Homeward bound

There's something about a lonely highway. It grabs me, draws me on and on and on ...

This is a photo taken through my windshield 5 minutes after sundown, lit only by the fog and my headlights.

Hwy 19, heading south from Lake Hoomak. 4:21 PM

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Algo tiene una carretera solitaria. Me toma presa, me obliga a seguirla. Y seguir ...

Esta es una foto sacada desde mi asiento atrás del volante, saliendo del lago Hoomak camino a casa, unos 5 minutos después de la puesta del sol, y con la única luz la de la neblina y los faros del coche.

Better late than never

I was running late. I didn't get started out for my Sunday afternoon drive (in the rain) until shortly after four. And by then, it was so dark that the colours had leached out of the trees. I set out with the camera, anyhow. I could at least watch tree silhouettes. And maybe see some wildlife, a deer or two, maybe.

Alder against the sky. 4:41 PM The camera sees more light than I do.

Chutes and ladders. And a pair of trees. 4:45. Quinsam Coal Barge Terminal

Crooked tree. 4:46

Looking out over Menzies Bay. 4:52 The bit of colour in the foreground was from my headlights.

As for wildlife, I saw four eagles, and a pair of moths in my headlights. No deer.

But Chia was waiting for me at home, and she's sort of wild.

Chia and her shadows. 10:15.

They're promising us rain for the entire week. I need to get some rain gear.

A Skywatch post.

Supermoon road

It gets dark early around here this time of year. Coming home in pitch-dark at 7:30, the street-lighted road ahead of me continued on across the channel, painted in place by the full moon.

Yellow light, white light. Taken through the windshield with the pocket camera.

I went home for the other camera. 7:43. The moon is now too high to capture both road and moon at once from this hill.

I drove south, trying to escape streetlights and spill lights from the houses and hotels along the waterfront. The first dark spot was at Oyster Bay: 8:30 PM; by now the moon was high above, the glow on the water fading.

Looking south, over Oyster Bay. The car tail-lights never stopped.

Three stars. The night was clear and just above freezing.

The moon shining through trees. And taillights, of course.

Looking back, northwest towards Stories Beach. Quadra Island in the distance on the right.

Two photo sites marked. Google maps.

A Skywatch post.

Rainy evening

I had been intending to go down to the docks to look for the diving ducks that fish these waters, but was delayed running errands, and here it was, past 5. And the sun sets at 4:30 these days; it was getting dark, and pouring rain to boot.

But the camera was waiting in the car, and my jacket was already wet; why waste an outing? I got the camera into its rain gear, and went down to the boats.

At the bottom of the ramp, a dead harbour seal was floating, half out of the water.

A sad picture, but the spotted hide is interesting.

The head seems to be intact, but skin was sloughing off the back feet already. The creamy line across the centre back seems to be a cut. He may have been in an accident with one of the boats.

Maybe someone ignored this sign. Photo taken with flash, which reflected off the falling rain to make that paler circle of blue. The house is one of the harbour buildings, out on a pier.

Warm light reflecting off ridges on the ramp, and, directly under the light, off raindrops slanting down.

Just lights, warm and cool, on the water.

There was one bird; a great blue heron, looking miserable in the rain. I lightened the photo up quite a bit; he was barely visible.

I went back to the car, got the camera out of its rain gear, changed the settings to cope with the fading light, suited it up again, and went out, to discover the heron just flying away, a dark, wide-winged shadow flitting behind the masts of the boats.

And here are the boats, with all the little lights and someone's bright yellow rain gear.

The darkness and rain blurs out distances, so that the masts and equipment blend in with the traffic lights beyond, the fish and chip shop across the street, and even the houses in the next block above.  In spite of the dark and the wet, it felt cosy, somehow; as if the people in all those little pockets of warmth and light were connected by a common thread; the hour maybe, the time to finish off today's work, and get a hot meal on the table.

And I went home, dried off the camera, hung my jacket to drip over the tub, and cooked up a batch of chicken and mushroom soup.

Super moon, shy moon

Tuesday evening, I was meeting friends at Willow Point. All the way there, the supermoon hovered over the water, a humongous, glowing disc, laying down a wide silvery path from shore to shore; it was hard to concentrate on my driving.

We met, dropped bags and books, and rushed out with our cameras to get supermoon photos. And the dang thing went and hid!

Photo taken with my little pocket Sony.

Looking back to the lights of Campbell River. With a couple of other disappointed moon watchers.

A couple of hours later, I drove home in the dark. There was no sign of the moon.

So blue

Away from the light pollution of cities, night falls quickly. The last colours to go are on the blue/violet end of the spectrum.

Brown's Bay Marina, 6 PM.

Fish boats, Brown's Bay

Small lights, orange and white, reflecting over water have always carried the connotation, for me, of welcome, food, conversation and warmth. So I was disappointed to find the Brown's Bay restaurant closed for the season. Next visit, I'll carry a bag lunch.

Happy about a lousy photo? Yes!

I am really impressed with my new camera, the Nikon D7000, once more. Because of this photo:

Skunk in the dark

And this one:

Skunk in the darker shadows of the rhododendrons

This skunk came to my garden around 8:30 in the evening. The sun had already set, and the shadows of the evergreens, hiding the sky, made him difficult to see, even a few feet away. He slipped away under the fence in the direction of Laurie's flower beds, so we went the long way around, to head him off; he's sprayed under our windows before, and the stink persists for hours.

