Category: Photography

Vertigo

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 23, 2003

Today was cold but clear and I had to get out of the house or implode. Exploring around at the Missouri State Parks site I discovered a park not far from my home that I hadn’t been to before — Castlewood State Park. It was only 20 minutes away, 30 if I obeyed the speed limit, and it promised wonderful views of the Meramec.

During the drive I thought about this last week, and it seemed as if it was a tough week, or at least, it felt like a tough week. Do you know that feeling you get when it’s Saturday and you wake up feeling emotionally evaporated? I felt that way yesterday, and it was only Friday. I needed a walk, but not on paved roads and elegant little paths — I wanted to push myself to the limit.

(Of course, my current limit isn’t much beyond elegant little paths these days. But I wanted to find a new limit.)

After parking at Castlewood, I found the trailhead and looked up the hill and knew I’d found what I was seeking.

About half way up, tired from both the sudden steep climb and trying to keep footing on dead leaves layered over loose shale and wettish clay, I stopped by the side of the road to see if I was truly having a heart attack, or if I just needed a breather. However, instead of standing there panting my life away, I fooled around with my camera, taking pictures of other hikers and trail bikers. “See”, my actions told the people passing by. “I’m not standing here because I’m out of shape and any second I’m going to keel over in exhaustion. I’m a photographer, taking photos. And my face is always this red.”

I never knew how handy it was to have a camera with you until I used it for a prop during my uphill breaks today. However, if I had carried my full photographic gear instead of just my little digital, I’d be dead now and you’d all be fussing with your blogrolls, removing my link.

There’s time to think on a hike like this and my thoughts soon turned to the topic most on my mind lately, my impulsiveness and my temper — my passion, as the kind would call it. Yes, I also thought about weblogging, and the people I’ve met weblogging, too; both friends and foes, though at times, I’m not sure which is which. I thought about the discussion this week here and over at Misbehaving, by Gina and others, and how the topic was on being woman and invisible but the conversation ended up focusing on ‘look at me’ men.

We are too easily baited, too easily derailed, no, I am too easily derailed, slipping on these discussions as easily as I slipped on the rocks today. A mistake we/I make is to be defensive about our/my writing. If we believe what we write, we let it stand on its own — we don’t have to justify it, we don’t have to defend it, we don’t even have to debate it unless it gives us satisfaction and enriches the conversation. When we respond to criticism with ‘I meant to say…’, and it’s not true because we really did say what we wanted to say, then we’ve lost the high ground. No matter how outrageous or provoking the writing, the only one who can truly prove it false is the writer.

On the other hand, though, sometimes the high moral ground is lonely, and you think to yourself, “Pick your battles”, because it would be good to have others there fighting with you. The risk with this is that at some point you may find you’re no longer the one doing the picking and your high moral ground is reduced to a pebble in the ground that wouldn’t trip even the ungainly such as myself. What a conflict: we want to speak what we perceive is ‘the truth’, but we want to please. Rarely do the two go hand in hand.

These were the thoughts on my mind as I pushed my way uphill, cheeks billowing like a blowfish, forcing thoughts out between great gulps of air. When I reached the top I had to push all these thoughts aside and focus on the trail. It led along a bluff 250 feet above the river floor, and though the leaves were gone and the ground dry, the rocks were numerous and I had to watch my footing because there was little room for error. Particularly since this trail was literally at the bluff’s edge at times, and I suffer from vertigo.

Remember those scenes in that great Hitchcock movie, “Vertigo”, when Jimmy Stewart would be overcome with his fear of heights? That spinning that would kind of make you feel sick? Unlike Jimmy, my vertigo isn’t crippling, though I cannot for the life of me walk to the edge of a cliff. I can and will walk along a bluff, but I have to push myself just to go out onto an outcropping.

When I reached my first outcropping and saw the view, I had to take some pics. I found a tree to lean against because when I would look through the viewfinder, I would get dizzy and start to lean forward, and slip about. But this bluff was just the first of many; there was one outcropping after another, each with a view better than the one before, and I found that my vertigo actually got a bit less with each occurrence. I started out leaning against a tree, but towards the end of the trip, I could actually push myself out to within a couple of feet of the edge and look down at a passing train below and snap one quick shot, feeling enormously pleased with myself.

