress! In Reyðarfjörður there were wild bellflowers (Campanula) blooming in the sidewalk grass, which delighted me because where I live they prefer wilder places. A sturdy old wooden sled graced the entrance to the guesthouse next to a restaurant where we enjoyed a simple meal of burgers and fries one evening. It tasted delicious after a week of grocery store food we cooked ourselves and ate in the guesthouses where we stayed.
No cruise ships were waiting in port to disgorge hundreds of passengers, a welcome change from Akureyri and Grundarfjörður. The town seemed to be holding onto its identity as a simple fishing village. But ten minutes east of town, the gigantic Alcoa Fjarðaál aluminum smelting plant, built in 2007, astounds the visitor expecting only rugged wilderness beyond the village. Drive a short distance in any other direction and you’re enveloped in Iceland’s spectacular mountain scenery. That’s the Iceland experience that spoiled us ever since we left the capitol. All around the island country we followed curving, scenic two-lane roads that trace the habitable border between open water and the forbidding peaks of the interior. East Iceland whetted our appetite for charming villages and empty nature reserves and I expected the south coast to be swarming with tourists – but we had an itinerary to follow.
Reyðarfjörður, a quick slideshow
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East Iceland
2. Yet another astounding example of erosion was a mountain of needle-like spires and colorful slopes I saw from the Ring Road about an hour after we left Reyðarfjörður.
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3. The constantly changing weather is sometimes frustrating, often beautiful.
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We snaked up and down pristine fjords for several hours before stopping at the small town of Djúpivogur for a lunch break. Looking down, we found an unusual way to find the public restrooms – just follow the little snails painted on the sidewalk to the back of a black, peak-roofed building near the water. Who says the route to the bathroom can’t be amusing! If you google Djúpivogur, zoom in, look for the W/C icon by the port, switch to satellite view, grab the little guy, and browse the street view – you too can see the snails and WC signs on the sidewalk.
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4. The marina in Djúpivogur.
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At the marina two boys fished with baited lines under their mother’s watchful eye and about 20 neat fishing boats were anchored at their slips, their reflections motionless in the calm water. It was a typical Icelandic scene but it was about to take a turn – overlooking the marina, an odd monument caught our eyes. It consisted of a big, chunky arrow made from stacked panes of glass, pointing straight up and resting on a black stone plinth. At the base was a heavy length of iron chain, broken in two. The sculpture’s title? “Liberty.” A plaque explained that the arrow and chain celebrated the story of Hans Jonathan, an enslaved African-Caribbean born in 1784 on the island of St. Croix.
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Intensely curious, we googled the rest of the story later. Here it is in a nutshell. Hans’ mother was African, his father was white. Enslaved like his mother, he was taken against his will to Denmark when the Danish-German family that “owned” him moved to Copenhagen. Somehow Hans managed to escape and join the Danish navy. This was in 1801, when he was in his teens. After he fought in an important battle, officers spoke out on his behalf and he was granted freedom. It didn’t last long. Fate intervened when his “owner” located him and brought him to trial, alleging that he belonged to her family. Her plan was to send him back to St. Croix and sell him. In a case that became famous, a judge ruled against him, sentencing him to be returned to the West Indies. It’s hard to imagine what this turn of events felt like to the young man after being raised in servitude, escaping, and successfully serving in the Royal Danish Navy. But he wasn’t going to let anything keep him down. He escaped again, this time eluding capture. Where did he go?
Iceland. It was under Danish rule at that time but the country was isolated enough that he stood a good chance of maintaining his freedom. Settling in Djúpivogur, he farmed and operated a trading post, dying there at the age of 43 after marrying and fathering two or three children. Thanks to a groundbreaking genetic study that identified members of his family, it’s been shown that Hans Jonathan now has over 800 descendants!
The morning we stopped in Djúpivogur, all I knew about Hans Jonathan was what the plaque said. That and the upward-pointing arrow and broken chain were enough to bring me close to tears. It was not the kind of story you expect to come out of a small town in Iceland.
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Yes, that was another digression. Resuming our long day in Iceland, we got back on the road and continued southwest. Then we saw the Hvalnes Nature Reserve, a broad, black beach backed by a tranquil lagoon. It was too attractive to pass up! We parked and began walking out toward the water on a beach of little black pebbles that gave way underfoot. Across the lagoon, a bevy of Whooper swans rested elegantly on a narrow spit. Long, dark waves broke ashore, pounding the rocks into smooth submission. We ventured further out on the spacious beach, stopping to admire a wrack line of seaweed studded with swan feathers. Pale succulents found footholds in what could only be a hostile environment. Shells and bones gleamed against the black stones and to me, even a tangle of fishing rope looked attractive against the raw beauty of the preserve.
On the beach at Hvalnes Nature Reserve, a quick slideshow
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Hvalnes
5. The imposing Krossanesfjall Mountains guard the reserve’s western edge.
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6. Somewhere out there, the next landfall to the south should be Africa. You can imagine the strength of storms that hit the south coast.
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7. Most of the rocks at Hvalnes are black. Not this one!
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8. Across the lagoon, buildings are dwarfed by the landscape.
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Because Iceland is far north (63 – 67 degrees N) and isolated, it has a relatively small native flora and fauna. About 85 bird species nest there, among them the stately Whooper swan (Cygnus cygnus). We observed them at Tjörnin (a lake in Reykjavik’s city center), along North Iceland’s Eyjafjörður and on the south coast. Iceland has around 30,000 Whoopers, most of which spend winters in the UK. Unlike the city swans, the group I saw at Hvalnes epitomized the untamed feeling I associate with Iceland – they seemed wary of humans even at a great distance. It was clear they had no need for us, a reassuring feeling. In some districts, nature still holds sway.
