Category Archives: Photography

iSnapped While Walking

I’m going to love writing this series this week: it will give me a chance to iVerb all sorts of innocent byspokens in punny and personally amusing ways.

The irony of today’s title is that I rarely snap while we’re walking. Rather, I almost always find myself more calm and grounded than when I laced up the trail shoes the hour earlier. I prefer to reserve my annual snapping quota for use during customer support calls with online banking institutions when I can’t remember the postal code for a Canadian address from 14 years ago.

But I digress. This post is about shooting this photo with my iPhone while out for a walk, and how we’re going to fund our retirement by monetizing this blog.*

HA!

One of the highlights of our days is our favorite 2.5 mile walking route that’s about a five-minute drive from our place, or if the spirit, flesh, and dog are all willing, about a 45-minute hike from our house to the starting spot.

I’ve taken a Big Camera along this route many times when I’m in the mood for an “art walk,” but those experiences tend to be a pain in the patoot for anyone accompanying me who thinks that “going for a walk” means actually walking, rather than pausing to adjust for light and depth of focus every three strides. I generally leave the Nikon at home.

However, since getting seriously high-centered stuck in a fresh snow fall just over this hill last winter (“No problem, Rick! It doesn’t look that deep. Go for it!”) and having only one cell phone with 6% battery life on hand, we now both take our charged phones with us, and Rick draws his own conclusions regarding road conditions.

BTW, the most painful part was when Mike, the ungloved and bare-headed tow-truck driver with his plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned and flapping in the wind over his t-shirt, finally backed in the mile it took to reach us and hollered, “What the HELL are you doing out here? Everyone knows this road hasn’t been winter-maintained for 30 years!” He then paused, absorbing the scene of our California-plated Honda Pilot, Rick and I in our multiple layers of down-filled everything working with one small plastic shovel to dig the snow out from under the car, and a highly agitated but well-groomed 75-pound poodle puppy sporting a bright red fleece-lined vest, and concluded somberly, “You’re not from around here, huh?”

Anyhoo, that’s why my phone’s camera was available to catch the neon green offering on this overcast spring day: Car + Teton Valley Back Roads = Cell Phone

*I’ve decided to postpone disclosing our plans for raking in untold millions of dollars from this blog until tomorrow (clue: notice the copyright on the photo?) because I’m freakin’ cold in my upstairs office right now and need to go downstairs and inquire politely of Rick when he might be thinking of starting that fire in the wood stove, please?

Come back tomorrow when I’m warmer, ‘kay?

oxox k

Are You A Gardener?

By virtue of proximity, my camera of choice often turns out to be my phone.

I rarely upload those images to my computer, relegating them instead to the category of a quickie “upload to Facebook” or “text to loved one.” They’re the point-and-shoot touchstones of my life, short hand for “Here’s what I’m up to right now,” or “Can you believe this?!”

They aren’t usually moments that inspire me to run for either of the Nikons, and without my phone sitting nearby (which it often isn’t, as those who would like to chat already know), the images wouldn’t exist. Also, I don’t normally consider the subjects blog worthy, so for the most part, the images live a quiet life in the photo folder on my phone.

This is why I have a small, almost forgotten archive of a wonderful summer that wouldn’t have seen the light of a post had it not been for settling in, wine in hand, on the north porch on Tuesday for a phone call that went unanswered, and the epiphany I had had an hour earlier that, yes, I actually am a gardener.

I have the laundry issues to prove it.

The story, nutshelled:

A few weeks ago, a woman asked me, “Are you a gardener?” I fumbled and bludgeoned my way through an answer, stumped in the moment by the myriad unclear specifications inherent in the question.

Do I grow all–or any–of our household vegetables? (Yes, until early in the season a week-end camping trip nuked all the tomato plants that hadn’t been sufficiently hardened for the heat.)
Is my iris bed pristine? (No: there was so much inexplicable lovely grass there this year, it looked like I had carefully planted and lovingly watered it.)
Do I have ANY idea at all what we’re doing with the placement, pruning, or pollinating of the  nine fruit trees we planted in our Hardiness Zone 3 environment this year? (Nope… basically just winging it here, with the occasional mad dash to Wikipedia to find out what we should have done six-weeks earlier.)

