Sun Setting, Mill Cove 10-21-11-011

Cloud Front, Mill Cove Pond 10-21-11-020

Dusk, Mill Cove Pond 10-21-11-32

Fall Maple Leaves, Birch Point, Maine 10-20-11-005

Bay Water, Birch Point 10-16-11-022

Autumn Colors and Textures, Berry's Mill Road 10-17-11-059

Sunset, Mill Cove, Maine 2011-09-09-026

Sunset, Mill Cove, Maine 2011-09-09-029

Sunset, Mill Cove, Maine 2011-09-09-025

Driving home over the Mill Cove bridge, I saw this sunset, turned the car around, parked, snapped my camera onto my tripod, and watched this phenomenon play out for me. “F8 and be there” is the old saw, and this time I was. I’m not a sunset kind of photographer, but you don’t pass up something like this!

Saltwater marsh, Popham, Maine 09-05-11-025

Saltwater Marsh, Popham, Maine 09-05-11-083

Saltwater Marsh, Popham, Maine 09-05-11-037

The Cache, Saltwater Marsh, Popham, Maine 09-05-11-069

Pine Tree, Saltwater Marsh, Popham, Maine 09-05-11-042

Come with headrails, hardware,
And clear, tilt wand.
Flush-mounted, snap-in brackets.
ReadyMade aluminum grommets.
Top down, bottom up,
Right hand draw.
“Hook and loop, then hang.
No pull cords to tangle.
Length can always be shortened.”

Bamboo vanes,
Basswood slats,
Linen-look vinyl
Vertical blinds,
Embossed or lacquered.
Elegant faux-silk
Double shades with
Half-circle bottom and half-round arch
Offer “privacy while still allowing
Visibility.”

Banded savannah solar mesh,
Fringed or unfringed.
Pleated duck with scalloped hem.
“Add a subtle edge
With chic, jute trim.”

Almond,
Chestnut,
Ivory beige,
Mocha,
Honey,
Silver sage,
Antique linen,
Candle light,
Leaf gold,
Spun lace,
Olive night.

“Sheer-back roman blinds
Facing street-side
Allow light to
Softly
Penetrate.”

* * * * *

Your match flares
And in that second
All your Fears and Doubts
Have scuttled into the depths of the
Sudden, looming shadows.

There They lurk
Skulking, mocking, defiantly baring
Unseen pointed teeth
Holding their breath
Still as death

As if they never even existed.

.

* * * * *

This overcast weather is great for my photography. Much of my landscape work is characterized by textures and subtle colors which only emerge in such indirect light. Cloudy weather is the most useful of indirect light because it affects the whole viewable world, and for substantial amounts of time. It gives me free play. (A thin wash of high clouds is another sort of indirect light, much rarer, but colors on the ground pop in most thrilling and unexpected ways. And before sunrise, and, better, after sunset on clear days. You have to choose your spots. In desert country I usually chose my photo trips for spring and fall, partly because there was great likelihood of stormy weather then. )

But this weather baffled me. Could rainy weather be more common here in New Mexico/Arizona than just to the north, in Utah in July?

Two afternoons into my drive, when I was stopped by a road crew working on the highway over the Malpais lava field in east-central New Mexico, a great flotilla of clouds was gathering overhead and farther west, where I was headed, heavy and dark again. Rain drops, fat as bumblebees, started splatting on my windshield. I waved the local flagman over.

“Does it often rain here this time of year?”

“No,” he said, “In fact, this is our first rain since April.”

It seemed to be dogging me. That day, it continued on and off through the afternoon and night.

Now, however, two days later, in the Coal Mine Canyon area, the sky was spotless. The heat was well over a hundred in this arid, forbidding landscape. This weather was what I had expected all along.

Phippsburg strand,with flag on pier

Late afternoon, instead of heading into Bath to  swim at the Y, I thought there was the chance for great photographs: the rain, though drenching at times, was fairly sporadic, and uncertain weather is irresistible to me. After 20 minutes of driving and scouting through a torrential onslaught, I gave up. This was not fun. Back at the Phippsburg Store, though, I felt the rain easing off, and on the spur of the moment, I turned onto the Parker Head road to a public turn-off nearby, the site of the few remains of a major shipbuilding yard from the 19th Century. Over two hours, the light and motifs were shifting in 360 degrees every moment. Mosquitoes were fierce, but I didn’t even have time to get mad. They bit and I’d just brush them away over and over and over.

Afterwards, I was exhilarated. I certainly had every opportunity to make fine images. It’s my own damn fault if I didn’t get them!