(Before grasping behind me for something secure to hold on to because I was frozen to the spot, and ended up grabbing this poor little twig in the dirt and almost mauling it out of the ground just to get back on to the path.)

The wind was gusting today, at times, and at the top, looking down at river below and feeling the sun and experiencing the beauty, I’m glad I did push myself to hike today, though my foot is paying for it tonight. Every time you push yourself beyond your edge, you’ve created a new edge, and how can you not feel good about that?

I left my hike for later in the day, as I usually do, and there were few people about when I stood at my last bluff and watched the sun starting to set. I hiked alone and though sometimes I wish I had someone to turn to and say, “Isn’t it marvelous”, I’ll still hike, though I may choose different paths.

I write as I hike, alone, and not always looking for the easiest path, or the one most comfortable and secure. When I am finished though — walk or words — I feel good, though this is a poor word to use to describe the experience. I also feel lonely at times, too, like today while still feeling the glow from going that close to the edge, but wishing I had a hand to hold on to instead of that poor little twig.

Same with my writing — I wish with all my heart that I could write of lightsome things and beautiful dreams and could find my way into all your minds and hearts and pull your secret words out and publish them here so that you’ll all universally love me. Then my words would never have to sit here on this page, alone. Perhaps, like my hikes, what I need is to find a different path.

It is close to the end of this story, and the end of my hike. I was near the end of the bluff and tired, very tired. A rule of hiking is always go hard going up, easy coming down. What this means is to climb up the toughest part of the trail, because you have better balance and you use your stronger muscles when you walk uphill. You want to save the easiest part of a trail for descent, because descent isn’t much more than a controlled fall.

I wasn’t sure what I’d find to take me down hill at the end of the bluff, but I was fairly sure it would be the easier walk because of the location of the trail head where I started. And I was right, and pleasantly surprised to find a set of wooden steps zigzagging all the way down to the bottom. Best of all, I could use the guardrails on the sides of steps and use my arms to bear some of the weight because at this point I was limping rather distinctly.

The guardrails were worn smooth after years of helping other walkers climb up or down, and at the end was a tunnel under the tracks to the path along the river. When I got to the bottom, I met a party of mothers and daughters out for a walk who obviously were not familiar with the path and had started from the opposite direction. As they were about to start climbing the steps I called out asking if they were familiar with the path, but they didn’t hear me, chatting among themselves. I thought to warn them of what lay ahead, but sometimes people just have to find these things out themselves.

Besides, they had hands to hold at the top if they got tired.

The Insignificance of small beings

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 21, 2003

Before the cold rolled in I took my belated trip to Elephant Rocks today. I was able to avoid the gauntlet of confederate flags along the way by looking at a map and discovering that the road I take to one of the parks I visit frequently is the same road that ultimately leads to Elephant Rocks, but coming from the opposite direction. So I came in the back door.

Near the town of De Soto, I noticed an older woman walking along the side of the road and I stopped to offer her a lift. She was heading home after visiting an herbal shop in town, and her arms were full of bags of herbs.

She was a fascinating woman, probably about 60 or so, currently on disability because of cancer of the breast and diabetes and various other ailments. Born and bred in Missouri and lived most of her life along that stretch of road so she was able to give me the feel of the place — not the statistics or the raw facts. The feel. What the principal did when the last tornado hit the school, or that the owner of the place we just went past was forced to clean up after the last storm but the damage wasn’t his fault, why did the government make him clean it up?

My passenger was religious, which didn’t surprise me. Religion is not an intellectual exercise in Missouri, it’s as much a part of the countryside as the rocks I was driving to see today. What did surprise me, though, was the deep acceptance and trust in God she felt. She had cancer, and from all indications, terminal cancer, but she was healthy and happy and upbeat, hitchhiking into town to get her herbs, taking her homeopathic remedies and trusting to God to do the rest. And if God decided to take her home, well, she’d be content with that too.

“Why worry”, she said. “Worry just makes you look old.”

