Well, we've done it again ...

Yep, abandoned our cozy home, after spending hours that could have been happily spent in the recliner, instead cramming the minimal necessities of life into a tin box on wheels, then spend 8 hours in an even smaller box pulling the thing down the highway, stopping frequently to replenish gallon upon gallon of apparently liquid gold. And to what end? To squeeze it in among row upon row of hundreds of other tin boxes and spend good money for the privilege. The privilege of hearing the neighbors (and our) dogs bark, children squealing, dune buggies rasping.

And you know what? We love it. Our lists of things to do have blown away somewhere on that 400 miles of highway. We have our books and our doggies, and a few steps away from the trailer is a dune from the top off which we watched the sun descend into the Pacific Ocean; descending through a clear sky except for a thin band of cloud just above the horizon, seemingly arranged just so the sun could burnish it with a bit of gold as an elegant signature to wrap up the day. Long naps in sunny, salty air have refreshed us. Tonight we'll tuck into a cozy bed, wake to coffee from Trader Joes, and head out to explore California's Central Coast.

Hike 2013-03 Nice Day Getaway

January 8, 2013
An Early Check on the Knickerbocker Homestead Narcissus
Auburn State Recreation Area trails outside of Cool, California
3.75 miles

Wonderful drippy, mysterious, fog in the morning. Familiar shapes are both subdued and enhanced. Coffee time is a bit cozier, and the birds seem to appreciate the feeders a bit more. Morning is focused on the day job and paying bills. Then the sun, low winter sun as it is, calls me out. Magic light all afternoon, green stuff, and wonder of wonders, the narcissus that have gone feral at the long abandoned Knickerbocker homestead are already beginning to bloom. I wonder what February will bring.

White-breasted Nuthatch

Roadside retaining wall, Knickerbocker Homestead

Narcisus at Knickerbocker Homestead

Hike 2013-02

January 6, 2013
2.5 Miles

Rain in and out. But gotta try my new pedometer. I sprung for it because I thought it would get me walking. It worked. I plugged in an audiobook and headed out into the wilderness of our community. Two and a half miles counts as a hike if I say so. And there are the hazards of walking on a road with traffic - I swear I saw two cars. And then possibly needing to duck balls while traversing the golf course. And always the possibility of encountering wild creatures on those "wilderness" trails behind the back yards.


Well, I did hear a dog bark once - sounded like a big one.

Does a round on the links count as a hike? It does if I say it does ...

I plunge into the wilderness ...

I know Robin and his Merry Men were hiding behind these oaks and boulders ...

Hike 2013-01 - Shop Window Self Portraits

January 5, 2013
3.2 miles

When the freeways got blasted and bulldozed through the gold rush era towns of Northern California the results were generally not pretty. Lovely stone, brick and gingerbread structures, together with century-old trees, were wiped out, and communities divided. Grass Valley, Nevada City, and Auburn were all victims of degrees of devastation when the quiet strips of tree-shaded, two-lane asphalt or concrete were replaced by four lanes of efficiently routed freeways and their interchanges.

Auburn has recovered and adapted well, though. The I-80 freeway left the 19th-century section, known as "Old Town", relatively intact, and did not separate it from the the newer business district, known as "Downtown Auburn", that extended in the 1930's through 1950's to the east along the Lincoln Highway (US 40). In fact, the freeway did a positive thing by isolating and protecting Old Town and Downtown from the commercial sprawl that developed on the north side of the freeway beginning in the 1950's. The Auburn of strip malls, auto dealerships and fast food along the Grass Valley Highway is well walled off by the concrete and roar of I-80 from the gentler, pedestrian-friendly,older sections. Civic improvements recently have enhanced the pleasure of strolling both Old Town and Downtown.

And so, when looking to get a bit of a walk along with some errands in Downtown yesterday I parked instead in Old Town, which was well crowded with strollers, and its many restaurants busy despite the gray and wintery day.

In the Sierra Foothills of northern California you can expect the terrain to slope generally from east to west, thus Old Town is much lower than Downtown. In picking my parking spot I had slyly recognized that while I would be huffing and puffing up hills to my errands in Downtown, the return trip would be a breeze.

And so it was. It was a treat to get out, despite the lack of sun, and I entertained myself along the way by taking self portraits via reflections in shop windows.

Rebuilding the Past

I've always enjoyed restoring vintage photographs. For many years I was the photographer for the Nevada Historical Society, with access to vintage photographs ranging from government surveys in the mid-1800's, to the rise and fall of silver-mining towns, cattle ranching, and the growth of tourism. It was exciting to work with the negatives and prints made from large format cameras, where an enlargement could reveal details from the past never seen before. It was especially pleasing to be able to bring a photograph back to life that had faded almost to invisibility.

The last few days while recuperating from a hospitalization I've been exercising those old skills on some photographs taken in the late 1930's by my father's family. A beautiful album with a hand-painted cover includes some fun snapshots taken during a 1937 road trip that took in Yellowstone Park, the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, and the Jackson Hole Country in Wyoming.

What caught my attention this evening was a little loose print that slipped out: it was dark but looked to include a promising image of my Aunt Helen just before she was married. She is sitting in the back of a car with a girlfriend, both looking very happy. A nice-looking young man with his arm around her looks to be my Uncle Paul. Both long deceased, and in my memory as older people. So it was worth some time to bring Helen out of the shadows, and reveal a young, vibrant woman I'd never seen before.

Helen Mindling Thompson, about 1937

Montana in the Morning

A senior portrait sitting.

Beautiful early morning light on an Indian summer day down at the Marshal Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma made for some satisfying photographs. Having a lovely lady named Montana as a subject didn't hurt. Taken with my venerable Nikon D300, mostly with an 85mm f/1,8 lens used wide open.

Ambiance and the Blue Refrigerator

Back in the day, when the mother of my young boys and I lived in a little old rented house, we had a kitchen with a blue refrigerator. If you are supposing that a major appliance of that color would have been found in a kitchen in the late 1960's your sense of color chronology is pretty sharp. The refrigerator lived next to our oak kitchen table, passed on to us from my folks to help establish the furniture of our early married life. Next to the table in our little old house - probably pre-1940's vintage - was a high kitchen window that faced to the north. Now likely you have acquired the information that artists like north light. For good reason. Our window always avoided direct sunlight, thus banishing harsh shadows and highlights. instead it gathered skylight, that soft light reflected from the sky that gently wraps itself around whatever you place in its path.

At the time I was a geologist, but in my heart a photographer, and thus had some sensitivity to the quality of light. As a result I learned to appreciate the magic light at that table. And that blue refrigerator? Its role was to provide, as rendered on black and white film, a clean dark gray, almost black, background.

Perhaps due to the lovely light through that window, or the blue refrigerator, just plain laziness, or more likely a complete lack of business sense, I have never acquired the skill for properly using artificial light (although I have deep respect for those that can mold light to their will). But I think I do have a sensitive awareness for nice ambient light.

Here are a couple more  photos, recently dredged from the 1967 archives, that took advantage of that ambient north light, the blue refrigerator, and the texture of our old oak kitchen table.