Phippsburg, Clouds Roiling, Sun Breaking, Near Lighthouse

Phippsburg, Dinghy and Buoys, Muted Blue, Yellow, Orange

Phippsburg, Sun Breaking Onto Pier Seaweed

Phippsburg, Sun Breaking North, with Heron

Phippsburg, House and Steeple

Phippsburg, Pilings from 19th-Cent Shipyard

Phippsburg, Blue & White Dinghy on Pier, Dusk

1st Visit Coal Mine Canyon

Preface:  After I had left Santa Fe four days earlier, I drove a meandering route back to my home in Salt Lake to see some new country.  Since it was early July, to my surprise, every day  filled with clouds and even periods of rain. I expected weather like Utah in July, which is filled with pitiless, relentless sun.

This overcast weather was great for my photography. Much of my landscape work is characterized by textures and subtle colors which only emerge in such indirect light.

But this weather baffled me. Could rainy weather be more common here in New Mexico and Arizona in July?

Two afternoons into my drive, when I was stopped by a road crew working on the highway over the Malpais lava field in east-central New Mexico, a great flotilla of clouds was gathering, heavy and dark again. Rain drops, fat as bumblebees, started splatting on my windshield. I waved the local flagman over.

“Does it often rain here?”

“No,” he said, “This is our first rain since April.”

Rain seemed to be dogging me. That day, it continued on and off through the afternoon and night.

Now, however, two days later, in the Coal Mine Canyon area, the sky was spotless. The heat was well over a hundred in this arid, forbidding landscape. This weather was more what I had expected all along.

After lunch I decided to walk around with my camera in spite of the blasting light, for a few minutes, and see what this remarkable country might offer me another time. As I explored a bit and started to get turned on by what I was finding, a thin wash of high clouds drifted over. Soon I did take a few tentative photographs after all.  As I began to get more serious, the clouds thickened a bit. I soon forgot about clouds, except for the great light I was working in. I photographed for hours.

When I’d finally had my fill (which is rare enough), it was late afternoon. I hiked back to my truck. As I put my gear away and drove back up to the highway, I noticed the cloud cover meanwhile had entirely disappeared.

It had been there when I needed it. When I was done, it was gone. Spooky.

(Over the years since, I have always paid close attention to the presence of clouds when I want to shoot. My experience is that, in the desert, perhaps 80% of the time I get what I need, very often in the face of continued TV weather predictions saying directly otherwise.  More later.)

A few Navajo hogans and trailers tucked insignificantly in the margins of the rock and sand landscape.

“Now, here’s luck!” I found a graded, dirt road, headed straight north. It even had a Navajo Nation route sign.

In a few minutes the road was nothing but a sandy track, perching along a ridge with cliffs falling away to either side. The tops of  pinnacles on either side plunged a hundred feet to the desert floors. They were white–loose sandstone and chalk–streaked with a couple red and lavender-pink layers. Near the top, one thin black seam of coal ran horizontally through it all.

Mid-day, 105 degrees, no shade, a lot of sand. Just breathing in sered my nostrils. Although the scene around me was indeed remarkable, the full-bore, overhead sun washed out any hope of making photographs now. I sat on my driver’s side seat, door open, in the scant shade of my truck, munching a sandwich and wondering if I would ever return to this place.

Eight or ten yards on the ground across from me, I saw a strange phenomenon I never saw before or since. A foot above the ground, rising another two or three feet was a sort of wavering flame of air. As I ate I considered it. It seemed a natural phenomenon, but unlike any dust devil: it stayed rooted to its spot, its air was clear and clean, it was orders of magnitude too small. There seemed to be no gap or gash in the ground under it that might be emitting gases.

After finishing my lunch, and it appearing no different, like so many mysteries, I got used to it. I assumed it was harmless, and paid it no more attention.

Recently, all these years later, during a shamanic journey, which is for me entering a slightly dreamlike state of consciousness which can help me deal with my current illness, I was taken quite unexpectedly to this wavering flame of air.

When I want to know something during a shamanic journey, I ask a question just to the front of my left ear, and I always get an answer, usually crisply and without the slightest hesitation. The criteria I judge its responses by are 1) does it give insight into the matter, and 2) (a bonus) is it unexpected. In other words, am I making this up myself?

I asked what this flame of air was.

“It’s a boundary spirit.”

Well, that was unexpected, to say the least. I know now, what I did not know on this first visit to the Coal Mine Canyon area, that the boundary between the Navajo and Hopi lands here was a longstanding and ongoing dispute. So this answer made a strange sense. Not that I’d ever heard of a “boundary spirit.”

So I asked, “Oh, you mean so that the Hopi and Navajo don’t get in each others’ hair, out here?”

“No. You misunderstand me. The boundary spirit is here to diffuse the negative energy here, so that there will be no need for a boundary.”

For what it’s worth.

I also picked up on my own that the boundary spirit indeed has a kind of sentience, rather like the sentience imputed to be in certain crystals.