The only swans I knew for most of my life were Mute swans (Cygnus olor), the European natives brought over to America in the mid-1800s. As pretty as they are, I always thought of them as “decoration” – a park swan dependent on handouts, not a “real” native wild bird. When I moved to the Pacific Northwest I learned that vast flocks of Trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator) overwinter in the agricultural fields between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Whenever I see these great white deities of the north take flight over the dusky winter fields with their outstretched necks, I smile. Usually a few Tundra swans (Cygnus columbianus), another Arctic species, join the Trumpeters. Just last week, birders identified a third swan species feeding with the others – a Whooper swan. It’s very far from its usual wintering grounds in Europe and eastern Asia. Maybe it was blown off course in a storm and found a flock of “cousins” to feed with. Birds far from their normal range are called “vagrants”, which brings to mind a sense of freedom and open space. Wild swans are no one’s pets. They only need us to refrain from despoiling their habitats.
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9. Whooper swans in the lagoon at Hvalnes Nature Reserve
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Yes, that was another digression. OK, now we are forging aheadtoward some of Iceland’s most popular sights, the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon and Diamond Beach. After a few hours we caught glimpses of the enormous glacier at Vatnajökull National Park, Iceland’s largest at over 5,460 square miles (14,141 square kilometers). Its centerpiece, Vatnajökull, is the largest glacier in Europe, with ice depths up to 3,120 ft. (950m). Under the ice, eight subglacial volcanoes lurk. When one blows, great, landscape-altering floods can result. Ash can be a problem, too. In 2010 an eruption of Eyjafjallajökull caused a major ash fallout across southern Iceland and parts of Europe, piling as thick as several inches in some places. Another volcanic eruption the next year blew enough ash into the atmosphere to cancel 900 flights in Europe.
As we drove around the country, passing snow-topped mountains and hot steam vents, it was increasingly easy to see why Iceland is the “Land of Fire and Ice.” The south coast seemed to be where the reputation was earned.
Vatnajökull National Park was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site just five years ago, thanks to an overwhelming variety of tectonic, volcanic and glaciovolcanic features. There are dramatic waterfalls, craters, canyons, and springs. Table mountains created by subglacial volcanic eruptions dot the landscape and unique sandur plains, or glacial outwash plains flow from the ice. A glacial outwash plain may not sound interesting but in this part of the world, unexpected changes in the sediment fields can have dramatic effects. For many years just one road connected the eastern region to the western part of the south coast. Of course, bridges crossed wet sections like the outwash plains, as seen in this post’s feature photo. One bridge, the longest in the country (at 2,890 ft/ 880m), was destroyed in 1996 when massive flooding sent house-sized icebergs crashing into it. It was another manifestation of fire and ice – those icebergs were loosened by a volcanic eruption.
Our route traced the same southern portion of the park, safe for now at least. (The current situation over on the Reykjanes Peninsula is another matter – magma is building and a fifth eruption is expected any day now). Putting our faith in electronic warning systems, we drove across a land of steep mountain ranges that rose above outlet glaciers slowly washing ice and sediment to the sea. The clouds glimmered and scowled as views of great glacial tongues emerged or hid behind forbidding mountains. The grand, empty appearance of the scenery hardly prepared us for the crowds at Glacier Lagoon…
Roadside glimpses of the Vatnajökull under changeable skies, a quick slideshow
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Finally, we arrived at Jökulsárlón, the glacier lagoon. Unfortunately it was jammed with tourists(I know, we’re tourists, too). The lagoon and its zoo-like parking lot were exactly kind of the situations we had been avoiding for the past two weeks. As beautiful as I knew it was – even from the road it looked spectacular – we gave it a pass. My guidebook said a second, less popular glacier lagoon was just ahead. It was late afternoon now and time was running out. I wanted to experience another attraction nearby and the clearing sky told me that we needed to go today – there could be sunlight on the diamonds!
You’ll see what I’m talking about in Part 2 of “A Long Day in Iceland.”
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10. Icebergs at Jökulsárlón float down a channel and out to the sea.
In January I read a book called The Boy Detective by Roger Rosenblatt, a native New Yorker. Meditating on time, Rosenblatt links past and present by revisiting the Manhattan neighborhood where he grew up. When he was a boy he fancied himself a detective. Prowling around his neighborhood, he observed life on the street with a sleuth’s inquisitive eye, honing a talent for story-telling. The memoir’s vivid, free-wheeling descriptions of New York reawakened my passion for a city that defined my formative years and called me back years later.
From late adolescence through early adulthood I was out in the world on my own, bouncing across the city from one cheap apartment to the next, from one school or job to the next, and from one boyfriend to the next. I had been determined to discard the stifling, suburban lifestyle my parents worked hard to give their three kids. Begging them to let me attend college in New York City, I could not – did not – imagine any other possibility. I compromised by applying to schools in other cities but had no intention of living anywhere but New York. At the age of 18 my feet hit the pavement and I never looked back.
The odd thing is that as much as I was attuned to the extraordinary energy of New York, I was imbued with a deep appreciation for nature, instilled from earliest childhood. Our family moved from one state to another three different times but nature was always an integral part of our lives. I toddled around the yard of our first house, explored the woods behind a different house as a girl, and made drawings of trees and lakes near another house as a teen. In grade school, when I learned the word “pantheist” I felt sure that was me. A connection to nature as ultimate life force felt deeper to me than anything else, perhaps even my family.
But I was restless and the suburbs, pretty as they were, left me wanting more. When we moved to a small town 45 minutes from New York City, it took just a few visits to convince me that it was THE place, my place. I first saw New York as a five-year-old on a family trip and was enchanted even at that age. Seeing it again in my teens, I understood that this city activates an entirely different set of opportunities, like a bright light flashing at a crossroads. I followed the light.
