reassured by spring flowers and a creek

post #382
      It's sort of spring! This weekend I have been to where there were wildflowers everywhere. I was at Pine Mountain Settlement School, in Harlan County, in southeastern Kentucky. We had lovely weather on Saturday, with mostly intermittent rain on Sunday (today). In any case, it was reassuring, to say the least, to have redbud trees in bloom, some tint of green on trees, and a canopy of early wildflowers. It took me around four hours to drive home this afternoon, heading as close as I could to the way a crow flies. It never fails that I find driving through eastern Kentucky fascinating and often beautiful. However, it's hard to find places along the way to stop for photo taking. Probably a good thing. I might otherwise not yet be home....
        I wasn't able to make many photos, but here are the few I did have time for:

star chickweed

The Chapel at Pine Mountain Settlement School, with an organ!

Behind the chapel is a wooded area with all kinds of treasures....

trillium (not my best photo but included becase it's my only one from yesterday)

With more time to work, I could have shown better how this feels like a carpet of flowers.

These trillium are blooming atop a large rock.  I love this habit of theirs.  We have some similar patches here as well.  I need to go check on them soon.  (Harlan County is farther south than we are up here.)

big, brave, beaten up tree but still standing

I always like to stand on the little walking path bridge that goes over this creek. For me the creek of a place is like an anchor.

           Creeks also make me think of creek beds, and then tonight I think of my own bed... .Long day, but worth it. I can always hope that some year I will be able to go down there just to take photographs, during April. But then I would miss the fun of being around a fire pit, with kids and marshmellows and a guitar and a ukelele and the singing of vintage songs and current songs, and the such. I hope everyone has had some beauty this weekend, though it is not yet spring everywhere, at least not in the United States.
 

breaking for spring

post #380
         This time by "spring break" I mean that I'm taking a break from posts featuring my note cards.  Instead, today, I am posting the photos I made in mid March, mostly ones down by the creek. In the time I had I couldn't find any early blooms, even though it was technically spring! However, there are always things to see, no matter what the calendar shows.

         First, to set the scene and to go with last week's duo, here are additional winter photos, also taken in March:

early morning clarity on the 21st

Three days later, where's the driveway this time?!?

blanketed, in the back, nearby the barn

 Celebrating a day without rain, snow or whatever by walking in the woods:

winter feast collections

evidence that the rattlesnake plantain survived the winter, as always. This phrase I lifted from the internet:
This evergreen orchid is a perennial rhizomatous herb of the forest floor. It's an ORCHID! I didn't know!

Later I saw another grouping, this time with the stem left from 2017.  I tried to focus the photo to be mostly on the stem so that it could be seen better.  Even with all the walking that happens on the path to the waterfall, these common plants seem to thrive. In fact, I wonder if we spread them by chance with our walking....

These two photos show the creek when it joins another, all on the way to the waterfalls. I was standing in the same spot for both photos, about to cross over the creek below to follow the path.

All kinds of moss are along the bank on the non-stream side of the path.

And of course there is the wonder of clear water flowing, in the creek.

I wish that all creeks could be so pristine and safe, for the sake of wildlife and for the sake of human beings who live on this planet. I am still shocked that one of first thing negated by the new administration in D.C. was the stream saver bill, which took years of work to get in place, which made common sense, and which would make such a difference in the health of people who happen to live near where mining happens.  Actually, since we all live downstream, the new regulation would have helped generations of families who want to make Appalachia and Kentucky a better place in which to live and work.  I think about this every time I see this little "beginner stream" carrying clean water out into the wider world.

I discovered this collection of treasures on the steep hillside near the first waterfall, in the base of a very tall tree. I would have suspected little creatures at work, but when I asked my granddaughter later about what I found, she told me she had indeed done it! I loved finding it.

And I saw this second sighting on the way back, on the path. As I often say, you just never know.

Am writing this on April 1, so I am looking forward to a month of flowers and surprises. Since moving to Kentucky 45 years ago, April has become my favorite month; it's so beautiful. These photos definitely benefit from being seen larger -- try the click on one, see them all line up in order, and then find the one(s) you want.  

exploring the cliffs and creeks nearby in eastern Kentucky

post #309
       I'm back! I'm moved! I'm far from settled in! But with the fall leaves becoming sparser and sparser we all decided to go for a bit of a drive this morning to see how things were doing on Carter Ford, just a few miles away and down a long narrow dirt road. ("Down" and "narrow" are the operative words....) There we found actual water in the creek, some leaves still on most trees, and the rhododendron bushes looking beautiful even without their July blooms. So now, to continue the "not yet unpacking" motive of the day, here is my post with some of the informal photos I took this very morning!