Clearly, as ranked by depth of knowledge or by comparison to the accomplishments of others, I am not a gardener.

However, as I knelt in in the cool dirt of the iris bed this week, yanking out the dried leaves of this season’s glorious offerings, marveling at the lumpy brown root system that produces such spectacular beauties year after year, I felt connected to that miracle in a profoundly satisfying way. I realized that for me, the answer to her question lies exactly there.

Yes, I am a gardener, because there’s a specific part of me that’s more alive, grateful, and invigorated when I’m doing it than when I’m not. When my hands are in dirt or are wrapped around clippers pruning an ancient lilac tree, doing my small bit to help amazing things grow, my soul hums to a tune I can’t hear in any other place in my world.

I now know the answer to a bunch of other questions as well, such as:

“Are you a writer?”
“A photographer?”
“A baker? Musician? Dancer? Runner?”

Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

I wanted to remember that concept, and this blog is a great way for me to chronicle such things. It’s just that I didn’t have a camera of any kind on hand for the moment it occurred to me, and for better or worse, the rule around here seems to be: no photo, no post. But then I found myself sitting in the late afternoon sun with a Big New Idea, stains on my jeans, and a little multifunction camera in my hand.

One mondo upload of forgotten iPhone images and some encouraging nudges from readers (“Have you died or what?!!”) later, I’m planning a daily blog posting this week, each featuring one or two of these touchstones, and the ideas and stories they contain.

And yes, I’m also a blogger, again.

 

Stealth Waddling With Mum

Remember these guys? It turns out they weren’t up on that roof just sight seeing.

They were planning the routing for an important trek they would take in about a month, right around Mother’s Day.

We didn’t see where they started, and without the call from Steve who saw them from the road, we probably wouldn’t have noticed them at all. It was a stealth march from the nest somewhere to the east of us to the pond about 300 yards to the west.

That’s a long hike for those little legs, so it was slow going. I had ample time to reflect on a variation on my Dad’s favorite joke when I was a kid:

“Why does a little goose walk so softly?”

“”Cause a little goose can’t walk, hardly.”

Not a honk or peep was heard, and those parental heads never once stopped scanning left to right and back again. The vigilance was impressive.

Pops led the way, while Mama stayed in the rear, counting heads (four) as they co-floated down the creek for a bit, then up the bank to the other side. Is this what attachment parenting looks like in the bird world?

My inner photographer wanted to get closer, but my outer chicken kicked in with a healthy respect for 12-pounds of aggressively protective maternal instinct. Besides, there was something profoundly noble and dignified about this pair in the care of their brood that was better honored from farther rather than closer in.

Stay well, little fuzz balls. See you next year. We’ll save a seat on the new garage roof for you.

And Happy Mother’s Day to the rest of you!

Spring in the Air… Literally

Before last night while we were grilling steak on the back patio, I hadn’t really thought about how literal is the statement, “Spring is in the air.”

Canadian geese are just like their fellow human citizens: loyal, consistently handsome, and generally the first to arrive at a party and the last to leave. Fittingly, they are one of the first signs of spring around here, and welcome at that.
And don’t talk to me about the poop. We all have our baggage.

Before last night, I had never seen them book-ended, on any building, of any sort, much less the old shack on the other side of our creek. This pair, or a dang decent duo of doppelgangers, appear to have taken up second-home residency in the area.

They appear to be unable to fly without honking. I suspect they do this to show solidarity with the cab drivers in Calgary and Toronto.

While I was standing at the creek shooting the geese, I glanced down to witness an avian Bathsheba, mid-armpit swoosh.

They call them “bird baths,” so I had always assumed that birds bathe, but apparently, robins, at least, prefer to shower. And don’t think we can’t see you behind that little tuft of grass. That is such a lame ostrich move.

I love this: an image of the quintessential “Spring in the Air” avatar, spring cleaning.

Yes, yes… you clean up very nicely.

Welcome home!

A Fresh Look at Spring Grunge

Apparently, this takes me by surprise every year.