For well over a decade I grew with the city, attending and quitting school, working in fashion, returning to college for fine art, and then hopping from one dead-end job to the next. (Oops! I forgot to consider the fact that an undergraduate art degree equals low or no income!). Still, I always enjoyed the grit and glitter of the city that never sleeps. Then at 32 I was introduced to Zen practice. The zendo was a grand old mansion high above the Hudson River, at the city’s northern edge. No doubt, part of the appeal was the quiet surroundings, a stark contrast to the Upper West Side neighborhood where I lived and worked at that time. Within four months I quit my job, joined the Zen Community of New York, and moved in. Those were turning years, when I dedicated myself to a deeper understanding of life, ethics, and spirit. Nature was close at hand at the quiet, gray stone residence under the trees. There’s nothing quite like an early morning meditation that begins in semi-dark and ends just after dawn. Manhattan’s bustle wasn’t far away either; the bakery we ran to support the community necessitated frequent sales trips to busy restaurants and shops.
But life shifted again when I got pregnant. The community was changing, too and wasn’t a good fit for a small family. A two-year sojourn in the rural hills of Western North Carolina was an experiment gone wrong – our little family splintered apart and we moved back to metropolitan New York to begin again, separately. I plunged heart-first into a difficult relationship, taking my unsuspecting four-year-old with me. That’s a story for another time. One positive aspect of the partnership was that we agreed on living spaces. When it became possible to buy a home we chose a sweet country house with gardens in front and back. For a few years, garden work was my livelihood as well as a joyful occupation at home, where deer and wild turkeys roamed freely. The city was hours away, out of sight and out of mind.
Country life was hardly bucolic though. Our relationship was beset with problems that took years of emotional work to see past. In midlife I finally cut loose. I went back to school for an advanced degree, a more useful one this time. Moving to a small cottage on a sparkling river closer to the city, I began to rebuild my life. My son was old enough to be on his own and the funky, one-room cottage was the solitary refuge that I needed to grow stronger. After completing my degree I found work near home and focused on my clients, a fascinating group of people who were finally living independently after years of struggling with serious, persistent mental illness.
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2. Nature: Leaves flung by autumn winds by the river. City: A winter view in Lower Manhattan.
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A few years later, management changes drove me to look for a better job. The new position promised fresh challenges and just happened to be located in the heart of downtown Manhattan! Once again, the city’s fast-paced energy worked its magic. It was invigorating. Commuting from the cottage on the river wasn’t tenable so I moved to an apartment in Staten Island, New York’s forgotten borough. From there, a short walk, a scenic ferry ride, and a quick hop on the subway got me to the office in under an hour. Several days a week, I traveled throughout the metropolitan New York area for work. My colleague and I usually stayed overnight as we visited agencies that served people with traumatic brain injuries to monitor the quality of service. After work I could explore the countryside. I felt young and hopeful again. Perhaps not surprisingly, a healthy relationship took root, growing from a single coffee date into something lasting.
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3. Nature: Ashokan Reservoir, Ulster County, NY.  City: World Trade Center construction.
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4. Nature: Springtime at Staten Island Botanical Garden. City: A pocket of peacefulness in lower Manhattan.
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5. Nature: A petal-strewn path at a garden on Staten Island. City: New York’s Bowling Green subway entrance at 5:13pm.
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During those years I haunted the botanical garden near our apartment and Joe and I explored the farthest reaches of our rather peculiar island home. We’d spy a deer in a field one day and a seal on a beach another day. In contrast to the tranquility of the botanical garden and the island’s beaches, my 13th floor office was adjacent to the site where the World Trade Center Towers had crumbled to the ground seven years before. Now a furiously active construction site, it was an exciting scene to view from above – but New York’s financial district is a stressful place. Reminders of 9/11 were everywhere, from the heavily armed guards with their German shepherds standing at attention at the ferry terminal to the hawkers selling 9/11 pamphlets to tourists. I loved what lower Manhattan had to offer in the way of food, shopping and architecture, but being in the midst of that constant sensory overload began to wear me down. Joe’s two-hour commute across a major bridge and over some of New York’s’ worst highways wasn’t bringing him any joy either.
Then life presented another opportunity. By chance we were both in the midst of work interruptions. Should we look for new jobs nearby or not? Maybe we could move someplace far away, someplace we had never been before. How about the Seattle area? On an exploratory visit we roamed around the Pacific Northwest in a rental car. That sold us on the advantages of the Pacific Northwest. Dramatic scenery that’s easily accessible? An informal, liberal West coast lifestyle? Cheaper rent and no state tax? It all looked very good after years of fighting the crowds and stress of the East coast. So we took a giant leap across the country with our aging cat and settled into a suburban garden apartment within striking distance of Seattle – and spectacular scenery.
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6. City: A Seattle alley and high-rises.  Nature: A stream at the Seattle Japanese Garden.
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7. City: Seattle fire standpipes. Nature: A dahlia at Bellevue Botanical Garden.
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I missed New York – Seattle is no substitute – but I was enthralled by the sheer abundance of nature in Washington. Even office buildings and shopping centers had carefully maintained landscaping. Streets were clean, people polite. We had fun exploring the foothills and mountains to the east and south. The Olympic Peninsula offered temperate rainforests to the west. Engaging rural towns and islands dotted the landscape to the north. We were surrounded by lush forests, rugged mountains, and all kinds of waterways, from wide lakes to tumbling streams.
The islands north of Seattle especially appealed to us. In fact, every time we drove up I-5 and the landscape opened up at the Skagit County border, we sighed with relief. There’s something freeing about a landscape that suddenly expands in all directions. We liked to cross the agricultural fields and drive onto Fidalgo Island, a mid-sized island with a dramatic shoreline encircling conifer forests and small lakes in the middle.