The straight up to the sky tree growth is very typical in our Appalachian forests.

We thought this was a playful Hallowe'en mask in the making!

This is the "we."

Here is enough water to make a refection. 

This other reflection intrigued me -- it looks so seamless.

mossy rocks all along the banks

and fish swimming in circles, perhaps because there is nowhere to go? We think these are trout.

With more time I might have made a better photo from this, but I love this image even so.

                                                            *******************                                                                  
      This year, of course, is also the shock of a disheartening presidential election -- an unnecessarily rough and alienating undertaking this time around. I feel I must comment on how I admire Hillary Clinton for the grace under pressure she has demonstrated when faced with an opponent who only knows name calling and rudeness and who contradicts himself to the point of telling constant lies. His narcissism is more than a personality trait. It seems like a fullblown narcissistic personality disorder, and I feel this is very dangerous and destabilizing for someone who is supposed to be a leader -- which requires being a responsible and visionary human being, NOT a vindictive and fearmongering one.

       I know we are spoiled after eight years of a White House without scandal, and we forget how most families treated like the Obamas have been would have caved by now. They have not. They deserve our sincere appreciation, at the very least, for their hard work and steadiness. I think history will treat them very well.

      None of these candidates is perfect, and I am not trying to say my way is the right way or the only way. But I would feel less than an active citizen of this remarkable ongoing experiement that is the United States if I did not speak my mind. What happens on election day is always important, even if we mistakenly take voting for granted. This year it feels like that in addition to choosing a candidate we are being required to show our support for our very own democracy!! (Voting for someone who does not have a chance of winning is the same, to me, as throwing your vote away. It is like being a sore loser. Why not instead decide to begin to take part in local politics and make needed changes from the ground up?)  It takes work by all of us to make our democracy work. Please do vote. Do your part.

       note: I wrote all this for two people I care about. One is my young friend J. who is convinced that Hillary sent people to die in a war that she initiated. He read this somewhere on the internet. Of course this is not true, since she was only a Senator when the war in Iraq was declared.  She did not have powers that are the president's. You don't want to believe me on this, J., but you are smart and one day you will figure out there actually are no simple answers or solutions, and there are people willing to exploit us citizens on their way to power. What is important is for each of us to practice, practice, practice using our brain to think for ourselves. Why else do we have brains?? Go for it!!
        The other person this is for is my mother, who died in 2008 the day Obama was elected. She was 92 and always voted, but that year, for health reasons, she had had to vote absentee, in New Hampshire. However, she could never fully believe that her vote would count if she died before the election.  My sister Robin was there the night before and that election day morning, and she decided to tell my mother, at 8 a.m., "Ma, isn't it great that Obama got elected!"  Our mother died an hour later; we feel she felt permission to do so.

still more note cards, chapter 4: some favorites!

post #265
       It may be a New Year, but I have not yet finished sharing some of my cards. I have been saving a few more favorites for this post, chapter 4, as a way to celebrate bringing good things forward into a new year. I am not necessarily a fan of clean slates and resolutions.
      Many of the images are chosen for their titles.  When I showed the first one to a friend and neighbor -- in the country sense -- he said "Oh, groundhogs boiling coffee." What? Where did that come from?? I loved the expression, and I trusted that he wasn't making it up on the spot, though he could have. Even so, I did ask around to find out if others knew that expession as well. Many did! I felt enriched by learning such an evocative phrase through one of my photos.

        This next image happens every spring. These steps are located halfway between my home and "town" so I never forget them. I even remember the house that used to sit on the top of the hill and watched it be left alone and then taken down a few years later.
       I talked over possible titles with my friend George Ella, and she came up with "legacy," one word that describes so much. Yes!

      The power of the words is somewhat different for the following photo of some other friends and neighbors. The title "stripping tobacco" can't really describe the poignancy of what is happening. This job was something they had been doing together every December for ages; this year (2010) was the last year. The end. No more tobacco. I have always been grateful to them for letting me know their plan -- and grateful the counter didn't collapse when I stood on it to take the photo!