I’m out on a walk on a day sometime shortly after the warm spring winds begin to blow and the mud appears, and I think, “You know, most people think this is an ugly time of year, but if you pay attention, there’s a lot of prettiness.”

At the time, this strikes me as an original thought, worthy of a blog post, even.

Is it just me, or is it repeating itself in here?

Who can blame me, though? When you first look down an unplowed section of shadowed, dirty-ish snowbank, it’s not all that appealing. However, when you know that you are walking on top of four feet of most excellent igloo-building snow, there’s something cool and unique about that. For one thing, it makes you wonder: how do they build igloos, and what it’s like to call such a place “home”?

This is the sort of snow that I affiliate with the stirrings of maple sap, and this is also lovely.

The crust on the snow crystallizes, throwing off colors you can only see out of your peripheral vision (they disappear when you look at them directly) or through a polarized camera lens.

This is not only stunning; it’s downright psychedelic.

Of course, the big picture isn’t too bad, either.

Snowplow blades have created the illusion of multiple geological eras, which, depending on how long a winter it’s been, isn’t too far off the mark.

There’s a simple joy in hunting the sides of the roads, anticipating the first blade of really green grass amongst the dead. This is a small pleasure denied to those who live in chronically verdant locations.

By the way, I told Winston he could come on my “camera walk” only if he promised to stay out of the photos.
He agreed.

What dog? I don’t see a dog.
I believe in giving the benefit of doubt.

The runoff creates winking streams in the road. This one actually burbled.

And when else in the year can you see this kind of mud pattern in nature? Or all across your living room hardwood floor?

Even the mud itself can be beautiful.

This reminded me of the incredible hand-made fudge-ripple mocha ice cream we had in Key West last August. What else in my day was likely to remind me of that?

The wind and sun conspire to drill mysterious caverns and tunnels into the banks. How, exactly, does this work?

And where does that blue, green, and lavender come from? On the surface, it all looks very white.

Don’t stare at this too long… You’ll see a face, an armchair, and a sci-fi snow monster in quick succession, and then it gets weird.

Oh, Winston… for the love of all things shiny, will you MOVE, please?!

I think I was setting up the shot to make a point about repeating cumulus shapes in nature, but now I forget where I was going with this.

Anyways…

Found some!

The Gift

Brace yourself: this post contains another parcel by mail, more shots of the damn dog, some very old news, and the extraordinary and entirely unexpected gift of healing and hope from someone I didn’t even know.

This could get weird for some of you before it gets better.

To set some context, this is as good a time as any to let you know that my employment situation with my company in California has evolved into half-time so that I can spend more time writing. I have a book underway called “The Accidental Speaker.” It’s about how to think about business presentations, and how they differ significantly from professional speaking gigs, and why knowing that can really help make the whole thing more comfortable and effective. It will be a fun book and the writing is coming along, but it’s difficult because it involves taking what I know and packaging it in text in a way that makes it accessible for other people. For me, this feels more like administrivia—organizing, cataloging, etc.—than it does writing. Still, it’s not horrible, and I think it’s necessary.

But in the last couple of weeks, I have also been exploring the idea of a parallel project of what feels like a more creative bent: a book that will be a hybrid of selections from this blog woven together with an easy going essay-style narrative of observations and musings on life, truth, and reality. Think “Travels with Charlie” or “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” except with photography, like here, and a storyline of two ridiculously happy fifty-something artists and their pooch moving full-time to a renovated 95-year old farmhouse in Teton Valley and figuring out what that looks like.

It’s the kind of writing that only happens in a flow, where I don’t really know what will emerge until I sit down, hands on keyboard, and just start. It requires the partnership of the Creative force, and looks more like a conduit than it does a file cabinet. It’s a decidedly un-corporate way to write, and while I’m familiar and comfortable with the bloggy part of the project, this other thing, this opening myself up and jumping into the stream, trusting that something interesting and engaging will emerge, is brand new, exciting, and frightening,

And my ability to leap thusly, it turns out, hinges on my being able to think of myself as a legitimate creator of valuable things that wouldn’t exist without me… an artist, and more specifically, a writer. This is not nearly as easy as one might think. A workbook called “The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity,” by Julia Cameron is proving very helpful… life-changing, even. It’s about how to swap the “it’s too late…,” “you’ll never ‘make it’ as a real artist…,” type voices inside your head for ones that actually help you to get the work done.