As we got close to retirement Seattle was going through a growth spurt. Our quiet suburb was now beset by the same problems we thought we left behind in New York. Traffic was snarly, cranes signaled a building boom and the rent kept going up. The city’s siren call grew faint while nature spoke loud and clear. In 2018 we got lucky and found a comfortable, affordable place to live on Fidalgo Island. With more time and fewer obligations, we could explore it in depth. I went out with the camera almost every day, studying the island’s unusual flora, getting to know the beaches, finding parks I didn’t even know existed.
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8. City: A Foggy view out a window in Staten Island.  Nature: Fog on Heart Lake, Fidalgo Island.
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Since moving to this corner of the world, trips to cities, whether back to New York, Seattle, Vancouver, or Los Angeles, have grown less important. My connection to the outdoors has deepened, thanks to a schedule I can call my own, without the pressure of paychecks. I can go for a walk most anytime, get deeply involved with native orchids, spend hours monitoring a heron rookery, or hand-feed peanuts to chickadees and nuthatches. When the pocket-sized birds’ wild eyes look straight into mine and their tiny feet grip my palm, I’m not Lynn, I’m simply another lifeform on our great, breathing planet. That feels good.
But when I read Roger Rosenblatt’s book about the city he loves I was right there, drinking in every detail. Memories of the buzz and thrill of city life flooded back. I’m happy living where I do but I wouldn’t mind getting back to New York before too long. It’s where human culture reaches into brand new places, some of them not so good but many of them fascinating. It’s a place where “bests” are commonplace. People characterize themselves as either city people or country people but I’ve always felt a deep attachment to both. Why think of it as a dichotomy? Why not frame city/country as a both/and?
That’s what I’m playing with in this post – placing two great passions, the cityscape and the countryside, side by side. Letting them rub shoulders.
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9. City: New York’s Verrazano Bridge behind tree limbs. Nature: A view of Early Winter Spires through Larch trees; North Cascade Range, Washington.
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10. Nature: Driftwood beneath a lichen-covered cliff on Fidalgo Island. City: Rusting construction on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Queens, NY.
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11. Nature: Rock surface, Washington Park, Fidalgo Island. City: A street corner in Queens, NY.
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12. Nature: Hikers resting in the North Cascades. City: Riding the Staten Island ferry across New York harbor.
In the last post I wrote about a two-day January snowstorm that kept me indoors more than usual. In addition to snow, that month brought us four days of below-freezing temperatures and a major windstorm. Unlike snowstorms and cold snaps, windstorms often produce very localized effects – a few downed trees in one place, nothing of note in other places.
Regular readers may remember hearing about a place I visit frequently called Bowman Bay. A relatively small, sheltered, crescent-shaped bay, it faces a major body of water, the 96-mile-long Strait of Juan de Fuca. Because the strait acts like a funnel for wind and water flowing east from the Pacific Ocean, by the time windy weather reaches Fidalgo and Whidbey Islands at the eastern end of the strait, the effect can be very destructive. But wind damage depends on precise direction – a little bit north or south and one place will be spared while another place suffers. The major windstorm that barreled down the strait on January 9th blew in just the right direction to make a direct hit on Bowman Bay. West Beach (like Bowman Bay, part of Deception Pass State Park) and residences on Whidbey Island were also slammed. Even a San Juan Island ferry was swamped with water that day as it struggled through turbulent seas.
When intense winds blow during a high tide, massive amounts of driftwood can roll onto beaches – and those water-soaked logs are heavy! The damage from wind-powered waves and heavy logs crashing onshore that January day was extensive. A grassy strip of land between the beach and the wooded wetlands behind it was all but obliterated. That narrow ribbon of land is where a trail heads from the parking lot to the Lighthouse Point Loop, a favorite trail in Washington’s favorite state park. Of course, winter storms aren’t a new phenomenon but from my limited perspective they seem to be increasingly powerful and destructive. When I moved to Fidalgo Island in the summer of 2018, the path linking the Bowman Bay parking lot to the Lighthouse Point Loop was a pleasant trail flanked by tall wildflowers. Hikers would walk alongside a placid beach, up and over a rocky headland and on past a second beach backed by a wetland and a quiet bay. The trail is a splendid introduction to the Lighthouse Point trail, with its mature forest of tall conifers and spectacular views. This quick slideshow only hints at the delights of Lighthouse Point.
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Over the years, storms have come and gone. As of last summer, the path leading to the Lighthouse Point trail was in fine shape but January’s windstorms may have changed that for good. A wooden bridge over a stream was destroyed. Sizable chunks were taken out of the beach and the dune grass plants lining the beach were flattened. A massive maze of driftwood logs now obscures the trail. As hikers pick their way from log to log the way forward feels more like a climbing gym than a trail!
Another slideshow below illustrates the changes. The first photo, from May, 2020, shows the wooden bridge and wildflowers in May. In November that year, a windstorm flooded the trail with saltwater (second photo). My feet got soaked through from running back to the parking lot that day after my hike was cut short by the wild weather. A few days later the water subsided and the trail was passable again. The next year, another November storm deposited piles of driftwood onto the trail (third photo). The logs were removed and the trail was clear again. In the fourth photo, from last May, wildflowers bloom again along the obstacle-free trail. Then came January’s windstorm. Two photos show the broken bridge and piles of driftwood on the beach. Less than a week after the first storm, more high winds upped the ante. Two photos from January 21st show a blocked trail and driftwood logs on a boat ramp that broke apart and will have to be removed.
The last nine photos are from a rare sunny day when I went back to photograph the damage in better light. You’ll see the broken bridge up close, beach erosion, and people picking their way over the driftwood logs or walking on the beach. If the tide is low you can walk on the beach instead of using the trail but during high tide you’re forced into the maze of logs. More photos show a picnic area on the other side of the parking lot that flooded during the windstorm. The extra-high tide and wind caused a huge tree to split in two and topple onto a picnic shelter. Finally, the “Emergency Closure” sign is seen, positioned where the way forward is obstructed. But of course, people walk around the sign. We find our way. It takes a lot more than a storm and a sign to stop determined hikers from accessing the trails they love.