She pointed out the damage along the side of the road from a bad set of tornadoes that hit this spring. Stands of of trees were literally twisted off their roots, or picked up and tossed through the air like a twig. You could see the path of damage clearly as it followed along the highway, sometimes crossing it to hit the other side. I asked her if anyone she knew had been hurt and she said, no, God was protecting over them.

(When I got home, I looked the storm up and sure enough, the tornadoes killed people all around, but it left De Soto residents unharmed. An ambulance driver in the district remarked on this to reporters, saying, “It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”)

The rest of the drive after dropping my passenger off was beautiful, one of those almost perfect late fall days with sunlight breaking through dark clouds to frame this quaint old farm house, or that shaggy dirty white bull wading in a creek. I missed the stories though, the glimpse into the people I only know through my car window driving past.

There were quite a few tourists at Elephant Rock considering a storm was rolling in. However, the area is large enough that you can have space to yourself, so for the most part, I walked among the rocks alone, stopping at one point to eat my favorite cheddar and bread-n-butter pickle sandwich.

Elephant Rocks, the park, the experience, how to describe it. From the State Park description comes the following:

Imagine giant granite rocks standing end-to-end like a train of circus elephants. That’s what you’ll see at Elephant Rocks State Park. About 1.5 billion years ago, hot magma cooled forming coarsely crystalline red granite, which later weathered into huge, rounded boulders. Standing atop a granite outcrop, one of the largest elephant rocks, Dumbo, tops the scales at a whopping 680 tons!

Visitors to Elephant Rocks State Park can easily view the granite boulders from the one-mile Braille Trail, designed to accommodate people with visual or physical disabilities. The trail passes by a quarry pond, which now supports a variety of animal life. A short spur off of the trail takes visitors to the top of the granite outcrop, where they can explore the maze of giant elephant rocks.

At first the boulders are small and manageable — they may weight several tons but they are shorter than you and you don’t feel the age as much. One of the rock formations that I called The Worm had two core sample drill holes made oh, a hundred and fifty years or so ago when they were testing to see the quality of the granite.

The rock pile, if this word could possibly provide you a feel for what its like, has little trails all over and people can climb the rocks, and do, especially the younger kids. Being a little older, and a little more cautious, not to mention weighed down with my usual photographic paraphernalia, I didn’t frisk about like a young mountain goat. But I did explore most of the paths, include the wonderfully named “Fat Man’s Squeeze”.

I can say now, unequivocally, that I do not have a fat man’s build. However, I did have to suck in my chest, as it were, one time to get through an opening.

squeeze

According to the guide:

Molten rock, called magma, accumulated deep below the earth’s surface. The magma slowly cooled, forming red granite rock. As the weight of the overlying rock was removed by erosion, horizontal and vertical cracks developed, fracturing the massive granite into huge, angular blocks. Water permeated down through the fractures, and groundwater rounded the edges and corners of the blocks while still underground, forming giant rounded masses. Erosion eventually removed the disintegrated material from along the fractures, and exposed these boulders at the earth’s surface.

It was when you round a corner and look up and see the big rocks, the rocks that led to the name of the park that you’re left breathless. The Elephant Rock, prosaically named “Dumbo” sits on top of a knoll isolated from the other rocks and framed by the valley and mountains beyond.

Inscribed into Dumbo’s surface are the names and dates from the quarry workers over the years, including one from a guy called Murray in 1885. Nothing more than faint irritations by insignificant beasts happening in a split second of time.

The rocks towered over me, with a size that photos can’t capture without sticking some passing kid next to it for comparison, and don’t think I wasn’t considering it. But it still wouldn’t have conveyed the feel of the big rock.

I may think I am tall, and that I am impressive standing there shoulders back and head high, silhouetted against the clouds; but the rock was 27 feet tall and 35 feet long, and as old as earth. I am just that half seen shadow that is past before it’s even begun.

People were all about that rock. A tiny beagle walked by a boy with bright blue hair managed to get itself stuck in a crevice it was exploring. The boy finally managed to free it, calling it “dumb dog” all the time, but the puppy didn’t seem to mind if his wagging tail was any indication.

