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.

Quiet moment

 Back to the shore ...

As the sun goes down the light changes. Here, taken from the same spot, 30 seconds apart, as I sat on a log at Oyster Bay, the sea and sky are either blue or mauve, depending on the direction I pointed the camera.

Looking southeast, my back to the sun. 8:03:35 PM

Looking back northwest. The sun is just over the trees off-camera to the left. 8:04:07 PM. Sundown is just after 9:00 pm.

And looking straight ahead, a duck paddling along in tranquil water.

A Skywatch post.

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Regresando a las playas ...

Cerca de la puesta del sol, la luz cambia. Aquí tres fotos desde el mismo sitio, donde yo estaba sentada en un tronco al lado de Oyster Bay; las primeras dos fotos separadas solamente por unos 30 segundos. Con el sol a mis espaldas, el cielo y el mar son azules; mirando hacia el sol poniente, todo toma un tono violeta.

La tercera foto: una pata tranquila aprovechando el momento.

Winter solstice

 End of the day ...

4:40 PM, last week. A few minutes after sundown.

And tomorrow, the days start to stretch again. Today, we have 8 hours and 4 minutes of sunshine. Well, not actually sunshine; light behind the clouds. It's BC, after all. Over on the mainland, it's snowing. But tomorrow, we'll have a whole extra minute of daylight. Yay!

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El 21 de diciembre; el solsticio invernal. La foto la saqué unos cuantos minutos después de la puesta del sol, a las 4:40 de la tarde. Hoy, se pone a las 4:17.

Hoy tenemos 8 horas, 4 minutos de sol. Miento: no hay sol; tenemos las 8 horas de luz tras las nubes. Estamos en Colombia Británica, a fin de cuentas. Y al otro lado del agua está nevando. Pero para mañana, los días se alargan, y tendremos un minuto entero más de luz de día. ¡Bravo!

Successful failure

I wanted to get a photo of the comet, but it's down near the horizon, and the reflected light from the town faded it out. So I drove to the centre of the island, far from any human light sources. Sundown caught me on the shore of Buttle Lake.

Last rays of sunlight on Mount McBride, 2083 m.

This was at 9:26 PM. But from this vantage point, the mountains were too high to see anything, even if it were pitch dark. The comet would be behind Mount McBride.

View towards the top of the lake. 9:27.

Dusk lasts forever in the island summer. I returned to a viewpoint over Upper Campbell Lake. The sky was still orange.

I came back to Campbell River and joined a group of comet watchers on Tyee Spit. By 11:30, the stars were out, but down where the comet lurks, a sort of haze faded them out. Before midnight, most of us had given up and gone home. No comet.

But it was a nice evening drive, and I saw three young deer.

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Quería ver el cometa y tal vez lograr una foto, pero aquí la luz de la ciudad la escondía. Decidí buscar un lugar lejos de luces artificiales.

A la hora de la puesta del sol, a las nueve veintitantos, me encontré en el centro de la isla, a las orillas del lago Buttle.

La primera foto es del monte McBride. La cometa estaría directamente atrás de la montaña. Y de todas maneras, el cielo seguía iluminada.

El crepúsculo, aquí en el norte, dura y dura. Por horas.

Regresé a un lugar al lado de Upper Campbell Lake; allí las montañas no cortan la vista, pero el cielo seguía de color anaranjado.

A las once y medio me hallé otra vez en la ciudad, en la peninsulita Tyee Spit, con un grupo de otros buscadores de la cometa. Sí, se veían las estrellas directamente arriba, pero allá donde se debe ver la cometa, una neblina la ocultaba. Antes de la medianoche, la mayoría nos habíamos dado por vencidos. A casa. Sin cometa.

Pero el paseo al atardecer fue lindo. Y vi tres venaditos.

Winter willow

... at Willow Point.

Catching a few rays.

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Un sauce llorón al lado del mar en Willow Point (Punta de Sauces), con los últimos rayos del sol de la tarde.

A bit of everything

The fall rains have started, so I took the highway west, looking for mushrooms, in the spots where I found them last fall. It's too soon; I found only one group, near Strathcona Dam.

Unidentified mushrooms, with slug nibbles.

The search was not without its risks:

Hungry predator overhead. (About 10 feet up. I couldn't see her web at all.)

Cross spider, Araneus diadematus, on the shore of Upper Campbell Lake.

I wonder: how is it that I walk down a trail unmolested, return immediately, and run face-first into a spider web across that same trail?

It was almost sunset by the time I'd found the mushrooms, so I went on ahead to the dam to watch the light fade.

Glow beyond the hills. Facing southeast, from the top of the dam.

Weeds on the rocks. Elk River Road bridge straight ahead.

Looking northwest. 7:22 PM.

So: few mushrooms, so I'll have an excuse to go that way again next month. A narrow escape from spider fangs. And a peaceful half hour on the dam; this trip had everything!

The arrow points to the dam.

A Skywatch post.

Evening on the beach

I had an unexpected free evening, the last before I became responsible for a demanding kitten, so I went to wander on the shore and watch the light fade. It was raining slightly, off and on; I threw on a jacket, more to shelter the camera than for me.

While there was still light, I scrambled down to the water's edge and peered under rocks. Down in the tidepools, crabs scuttled away at my approach, tidepool sculpins dashed out of cover, and then froze, trying for invisibility in plain sight, not very successfully.

Random shot from a precarious, slippery balancing stone. I count 9 stripy sculpins here.

In the shade of the larger rocks, a pink encrusting growth covered many surfaces.

Pink encrusting algae, limpets, plumose anenomes, hermit crabs, snails, and sea urchins. If you look closely, you can find tiny orange specks; spiral calcareous tubeworms, feeding.

The pink encrusting algae, and a deeper red crust. I think the greenish sections are older patches of the red.

An assortment of red algae, including one iridescent species, growing higgledy-piggledy together. The little dotted lines are hermit crab antennae.

The rain picked up; I headed back to the top of the beach, close to shelter. The rain stopped.

Cloudy sky, looking north from Big Rock. 7:34 PM.

Looking east to the mountain peaks on the mainland. 8PM.

An orange glow just before the light fades. 8:15 PM.

And then it was raining again. But I'd found the remains of a driftwood fire, still glowing under the logs, and stayed to feed it until the wood was too wet.

Let it rain!

A Skywatch post.

(This was a difficult post: Chia doesn't understand why she shouldn't be helping with the typing.)