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Let’s switch gears – enough destruction! Extreme weather brings great beauty, too. Around the same time we had the windstorm there was a deep freeze, with temperatures dipping well below freezing and staying there for four days. One result of the cold snap was that a north-facing cliff at Bowman Bay was festooned with massive icicles. I don’t normally have opportunities to photograph ice so I spent as long as I could there, only giving up when frosty fingers and frigid feet screamed, “Enough, go home!” The photos below show the cliff face and closeups of the icicles. It was magical to gaze into the shiny, rounded forms with their sleek shapes. At one point I saw something like a crawling bug out of the corner of my eye. “What’s was that?” I wondered. It was the slow drip of water under the ice surface, sliding as if in a chute down the rock face, encased in an inch or two of ice. I smiled. Sedum, an evergreen succulent that grows on the cliff, shone under the ice. Even the dried grasses of summer hid in ice tombs.
Other phenomena caught my eye too, like bubbles and branching patterns in the thin wetland ice. Driftwood logs held puddles of ice with little rocks embedded in them. A few Canada geese huddled at the shore’s edge, their heads hidden under warm goose down. The most surprising curiosities were clusters of frozen bubbles on clumps of bright green seaweed. Apparently when the tide came in earlier that day on foam-topped, gentle waves, the waves broke over the seaweed and the bubbles instantly froze in place. Carefully picking a piece of the confection up, I could not keep it from shattering.
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17. With temperatures below freezing, a Canada goose stands on one leg and tucks its head into feathers and down. The puddles at its feet were frozen.
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To put it all into perspective, this much damage to one tiny corner of the world is nothing compared with the loss of livelihoods, homes, and life that occurs when extreme weather events manifest across the globe. I don’t mean to complain, just to communicate something surprising that happened in my neighborhood. Photographing and writing about disturbing events helps us digest and make sense of them. Sharing our impressions and thoughts keeps us together at a time when it can feel like we’re all flying apart, lost is our separate headspaces. So here’s to the tools of the trade: eyes and ears, camera, computer, internet….may we use them wisely.
This walk is hyper-local! I’ve been spending more time in the house lately because the weather has been less than ideal. Maybe you have, too. Here in northwestern Washington, winter temperatures tend to be pretty mild but early this month we experienced four consecutive days of sub-freezing weather, all day and night. Less than a week later, a two-day storm blanketed the island with soft snow. On the first day of the snowstorm I had to cancel an appointment I had in a distant city, which was frustrating. The gently falling snow was beautiful though and by lunchtime it had stopped, inviting me to step outside with the camera. That hyper-local walk was cut short by the icy cold but I was out long enough to enjoy the hush of fresh snow and the privilege of being very close to the chickadees, who were too intent on feeding to mind my presence. The roads were more or less passable so I drove into town that afternoon, very slowly and carefully. Not many other cars were out because most people aren’t used to driving in snow here. Having grown up in New York and New Jersey, I’m used to it.
1. A snapshot of our road on the first snow day.
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The next day the snow fell nonstop and practically erased our road. I was stuck. On our mid-sized island (under 21,000 residents on 41 sq. miles) there aren’t enough snowplows to keep up with a real snowstorm. Around 3pm a pick-up truck with a plow attachment finally lumbered down the road but it was too little, too late. Only trucks and heavy, 4WD vehicles were safe on the roads. It would have been a good day to stay in and make interesting still life arrangements to photograph, but I just wasn’t inspired. Only one photo bears that date – a window with a reflection of the computer monitor superimposed on a view of snow-covered trees. It was a day of alternately gazing out the window and working on the computer.  
A few days later snow still blanketed the ground and I tried a little intentional camera movement (ICM) photography behind our house. As readers of this blog know, I enjoy this technique. Earlier that week a friend told me about a zoom offering by Stephanie Johnson, a “globally recognized leader and mentor of ICM photography” so I watched the presentation. Among other things, she discussed making in-camera multiple exposures with camera movement, an idea that was new to me. I researched how to do multiple exposures with my camera and tried it, using the leaves of an Elephant ear plant that I brought inside when the weather got bad. I’m actually not sure the multiple exposures worked. I made both multiple exposures and single exposures of the leaves, all with camera movement. After I transferred the files to the computer, I wasn’t sure which was which! But I liked some of them so ultimately it doesn’t matter. ICM is not a technique that lends itself to reproducing something you did before. It always yields unpredictable results – that’s part of the appeal. If I try multiple exposures again I hope I’ll remember to keep track of what I’m doing!
Some of the indoor ICM photographs and outdoor photographs from that week seem to have a certain congruence. Maybe it’s the limited palette. Whatever the reason for the similarity, I thought it might be interesting to show them together, along with some still camera exposures from the same time. The techniques may be different but all of the images below were made this month in and around the house – a very local walk.
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2. Snow without wind brings out a wealth of soft details, something I wanted to photograph without camera movment.
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3. The simple form of a vase seen with the shutter held wide-open for just under a second. I followed the curve of the vase with my arms.
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5. The bright green, heart-shaped leaves of the Elephant ear plant (Colocasia sp.) are a welcome winter tonic. I like photographing them in color and black and white, with a moving or a still camera. In this intentionally blurred image, an unfurled leaf is in front of a mature leaf.
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7. The deck railing and window screen provide a backdrop for the plant. In a few months the Elephant ears will be back outside but right now, that day seems far away. That’s probably why I like the summery feeling this photo evokes.