A woman about my age, maybe a little younger, accompanied by husband and daughter started a conversation with me, telling me about the rocks along the coast of Rhode Island where she was from and how much they reminded her of these big rocks. She asked if the formations were the result of the quarry operation and I said, no, that she was looking at a rock that was formed a billion years ago from the primal matter that makes up the Earth. She looked at me and then at the rock and then at me and said, “Really?”

Yup.

She ran over to her husband and daughter and started telling them about what I said, but he just looked at her and asked if she wanted to go look at the quarry now, and her daughter walked away and she stopped talking and followed them, bright yellow sweater forming a vivid constrast to the pink of the granite.

The weather got cold enough and the clouds stormy enough that most people were chased away and I was finally alone on that knoll high above the world. I placed my hand on Dumbo’s surprisingly warm surface and just stood there, for the longest time, thinking thoughts you’ll never read. Then I left.

On the way home I again passed the tornado path and it really was uncanny how many trees were down around homes, but not on the homes themselves. I kept looking for homes being repaired, fresh roof tiles and siding, new glass. But all I saw was old houses, rusty mobile homes and a whole lot of downed trees. Maybe my passenger was right and there was a God protecting them. She was serenely confident this was the answer; that God looked down and saw the people of De Soto and said, not today.

That must be what faith gives you — a feeling like you’re carrying a little bit of that rock with you, all the time.

outdoors Photography

Challenge removed

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 20, 2003

I was very psyched about the hikes today so you can imagine that I was a bit disappointed to get to the park and find all the trails closed. More than closed – one of the trails I’d planned on taking today was totally gone. The good weather today lured me into forgetting that riverside hikes should be traversed in the dead of winter, when the cold freezes the ground and stabilizes it. One should definitely avoid riverside hikes after record levels of rain.

However, the trip wasn’t a waste. The drive was nice and I kicked around the trail heads a bit. On the way back I finally stopped by a covered bridge I’d seen a sign for before. It was a pretty solid piece of wood, and I wasn’t that impressed with it – until I read the plaque that it had been built in 1872.

I’d do a color photo, but the bridge looks too much like a highway department’s maintenance shed. I’m sorry, I know I lack romance, but I’m not one for covered bridges. It’s a bridge, it’s a building, and I’m incapable of conjuring up the sounds of horse hooves ringing on hard wood, or to visualize lasses in white crinoline on their way to market day. I looked for a poem that would invoke a deeper appreciation of covered bridges, but all the ones I found were as insipid as that foolish book and movie, The Bridges of Madison County.

Leave it to B & W that if it can’t improve the shot, will at least bring out the age of the subject.

As I drove back, I could see that the rivers were high, higher than I’d seen before. On a hunch I stopped by my favorite Meramec River location to find that the water was actually up to the top of the cliff I normally climb down. It was running fast, too, with much larger debris than normal, including several trees.

Today the temperature rose to 75F, sunny with a warm wind. We’ll have snow on Monday. Welcome to St. Louis.

Just Shelley Photography

Fraud, Fiction, and Flaws

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 16, 2003

Recovered story. I no longer have the collection, but you can see photos of what once was.

I am a poor collector. All other collectors know the name and origin of their rocks and crystals. Show a spark of curiosity and you’ll also here anecdotal material, history, and even industrial uses of base mineral.

I had the best of intentions when I started my collection. When I’d purchase a new crystal I would ask its pedigree, and diligently record it in my rock ledger. However, over time as the collection grew in relation to my time, I would delay writing down the information until all I could barely remember was the minerals name, and perhaps where it came from.

For a few of my crystals, I don’t even have that. Luckily though, I would usually stumble across the name somewhere and it would trigger my memory and I would say to myself, “Of course!”. For instance, a green crystal, a lovely green crystal. I couldn’t remember the name at all. However, while visiting the well known mineral photographer, Scovil’s, web web site to once again look at and admire his photographs of minerals, I discovered the name of the green mystery mineral. It’s Vivianite.