Sure enough, the skunk headed for Laurie's nice, soft dirt, and "fragrant" bag of manure. Laurie was there in time, (I had gone back for the camera) and threw a rock in his general direction, so the skunk changed his mind and hurried away. By the time I got in position with the camera, he was far away, and all I could see was a hint of movement in the shadows. Laurie couldn't see him at all.

I took a photo, anyhow; documentation, at least. The skunk dashed under the rhododendrons, where I caught him with a second photo.

And the photos, cropped 'way down, and lightened up, actually showed the skunk, and the green of the grass and leaves! Better than my eyes, far, far better!

The skunk was around again tonight. We smelled him, but never saw him.

Decapitated raccoon

Lee Vallley Tools included an Audubon BirdCam in their latest catalogue, with a motion sensor and a flash; it would run at night, and the price was right. I ordered one (I call it a RaccoonCam, though).

I picked it up the other day, and got it set up last night for a trial run. I am not sure of the settings yet, and it is difficult to aim; there's no viewfinder, and getting it closed down and locked always jiggles it a bit. I just set it on the ground for the first test.

It worked, the first night! Sort of.

Fat raccoon, eating my parsley. (See that pink tongue?)

And drinking the birds' bath water.

Baby steps, baby steps. I've got it on a tripod now; maybe the next photos will actually get the whole animal.

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Once again, a reminder: Rock Flipping Day is next Sunday, a week from today, September 9th. Instructions, history, etc.

Last year, several people wrote later, to say that they had intended to join in, but forgot until it was too late. So this year, I'm harping on the date. You can help by passing the word along. Thanks!

Headlight eyes

I was sitting here at my desk at midnight, when I heard a clicking noise just beyond the curtains. When I looked out, a raccoon was nibbling at a plant in a pot he'd turned over. I made a bit of racket unlocking the door in a hurry, chased him off and righted the pot. He would be long gone by then.

Except that he wasn't. He came back, before I had even shut the door.

Bold as brass

 And no matter how I chased him, the camera flashing all the while, he came back, and back, and back ...

Skulking behind the astilbes.

Rooting for something in the London Pride.

He spent some time trying to get into my compost bin, without luck. There's a heavy board on top. (I'm not inclined to share my compost fixings.)

And then he came back to the original pot. I don't know what interested him there; it holds a couple of stems of some unknown ground cover and a new volunteer lobelia. And a watering frog, which he dumped on the ground.

Maybe he's trying to make out the design on the pot.

I chased him again, out onto the lawn and over to the neighbour's garden. And this time, he left for good. I think.

Red snow, brown snow, blue birds.

I'm in Strathcona again, house- and cat-sitting. I arrived well after dark, but once I had settled in, I went out for a walk with the camera anyhow.

The camera does odd things, sometimes. This window had a red curtain, surrounded by deep red lights. The camera, on half a dozen shots, insisted on rendering the lights as white, the snow as red.

I had the camera set to "Available light", hand-held, which meant holding perfectly still for several seconds for each shot. Not easy, when you're shivering.

A little bare tree decorated with blue lights becomes a "V", with the quotation marks and all.

Or a flight of blue birds.

Other decorations, farther away, become check marks on the night.

MacLean Park, under trampled snow. The streetlights give a brown tinge to all the whites.

Lonely bench.

Telephone pole, with the remains of a local history in signs.

I had to use the flash on this one; there was no streetlight directly on it. Arnt Arntzen's "steel macaroni", again. With a light snow dressing, for flavour.

Anyone want a desk? With a nice screen? Freebie on the sidewalk.

And I'd had enough; my teeth were chattering. I came home to Sasha.


"It's about time!" she says.

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Midnight visitor

What made these tracks?


Tuesday night, around midnight, I looked out and saw these in the new snow. They are bigger than a cat's feet, smaller than some dogs. They came out from under a fence with about 6 inches clearance.

Clearly marked toes, a tendency to drag. No tail dragging.

Closer view.

There was no poking around; the tracks went straight across the patio, down the path and across the lawn towards the street.

What animal made them? My guess is a raccoon or a skunk.* What do you think?

*A while later: I think it's a raccoon, because of the gait pattern; one big, one small, side by side. Next step, the sides alternate. I found some good photos and diagrams at Bear Tracker.
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Discouraging realization

I will never, ever catch up. Not with housework, not with projects, not with blogging. Never. No matter how I work at it.

The days are too full of good things to do, to see, to share.

Like this. Bee mimic on thistle.

The "To be Uploaded" file on my hard drive stretches back to last June.

My Inbox (paper) is overflowing. The urgent stuff is somewhere on the bottom.

Poor Polly!

We've been antiquing, and I've come home with stuff that just begs to be researched. And photographed. But not tomorrow.

The Strathcona Culture Crawl is coming up in a week or so. We will come home with another 200 photos, I'm sure.

Strathcona, reflected in a car window. Not the Crawl, yet.

I have to make or buy Christmas presents. Many, many Christmas presents; my family keeps extending itself, drawing in more amazing people by the day, it seems.

And so it goes. I will never, ever, ever catch up.

And if that is a grumble, it's a happy grumble; life is good, too good.

Laurie, finding something interesting at Kwomais Point.

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