when wildflowers pique my curiosity, propelling me outside
day after miraculous day.
But in this dimmer season, devoid of birdsong,
I can’t complain.
There’s plenty to see –
small bits to stumble across,
wide views where the soul can rest,
modest miracles, startling finds,
refreshment
each time I venture outside.
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1. Our life-giving sun is setting in the west over the Salish Sea, illuminating the Deception Pass bridge.
2. A broken blade of Bullwhip kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) lies on the beach where the outgoing tide left it (for me?). This giant seaweed is an alga that reproduces by way of spores, not flowers. From a tiny spore, it reaches 30 – 100 feet (10 – 30 m) in less than a year. Then it dies and pieces wash ashore all winter, like this one.
3. The prolific Bull kelp is found from central California to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands in cold, fairly deep water. A root-like holdfast anchors it to the seafloor. Near the water’s surface, the stipe (like a stem) widens into a hollow, bulb-like float that contains gas, allowing the blades (like leaves) to float near the surface and gather sunlight for photosynthesis. .
4. Winter storms have left countless pieces of kelp on the beaches. This one nuzzles up to a fragment of Sea lettuce (Ulva lactuca).
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5. Here are wood patterns I found near the water, all in the past week in several locations. The first two photos are of driftwood logs. The third shows a closeup of fungi on the thick bark of a downed Douglas fir about 30 feet from the water, in the woods. The last two photos are of a tree that appeared at Bowman Bay during a recent storm. It’s caught behind a rock now and it will be interesting to see how long it stays there.
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6. A lone figure stands on the rocks (in the middle) enjoying a cloud-laden sunset view of the Olympic Mountain Range, 60 miles (96km) to the southwest.
7. A Bullwhip kelp stipe floats on the gentle waves of an outgoing tide.
8. A hieroglyphic kelp bed viewed from a rocky promontory called Rosario Head that juts out into the rich waters of the Salish Sea.
9. These Bullwhip kelp blades are still attached to the stipe. When the tide comes back in, where will the kelp go?
10.
11. King tides and winter storms have pushed heavy driftwood logs into an old Sitka spruce tree (Picea sitchensis). Every time I pass this tree I wonder how much longer until the tides undercut its shallow roots enough to make it lean and finally fall. Like Bullwhip kelp, Sitka spruce ranges along the American west coast from southern Alaska, through Washington and Oregon, to northern California. Bullwhip kelp is a very large alga; likewise, the Sitka spruce is a very large tree. One Sitka spruce, named the Queets spruce, lives on the other side of the mountains seen above in #6 and is around 250′ (76m) tall. In Canada, the Carmanah Giant is much taller, at over 314 ft (96m). As Sitka spruce trees and Bullwhip kelp coexist in this bountiful region, pieces of kelp wash ashore to rest at the foot of this spruce tree, or even in its lower branches. And perhaps spruce needles blow across the water to land atop a bed of kelp. While Sitka spruce trees can live to 700 years, Bullwhip kelp completes its life cycle in less than a year, but both depend on the grand cycle of the rolling earth, soaking up the sun and resting in the dark of each new day.
12. Bits of shell, rock, wood, plants, and who knows what else: a pleasing puzzle found on a nearby beach.
13. The tide rolled two logs onto the old boat launch. They’ve been there for weeks. I like the formal simplicity of repeating parallel lines.14.15. The old pier in the distance also suffers the insults of storms and high tides. A few days ago workers began to dismantle it. The plan is to slowly allow this bay to return to the form it had before people built a fish hatchery here back in the 1940s. It is well on its way.
1. After sunset, tide running out, Deception Pass. Late December.
Looking back over the past six weeks it seems like we’ve come full circle: in early December the skies were gray and drizzly and temperatures were moderate. Then over the holidays, a long week of sub-freezing, snowy weather settled in. Now we’re back to the cool, damp, cloudy days that typify Pacific Northwest winter weather.
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2. Sunset on a calm day, Little Cranberry Lake. Mid-January.
What a treat the bright, White Christmas was, at least for those of us who weren’t traveling. When icy temperatures continued all week I was reminded of my New York childhood. Everything changed – the air was sharp and fresh, the landscapes enchanting, and the roads – well, our road was hardly plowed. But we’re both cold-weather veterans who’ve driven in far worse conditions so the dicey roads didn’t stop us from going out.
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3. Snowfall on Christmas Day, at home.
4. Our road, snapped with an iPhone between Christmas and the New Year.
But the cold! I’m not used to it anymore! Ten years in the Pacific Northwest has spoiled me. So I bought a pair of warmer gloves and packs of toe warmers that stick to the bottom of your socks and keep your feet warm for hours. That helped, but my fingers were just too stiff with cold to cooperate. The pervasive bright light that snow creates threw me off, too. Many of my photographs were disappointing. Still, I haven’t enjoyed the simple activity of looking out the windows so much in a long time. I would check the little stacks of snow on the deck railing to see if they had grown tall with a new layer or collapsed into pancaked shapes. I admired and worried about the Douglas fir trees laden with snow, their branches bent to the ground. The birds were ravenous, fluttering down from the trees and swarming like ants the minute I tossed seed onto the ground. In the morning there were fine little birds’ foot tracks and delicate wing imprints on the thin layer of snow that blew onto the concrete. The whole house filled with blue-white light, a boon to my mood. Winter is often very dark in this land of towering, dense stands of evergreens.
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5. Ice in the wetland at Bowman Bay. Early January.