/photos/viv1.jpg

It’s not a perfect sample, but at least it’s not blackened as so many Vivianite samples are with exposure to light (she says as she looks at her sample, sitting in the sun). Obvious holes in the matrix show where better crystals have been pried loose, probably to be sold separately. Personally, I think imperfections in the piece adds to its character.

I have always collected based on beauty and character rather than value and perfection. Because of my undisciplined approach, my collection is interesting rather than profound. That’s not to say that the collection isn’t worth money — sometimes beauty and character do go hand in hand with monetary worth, as demonstrated with this virtually flawless rhodochrosite.

Still, there are a few of my samples I shouldn’t include in the collection photos because they’re obvious fakes, or novelty items and of no serious value. When you show your collection, you don’t show these rocks. You certainly don’t photograph them.

Mineral collectors will only show you their good pieces, the ones they’re most proud of. However, if you look into their dark corners and hidden drawers, you’ll find their bits of fraud, fiction, and flaws — samples they think about tossing some day, but they won’t. The imperfect pieces, the mistakes, and the fakes add life to a collection. They add history. They make a collection interesting.

For instance, the photo below is of bismuth, which is normally a featureless blobby white/grey mineral. However, put it into a centrifuge, spin it at fast speeds and inject a little oxygen, and viola — you have a beautiful bit of color. No value to it, but I like my eccentric no value pieces. This particular one reminds me of an Escher drawing. You can also use it as a pencil — now, how handy is that?

I have a few frauds, too. My favorite is a hand-sized rock with quartz and appetite crystals in it. I have no doubt about the nature and quality of crystals, but the sample itself is an obvious fraud. I knew it was a fraud when I bought it. I still bought it, and therein lies the value of the rock.

At an outdoor mineral show consisting of tents set up in the parking lot around a rather seedy motel in Tucson, Arizona, I came across one table filled with yellow-green appetite crystals from Mexico. Most were still attached to their rust-red matrix, making the pieces quite pretty overall.

I tried to effect a knowing attitude, but I swear, I must have had rube tatooed on my forehead. The Dealer, an older man who was very gallant to me and kind to my niece (not all that common among the tents if you’re not buying in bulk), sized me up, came to some kind of internal decision, and brought a rock from underneath his table for me to look at — a hand sized piece with a couple of relatively nice appetite crystals in it.

“That’s what you want”, he said in heavily accented English. “That’s good rock. Nice crystals. I give you good deal on it.”

I picked up the rock and looked more closely at the two larger crystals. They were both wedged into the rock but even a cursory examination showed that the crystals were cut at the bottoms and then glued into the rock, with bits and pieces of broken crystal glued around them in an attempt to hid the obvious manipulation. (Crystals in matrix always sell better than those that are loose.)

I looked up at the dealer and he beamed at me, nodding his head, pointing at the rock and kept saying, “Good rock, nice crystals, eh?”

“It looks like the crystals have flat bottoms and aren’t attached to the rock”, I said.

“No, no. This happens sometimes. Pressure on rock force crystals loose, but they held in by rest of rock.” He assured me, shaking his head a modest display of genuine sincerity. “No, this is good rock. Good crystals. I give you good deal.” Pause.

“Fifty dollars.”

I gaped at him. Literally gaped at him, mouth open in astonishment at the chutzpah of the dealer. I held the rock in my left hand, and pointed at the crystals with the index finger on my right hand and just looked at him.

He smiled back, beaming in pride of this treat he was bestowing on me.

“Fifty dollars?”

Beam.

“Are you kidding? This is a fake!”

His smile faltered. A hurt look entered his big brown eyes (before, bright black and alert, now suddenly taking on aspects of one’s favorite dog just before it dies). His age set more heavily on his shoulders and he shrunk in slightly, as if in despair. His body said it all: His son has died; his daughter has run off with a biker. I even thought that, for a moment, I could see his upper lip trembling, and a hint of moisture appearing in the corner of his eye. I watched his change of expression — from certitude to dejection — with utter fascination, and more than a little consternation.