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8. Here’s a leaf that’s tightly curled. Over the course of a few days, it will unfurl and lean as close to the window as it can get. This plant must breathe a sigh of relief when it gets back outside – there is very little light indoors in winter.
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9. The creek by our house runs in winter and spring but turns bone-dry in summer.
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10. Branches and twigs littered the ground after the storm. I didn’t use camera movement for this but I made significant changes in processing, such as taking the clarity almost all the way down, making an odd tone curve, and dialing up the aqua color.
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11. A view out a window on the morning on the first snow day.
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12. This photo of branches on the ground was made with intentional camera movement. I changed the colors in processing, pulled the exposure down, and made other adjustments to create the feeling of a sketch.
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13. Back inside, a pile of Ginkgo leaves rests on a book about words for landforms.
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14. Lichens love our wet weather and don’t mind snow and ice at all. This lichen community is on the bark of an alder tree.
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15. And there are the Chestnut-backed chickadees, keeping well-fed while it snows.
Beaches in Iceland. The phrase doesn’t exactly invoke visions of sun, surf, and palm trees – in fact, it sounds like an oxymoron. So why get excited about a beach in Iceland? For me, it’s the liberating feeling of open space, the lure of limitless water, and the appeal of unique rock formations. That’s why I went a little crazy the first two days we spent on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. From the time we left the small town of Grundarfjörður, where we stayed, until the sun went down, my eyes were as big as plates.*
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A simplified road map of Iceland. We drove most of these roads, except for the Westfjords (top left) and Husavik. Beaches on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula (to the left) and the South Coast are outstanding.
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It was late August and the weather was unstable, which is common in Iceland almost any time of the year. The first photo I made that morning was from the inside of the car, of a splash of raindrops scattered across the windshield and the iconic Kirkjufell Mountain looming outside like a blurry Hershey’s kiss, its reflection a dark triangle on the water below. Two hours later I photographed patches of pretty blue sky over a calm ocean, and later that afternoon I was photographing a rainbow over the mountains. The quick changes only added to the magic.
Following the coastline-hugging Útnesvegur (the road around the peninsula), we aimed for SkarðsvÃk Beach, or the Yellow Sand Beach, located in a small cove near the tip of the peninsula. It was all I could do to refrain from demanding that we stop every few miles, the scenery was so striking. Empty, wild, and vast, with olive-green mountains stacked on our left and silvery ocean vistas spread out on our right, the landscape was unlike anything I had ever seen. After stopping to admire a sleek, modern church atop a hill in the little town of Olafsvik, we continued west, keeping our eyes out for the turnoff to SkarðsvÃk Beach.
You may as well call it candy beach for me. With the imposing rock formations, broad expanse of beach, swirls of yellow and black sand, and emerald-green plants huddled in rock crevices, I was in heaven. Beaches like this, where humanity truly takes a back seat to nature, have an impact on my entire being. It’s more than the sum of five senses, it’s corporeal: the wholeness of my body responds to the space, as if some invisible shell suddenly melts away. At once fully alive and relaxed, I struck out toward one interesting thing after another, camera at my side.
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2. Imposing rock formations with surprising fracture patterns rise from colorful sand.
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4. A geology lesson waiting to be clarified.
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5. An elegant tapestry of yellow and black sand.
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6. Tough plants adapted to difficult conditions were thriving at SkarðsvÃk.
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7. Seaweed tumbled languorously from the rocks, like Rapunzel’s hair.
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8. A feather and seaweed (Bladder wrack?), a swirl of colored sand, and some strange creatures that washed up onto the beach. Jean Mackay helped by suggesting the bluish thing was a Gooseneck barnacle but I think someone on iNaturalist was correct when they identified it as a Buoy barnacle – Dosima fascicularis. They attach themselves to floating things and can even make floats themselves. Unlike the barnacles most of us know, they’re wanderers. It’s thought that increasing amounts of human-made debris in the oceans affect their numbers favorably. There’s always so much more to learn!
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9. Beachcombers at SkarðsvÃk.
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Skardsvik set the stage for the deep impact beaches would continue to have on me all across the country. We decided to carry on tracing a path around the perimeter of the peninsula, stopping wherever it suited us. A scruffy Icelandic ram seemed to approve of our plan so we worked our way back to the main road and headed south.
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But weather intervened – and so did our stomachs! We bought food for lunch the night before that we could eat in the car but we really needed a bathroom! With towns and facilities scarce, the best strategy was to head back east to the nearest town, where a Visitor’s Center would have clean restrooms. It worked out perfectly – we learned about the hard life of local fishermen while ducking the rain. Lunch energized us and soon the skies were brightening.
Back on the road again, we rounded the tip of the peninsula and pulled in at the Hellnar viewpoint, a platform constructed at the edge of a dramatic basalt cliff. Another cliff viewpoint awaited us just down the road at Arnarstapi, a tiny fishing village. In both locations, we jockeyed for space with other tourists on crowded cliffs with extraordinary views. In photo #13 (below) you can see the crowds, which admittedly were nothing like a major European city but made us reluctant to linger. In all three photos you can see mist in the distance, showing that the weather was still inclement, something we quickly learned to adapt to.
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11. A basalt cliff at Hellnar.
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12. The arch at Arnarstapi.
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13. Crowds on the cliffs at Arnarstapi.
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The next day we were eager to see more. A beach called Djúpalónssandur, or Black Sand Beach, beckoned. We made a quick stop at Kirkjufell to photograph the iconic mountain displayed in so many ads for Iceland. It was difficult to find a viewpoint without crowds of people but with a little patience, I managed. “Church Mountain” with a set of pretty waterfalls at its base, was formed from layers of rock from multiple volcanic eruptions, going back to the tertiary period. We didn’t spend much time there because we wanted to explore beyond the bussed-in crowds, so we jumped back in the car and rounded the tip of the peninsula again.