Hard to explain, but this next image is one I imagine I love for personal reasons. It is our creek, it is spring, I got the greens and the water to look like they really do look, and it doesn't look like this every day. But I was there for this day. I call it, simply, our creek in spring, or sometimes just spring creek.  Since I handwrite my titles on each card, I don't always have to say the same thing. I can therefore forget and redo or simply revise as I go along, an advantage of the extra work hand writing the titles takes.  

field, fog, and fence

      These two mourning doves never fail to fascinate, even though I made this photo with a slide early in my career when I was the photo-illustrator for George Ella's Counting on the Woods (DK Ink, 1998).  For the card's title, I use the words from the page they are on in the book: two birds, daybreak's words. I took it out my bedroom window, on a cloudy day (of which there were many during that long, cool spring). Doves, bless their hearts, actually LIKE to hang out together; I needed birds that would do that. Again, thank you, George Ella.

       There is not time to show all my cards, but I can't neglect to show the next two, both requiring the cooperation of animals. In one, showing off helped, and, in the other, take a look at the ears.  The showing off image is one of my most well known. It also sells well as a card.

Big Wheel

ear-winking mule

      For those of you who like the photos from other places, my most popular one is this street scene in Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. I have used many variations in the title, since I am never sure how much information to give without detracting from the image itself. If anyone wants to give title making a try, please feel free to let me know one for this image. Click on Comment, and sign in as Anonymous. That usually works. Thanks! (Now that I think of it, maybe simply "hanging in England" will work?)

 

        As soon as possible, I will add some samples of my cards with their colored paper choice.  I meant to do it weeks ago, though I have not yet done so. But for now I need to take a break from this fun time I give myself every week and do some actual real-life stuff. "Busy Day."
 

water, flowing and clear and needing protection

post #241
         Try to imagine owning a piece of property where a creek starts, emerges, one that joins up with three other creeks along its way before going over several water falls and only then leaving the spot on this earth which we've "owned" for over 45 years.  The hills on this place are like a protective circle around us, with the creek located through the middle of it all and nourished by run-off through healthy trees whose roots hold the hillsides.  We are cradled by this hollow, as it is called in Appalachia.  We are rich in our connection to the earth even if, ironically, our property's "value" is not that much.
         I have written in other places about the privilege of living on these 90 acres.  And about the job of stewardship. In this day and age even our small bit of the earth requires care as well as good fortune so that the woods don't burn down, that the Ashland Oil pipeline doesn't leak -- it is on our property but runs along the edge by the road -- and that invasive plants don't choke out the native ones that work more in harmony with the whole.  
       There is also the huge problem of it all being taken for granted. During a recent conversation in a car with three very smart local teens, it turned out that none of them knew the name of the dogwood tree then in bloom throughout the woods and along the road we were driving on!  Now they know the name.
        This is my photography blog, however, so it's time for one of the things I can do: share the love in a visual way. I decided to try to give a brief sense of the creek on its journey.  Several of the photos have already been on my blog over the last five years, but, hey, what is life anyway except seeing things with new eyes as we go along!!
        

a joining on our place

another joining, heading downstream

farther along

THE ROCK IN THE CENTER IS WHERE I WAS SITTING SO I COULD USE MY BODY TO MAKE LIKE A TRIPOD. It always amuses me that viewers are rarely curious about where I was when I made the photo.

the creek in full force from spring rains

the same creek, later in the spring, during another year

the creek during a dry spell, so strange to hear no noise from running water

same view, a bit closer to the tree, summertime

the second waterfall

   I also made a brief video, just with my iPhone, that goes for 30 seconds.  Water flowing, giving life.  The still shots from this same location are shown above. It had been raining a lot, so the creek edges are more washed over than usual.  I hope you have time to take a look.  (Note: I finally figured out how to embed a vimeo video! I am thankful to be on good terms with my close companion "trial and error.")


clear Kentucky creek from Ann W. Olson on Vimeo.
 
                                           


       I am not the only one grateful to feel the life force a particular piece of land provides.  It makes me ache for the families whose long held pieces of land are being abused by the extraction economy that prevails in so many places in the mountains.  The most recent outcries against more stingent regulations for keeping streams clear simply frost me.  As KFTC (Kentuckians for the Commonwealth) and other groups have been saying all along, we ALL live downstream and we SHOULD care deeply about how our water starts out. 
        With that work in mind, I am ending with a video of the song "Black Water", written by Jean Ritchie.  Jean died recently at age 92, but she spoke up and sang out in her chrystal clear voice for many years, a Kentucky treasure. I copied this video from a piece by writer Silas House that he posted on his FB page.    JEAN RITCHIE SONG: BLACK WATER