6. As above.
7. Looking down from the bridge at Deception Pass. Late December.
8. Grasses underwater, Little Cranberry Lake. Mid-January.
9. Surf scoters on choppy water, Washington Park. Early January.
News stories of atmospheric rivers bringing high winds and extra-high tides became routine but the storms’ effects were anything but routine. One day during a wind event I drove down to Rosario Beach, a rocky crescent of shoreline in Deception Pass State Park. Only one other car was in the lot. The noise of waves pounding the beach was deafening as I carefully made my way down the path to the beach. I could barely stand up, the wind was so fierce. Gulls sliced the air, wooden debris was smashed to bits at my feet, and walls of water tossed huge logs back and forth in a furious maelstrom. When white objects flew past me I thought, what little birds are those? None of our small birds are white. Then I realized the missiles were big chunks of foam the wind picked up from the wavetops and flung high across the trail into the bay on the other side. I didn’t stay long that day but I was glad I witnessed nature grabbing the upper hand with such unconditional determination.
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10. Slideshow: A wind-driven king tide throws heavy logs around at Rosario Beach. Early January.
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11. Logs and a tangle of Bullwhip kelp thrown onto Bowman Bay. Early January.
12. Blades of kelp floating on a calmer day, Bowman Bay. Mid-January.
13. Bullwhip kelp wrapped around a log by a rambunctious tide. Bowman Bay. Mid-January.
14. Red-tailed hawk, Campbell Lake. Mid-January.
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Eventually, the snow was confined to a few speckled patches in shady spots and the lake ice shrank to a smooth necklace on the shoreline. Temperatures returned to normal and numb fingers became a memory. We’re back to drizzly rains giving way to clouds, occasional fog, and sunbreaks (the sun only shines all day in summer here so we enjoy our sun in small doses that we call sunbreaks). The days are getting longer, the holidays are over, and a new year has begun. The dark cloud of discouragement that overtook me toward the end of the year has lifted. In my gut, just as the birds and animals do, I sense the climb toward spring.
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15. Calmer days. A hilltop path through the woods. Photo made with intentional camera movement. Mid-January.
16. Old road on Ginnett Hill. Photograph made with slight intentional camera movement. Mid-January.
17. Fog on Lottie Bay. Mid-January.
18. Fog at Lighthouse Point. Mid-January.
19. Fog, Deception Pass Bridge from Lighthouse Point. Mid-January.
What’s the difference between a sculpture given pride of place in a museum and a tree trunk washed ashore after being sculpted by countless tides? One is human-made, one isn’t, the places where we see them are nothing alike, and we attach very different meanings to each object. You can probably think of other differences. But what if we untangle the threads that make up the answers and see what’s left? Perhaps finally, the object itself is all that remains, without any stories “about” it.
1. Amida Buddha; Japanese, circa 1130.
2. Driftwood log; 12/22/21.
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What I’m talking about is the idea of removing layers of received wisdom from the experience of seeing, the encounter with the subject. A few weeks ago I photographed a handful of objects at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Essentially my approach to looking at art objects isn’t so different from my approach to looking at objects anywhere. That afternoon I didn’t ponder who made the work, why it was made, or how it fits into history. Those are good questions, no doubt. But I prefer to encounter art more directly. After all, the objects I was looking at were free from expectations or ideas about me. So, to the degree my mind was open, maybe I could approach them on the same terms, without distracting preconceptions.
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3. Detail, Buddhist ceremonial banner.
4. Bullwhip kelp; 12/22/21.
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Objects appear in my visual field as form, light, color, texture, structure, pattern, and perhaps other qualifiers that haven’t occurred to me. I enjoy taking them in on those terms. When I roam the landscape it’s the same: form, light, color, and texture present themselves in various guises. There’s no need to include extraneous thoughts (not that I don’t torture myself trying to remember the names of plants). Staying with the physicality of objects, leaving concepts and projections out of the relationship, one can embody a fresh appreciation of the world.
One thing that’s enjoyable about a museum experience is that the objects on display are presented with enough space around them to allow the viewer to rest in the encounter with the subject, to give oneself over to it. Focusing on objects individually, one after the other in conscious appreciation of their particularity, our attention is honed and heightened. I’ve noticed that after I walk out the museum door the experience doesn’t stop. I find I’m attending to the makeup of everyday objects in a deeper way. I’m more engaged with everything. In fact, even in the museum I often see chairs, shadows, and other “ordinary” objects as aesthetic subjects in their own right. That’s one of the pleasures of museum-going.
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5. Near East ceramic vessel? (I didn’t check the label).
6. Valves and alarms on an industrial building; 12/24/21.
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You probably already figured out what I’m doing with the images here. Each pair of photographs includes an art object and an object I photographed outside of the museum context. Maybe the pairings can help point toward a taken-for-granted fact: valuing one object over another is a choice we make or don’t make. I’m not suggesting that the log, the kelp strands, or the industrial valves I photographed should be in a museum. I’m suggesting that whether we’re in a museum or in a desert, at home or on an elevator, it’s possible to meet the world with fresh eyes and directly experience beauty without extra layers of mental activity.
Some of these pairs may be more obviously connected than others, which I think is fine. The point is to suggest a kind of universality of perception. There’s no need to see objects in museums differently than you see the objects you photograph. Conversely, everyday objects really benefit from the close, special attention that we give museum artifacts.
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7. Calligraphy scroll, probably Japanese.
8. Angel-wing begonia flower buds; 10/08/21.
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9. Water-moon Guanyin; Chinese, 10th to late-13th century.
10. Old Bigleaf maple tree; 12/01/21.
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11. Detail, Chinese landscape painting, probably 18th century.
12. Detail, peeling bark on a Madrone tree; 01/18/21.
bluebrightly 