One of the first views we had of Djúpalónssandur Beach was photo #1, above. Like the previous day’s Yellow Sand Beach, the landscape brimmed with interesting rock formations. For two solid hours we roamed through narrow alleys where ragged rocks overhang precariously. We investigated tight crevices filled with round pebbles and tiny plants growing straight from the rocks. There were round rocks in black and cream and jagged rocks in red-orange and deep blue. We sat on the edge of a freshwater lagoon hidden behind the beach and watched a pair of Common Redshanks (Tringa totanus) pick their way around the rim. A tiny Sea urchin that had washed onto the beach amazed us. Perhaps the most unusual sight at Djúpalónssandur are rusted pieces of a trawler that broke apart and washed ashore here in 1948. Icelanders are so respectful of the lives lost that day that they do not touch the remains of the ship. That kind of restraint would be unimaginable in the U.S., where souvenir-hunters would likely gather up the remnants in a few days.
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14. The obligatory shot of Kirkjufell.
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15. Seastacks at Djúpalónssandur under restive skies.
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16. Gulls were perched high on the basalt cliffs. The patches of grass up there must be well-fertilized.
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17. There were smooth, gray and black rocks in some places and craggy red ones in other places. Small, round, black lava rocks like those on the left are called black pearls of Djúpalón.
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18. Wildflowers and a Sea urchin.
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19. A view through the rocks, looking away from the water.
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20. Ship fragments from the tragic fishing boat accident during a blizzard in 1948 still rest on the beach, 75 years later. Fourteen lives were lost that night, five were saved. Djúpalónssandur is one of the most dangerous beaches in Iceland, a country where beauty and danger go hand in hand.
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21. Another geology lesson waiting to be clarified. The reddish rock might be part of the Söngklettur or “Singing Rock” which is supposed to reside here. Legend says it’s the Church of the Elves (Tröllakirkja) and one should approach it with respect.
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22. Suess-like rocks at Djúpalónssandur. No wonder elves and trolls are thought to live here!
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23. Precision cuts, stones for the palm of your hand, and black pearls.
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24. Dwarfed by their surroundings, beachgoers gaze out to sea at Djúpalónssandur.
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There was one more surprise that day: at the edge of the clearing in a lava field that serves as a parking lot, an Arctic fox suddenly materialized. The handful of people getting in or out of their cars stared, transfixed. One man with a telephoto lens carefully crouched in the grass, clicking away. We watched spellbound as the little fox followed its nose and, finding nothing of interest, calmly loped away. No one bothered it. Respect seemed to be the word for the day – respect for lives lost at sea, respect for wildlife, and respect for the gift we’d been given of a few charmed hours at the Black Sand beach in Iceland. We wound our way back to Grundarfjörður amidst mist and rainbows.
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25. An Arctic fox, its coat still brown to blend in with the environment. In winter it will be white. They are Iceland’s only native land mammal!
I’ve been all over the map this week about what to post next. There are more photographs from Iceland that I plan to share…but now or later? I’ve been getting outdoors often enough to put together a collection of photos that I titled, “Lightwater.” Then I changed gears and started another post that pairs older photos from New York City with recent images from nature. The idea is to compare and contrast my love for New York and the Pacific Northwest. But the post was inching along painfully as I struggled with doubts about how to make the pairs of photos work together.
Then I opened an email that had been sitting in my inbox for several days. It was from a woman who teaches conservation photography. Although I consider myself to be more a fine art photographer than a conservation photographer, Jaymi Heimbuch’s newsletters are often inspiring. In her year-end missive, she encouraged readers to write down what they accomplished in 2023, such as completing a photo project, growing a social media account, improving skills or educating people about conservation. Never one to follow instructions to the letter, I modified her idea and realized that for me, a photographic lookback would be appropriate. It would push me to review and reflect on what’s happened this year and of course, the timing is right.
I spun around a bit more, initially thinking I would use 12 photos that hadn’t been shown before, one for each month. Finally, I settled on a mix of three photos for each season, most of which have been shown before. About half are from favorite places, others are more experimental or were taken far from home. Looking back over last year’s photographs revealed something that I vaguely understood but hadn’t quite articulated: abstract images, especially those made with intentional camera movement, have become an important focus. Another genre I put more effort into this year is wide angle landscape photography, something I tend to set aside in favor of intimate views of nature. The trip around Iceland was just what I needed to practice zeroing in on large landscapes – a nice benefit I hadn’t expected.
Below the photographs there’s another 2023 lookback, focusing on four projects I’ve been involved with this year. The funny thing is that now I’ve come pretty close to fulfilling Jaymi Heimbuch’s year-end task after all!
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WINTER
1. “Red spaghetti” seaweed at Bowman Bay, Fidalgo Island, Washington, March 3, 2023.
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2. Construction site in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. February 16, 2023.
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3. Snow geese (Anser caerulescens) in flight; Skagit Valley, Washington, January 25, 2023.
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SPRING
4. Shooting star (Primula pauciflora); Dusty Lake, Washington, April 20, 2023.
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5. Rain on grass seeds; Goose Rock, Whidbey Island, Washington, June 20th, 2023.
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6. Burrows Island cliff with old tree seen from a boat; Salish Sea, May 13, 2023.
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SUMMER
7. Elsie Mae, a Northern elephant seal (Mirounga augustirostris) emerging through kelp strands; Fidalgo Island, July 1, 2023.
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8. Pine needle caught in a sparkling spider web; Fidalgo Island, August 7, 2023.
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9. Hvalnes Nature Reserve and Whooper swans (Cygnus cygnus); East Iceland, September 9, 2023.
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FALL
10. Three Fingers Mountain in the Cascade Range, from Goose Rock; Whidbey Island, November 3, 2023.
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11. Intentional camera movement sketch; Fidalgo Island, October 26, 2023.