“Madam,” he said quietly. “You wrong me. This is no fake. Please, I would not do such a thing”

Placing his hand over his heart, he lowered his head slightly and pulled away from the table, turning his shoulder away from me as if flinching from a blow. I looked back at him and I realized in that moment, I have met fraud before, but I have not met artifice. And artifice is a ceremony, as precise as the tea ceremonies in Japan — my response was equivalent to not taking off my shoes, spilling the tea, dropping the cup, and then farting when I go to pick up the pieces.

I didn’t know what to do. Putting the rock down and walking away would have flawed the moment and marred the experience, for both me and my young niece who was with me that day. But I didn’t know how to recover.

“I, uh, I’m sorry,” I stammered. “Uhm…I didn’t mean to..uh”

The dealer was not a cruel man; or perhaps he was used to dealing with gauche Americans who buy their goods marked with barcodes and stickers, with heavy assurances of quality. He turned towards me, his face now that of one’s favorite wise old Uncle, the one mother invites to dinner but then hides the booze.

“Madam, I understand. There is so much evil in the world. You must be careful. But see now, I am an honest man. But I am not a selfish man. I will give you this rock, this pretty rock for … forty dollars. It is a steal at forty dollars.”

Shrewd eyes on my face. Next line was mine. I had my opening. I could have put the rock down and say that I hadn’t that much money and I still needed to buy lunch for my niece and thanked him and walked away and the moment would have been salvaged, but it wouldn’t have been right. Besides, the crystals were good if small, and there were some interesting bits to the piece, not counting the ingenious use of glue.

“I’ll give you ten dollars for it.”

“Madam! Ten dollars! You are joking! No, no. Ten dollars. No, no!” He exclaimed in dismay, but he also smiled at me in approval of my response — there was hope for me yet, me with my wits dulled by years of supermarket shopping and sell by dates.

“Thirty-five dollars. I will take thirty-five dollars.”

I was about to counter with fifteen, feeling more confident in this bargaining game when the Dealer picked up another crystal on the table — a small one. A very small one. Barely more than pretty dust.

“And I’ll throw in this lovely crystal for your niece. See? It is a fine crystal. Yes? Good offer?”

“That’s very kind of you,” I said, clenching my teeth at the exclamations of delight from my niece who loves getting something for free even more than she likes sparkly things that cost money.

Artifice.

Tags crystals

Critters Photography Writing

Robin Redbreast

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 14, 2003

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

We had another flock of robins come through again today. Many more females this time since they are on a southern migration, not northern. Robins are ground feeding birds, so it’s surprising how fast and agile they are in the air.

Robins have long been the harbingers of spring, but for some reason, the robin is also associated with war and even with death. I wonder if its because its a migratory bird, leaving in the winter and returning in the spring. Leaving and winter reminds us of loss, while spring and returning remind us of hope.

As coincidence would have it Loren discussed Stanley Kunitz’s poem “Robin Redbreast” this week:

It was the dingiest bird
you ever saw, all the color
washed from him, as if
he had been standing in the rain,
friendless and stiff and cold,
since Eden went wrong.
…

Loren covered the poem on Veteran’s Day a day when we honor our veterans from so many wars. When I was driving yesterday, the radio played a set of ads from different organizations and companies and people in celebration of Veteran’s Day. The word Freedom was central to each and every one.

Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

At poets.org, I found Sara Teasdale’s poem “There will come soft rains” that references a robin. I liked it, but it, too, is somber:

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The page noted that this was a war time poem. My first reaction was: which war?

But robins are also a harbinger of spring, and they cheer me so with their puffed up chests of bright scarlet; like an old-time politician thrusting out his well-filled belly before shaking the hands of Father, while patting baby Suzy on the head.

Robins are also a contradiction: they’re a territorial bird, independent and individual, but they migrate in flocks. It’s comical to watch them when they fly as a group — they fly their own path within the flock’s path, and it looks like this big disorganized cloud of fast moving but fiercely chaotic smoke. When they land on the holly berry trees, they start to squabble when others land nearby but then remember, “Oh yeah. That’s right. Cooperate’, and settle in to feed.

Today though they picked a holly tree that has a large, well entrenched grey squirrel nest in it. The birds drove that poor squirrel to distraction — just as he chased one off, another would land.

Everything is a pest for something else.

P.S. Back online when the move and conversion are finished.