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12. Fidalgo Bay from March Point; Fidalgo Island, December 10, 2023.
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SOME 2023 HIGHLIGHTS
As I said above, I don’t consider myself to be a conservation photographer but I’ve been involved with a number of conservation projects this year. Many afternoons were spent protecting Elsie Mae, a Northern elephant seal that has made Fidalgo Island her home away from home. She spends the bulk of her time far out in the Pacific Ocean, eating and sleeping for months without ever touching land. When she needs to go through her annual molt of old fur and a layer of skin, she finds her way back to Fidalgo Island. Most Northern elephant seals haul out along the California coast but she returns to Washington. She’s one of a handful of elephant seals born this far north but the number is increasing, probably due to climate change. Shortly after she was born on Whidbey Island, she was tagged with a durable, easily-read plastic number tag on her rear flippers. As long as she hauls out where someone can see the tags, word will always get around quickly. Then the cohort of volunteers, sanctioned by NOAA (North American Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration) and under the auspices of the Orca Network, will spring back into action to keep her safe – all marine mammals in US waters are protected under United States law.
This year she arrived late for her molt, staying from mid-June through the end of July. The so-called catastrophic molt that elephant seals experience taxes their bodies and takes 4 or more weeks. She chose a new place to molt this year, next to the ferry connecting Fidalgo with sparsely-inhabited Guemes Island, just to our north. The ferry is busy all summer with Guemes residents coming over to do their shopping and people visiting Guemes. That gave us many opportunities to educate an amazed public about Northern elephant seals - and we only had a few close calls with dogs, drunks, and fireworks.
Late in July she surprised us by disappearing into the water and reappearing across the channel on Guemes. That kept us busy, riding the ferry back and forth and trudging up and down the beach looking for her each day. It was a quieter location and homeowners were wonderful about giving her space. The volunteer group grew this year, in numbers, enthusiasm, and experience. We’ll be ready if she returns with a pup in her belly early in 2024, something she did in 2022 when she gave birth to her first pup, a male called Emerson. One of the gratifying aspects of helping to protect Emerson (I began volunteering in 2022) was learning that he showed up in Victoria, British Columbia, this year – just a quick swim across the Salish Sea from his birthplace. And he was healthy!
Three other projects kept me busy during the warmer months. Fidalgo Island isn’t only host to a Northern elephant seal who’s far out of her normal range, we also host what may be the largest Great blue heron rookery on the West Coast. On protected land, the wooded site sits between two bays, offering easy access to food when it’s needed most. The Skagit Land Trust, which owns the land, installed three webcams in the rookery for a long-term project to monitor reproduction success. Trees with nests are numbered and nests are counted in the off-season. Once the herons begin appearing at the rookery in spring, the cameras are switched on. A small group of volunteers begins to monitor individually numbered nests from computers at home. No one enters the rookery during breeding season.
I was excited to participate in the project this year, my first. Watching herons engage in mating behaviors like passing sticks back and forth and seeing the first big, bright blue eggs was thrilling. Then came the first little hatchlings, often hard to see because both parents spend long hours brooding. You need patience! I was fine with that and was looking forward to observing the maturation and final fledging of many young herons from the 65 or so nests I monitored.
But it was not to be: a group of Bald eagles decimated the rookery this year. As I watched in horror, nestlings and eggs were devoured by adult and immature Bald eagles using the rookery like a free lunch counter. In previous years, a single pair of Bald eagles has nested in the heron rookery. They took a small number of young herons and eggs to nourish their own nestlings but also kept other eagles away, creating a balance between the two species. This year the eagles’ nest failed, falling off a limb early in the season. They did not rebuild, which left the rookery undefended and invited an eagle free-for-all. We volunteers hope and expect the eagles to rebuild their nest in the rookery in 2024. It was hard to watch what happened this year. We don’t know what the future holds but we’ll observe and record what we see. There’s no question that the information coming out of this long-term scientific project will be valuable.
Another project on Fidalgo Island monitors the health of our Western redcedars (Thuja plicata), which have been dying back in recent years, probably due to climate change. This beautiful, iconic tree of the Pacific northwest likes it wet but drought conditions are increasing across much of its range. For the second year, Elizabeth Drozda and I spent several days in the forest on our assigned trail, carefully assessing the health of one hundred trees. All Western redcedars growing within 10 meters of the center of the trail (on both sides) were gauged for foliage color and density, from top to bottom. Using laser pointers to measure distances and entering data on prepared forms, we were happy to note no significant change from last year’s survey. Time will tell how well Fidalgo Island’s redcedars adapt to a warmer, drier climate. This long-term citizen science project is sponsored by the Friends of the Anacortes Community Forest Lands and Transition Fidalgo, a local organization promoting climate resiliency.
Last but not least, Joe and I became Ferry Naturalists for the Orca Network, a nonprofit organization connecting whales and people in the Pacific Northwest. After our work with Elsie Mae, it was only natural to want to learn more about the marine environment. As Ferry naturalists we rode the San Juan Islands ferries, setting up educational materials on a table inside and answering questions. The San Juan Islands are a popular summer tourist destination – thousands of passengers take the ferries every day. Speaking to people while they ride the ferry is a tremendous opportunity to introduce them to the Salish Sea and its whales, especially our Southern Resident Orcas, a genetically distinct, endangered population. We only managed to do a few trips this year and we hope to do more in 2024.
If you’ve read this far you may be wondering why I haven’t written and posted photos about these activities before. It’s hard to put into words how much these experiences mean to me – I guess that’s why. One thing I can say is that I’m very grateful to be part of each of these projects. The experience enlarges my outlook, inspires me, and hopefully has a ripple effect. Here’s to many more opportunities to help conserve what we have on this beautiful planet.
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