Rick and I had just finished Week One in the program when this parcel arrived in the mail.

The return address said it was from Mary in Oregon. As I don’t know a Mary in Oregon, I opened it carefully and with a great deal of curiosity.

The note read:
“Hi Kathy, I know you don’t know me so I hope you don’t mind that I have been reading your blog since Kylie posted on Facebook about the SecurID that Winston chewed up. Your stories and photos are so creative.
I’ve enclosed some of the dog toys that I make for our company craft fair in Hillsboro for Winston. He looks a little pampered and I’m sure he must have a few toys already, but what dog doesn’t need more?
I hope you have a wonderful day.
Mary”

Mary, there are just so many things about this that make me puddle up in a super-sized flood of gratitude, I can’t even begin to tell you. But let me start with the obvious:

  1. Your following the blog at all. Seriously, there isn’t a blogger on the planet who “minds” if someone they don’t know reads what they write. In fact, the first time you get a comment from an unknown reader is a moment of pure disbelief and excitement. Your family is obligated, BY LAW, to comment once in a while to let you know they’re still reading it, but a stranger?! The completely voluntary comment lands in an entirely different place.
  2. Your spontaneous generosity and for all the effort it took to actually act on it. Anything that requires finding the right box, getting it wrapped, labelled, and schlepped to the post office, then finally paying for the postage represents a serious intent to do good.
  3. Your attitude that a dog can never have too many toys.
  4. Your kind, kind words. You will see in what follows how they mean so much more to me than you can ever have imagined. Thank you.

Mary sews labels into her creations, identifying them as “Merry Bears.”

(Ready? More weirdness just around the bend ahead.)

In the early 90’s when I was busily employed mothering my kids, I had a Christmas craft business that made enough money to finance our annual family vacation for the years I did it. I made salt-dough teddy bear Christmas-tree ornaments, and for five dollars, would calligraphy people’s names on them with a fine-point sharpie, right there at the craft fair. People snatched them up as affordable gifts for music teachers, favorite aunts, etc. My mom helped out at the table, taking orders, getting the bears lined up with the names on little slips of paper, packaging up the completed ones and distributing them to their new owners while I churned ’em out.

I called them “Merry Bears.”

I remembered I had a newspaper clipping from those days in a scrapbook buried deep somewhere in one of the three huge, stuffed attics we have.

I hope you enjoy this photo. It came at a great cost of digging through mountains of old flotsam and other surprising and completely distracting finds of jetsom along the way.

The point here is that Mary’s gift, a token of appreciation and support of my writing and photos, pointed me directly back to a time when I did consider myself to be an “artist.”

There are still a few of these little critters that show up every year on our tree.

I was so excited by what was coming together that I did what I always do: yelled, “Where’s the camera?!” I wanted to set up a beautiful photo shoot for Mary’s creations so that I could blog here about how sweet and “coincidental” it all was.

And that’s when I learned that Mary puts intoxicating doggy-squeakers in all her toys.

Winston’s a sucker for a squeak.

I grabbed all three at once, and amazingly managed to connect with all three squeakers, simultaneously. Winston responded with enthusiasm to the sirens’ calls. Every time I’d get set up, he’d sneak up and slide one of the toys off the table, wrecking my photo shoot.

After five minutes of this fun game, I gave up and told him to pick which two he wanted.

Mary, I hope you don’t mind, but he left the blue one, and I’m keeping it for myself.

I wanted to have something to remember your kindness by, and W. has an intense focus on finding and removing the squeak. Death by nibbling, we call it, and he’s relentless.

Is there such a thing as “dognip” that they put inside those things?

Anyway, he settled in with the red one. I told him to lick it.

Dog slobber is a guarantee of permanent ownership granted to the slobberer. No one else even wants to touch the slobberee.

He seemed pleased with his choice.

In fact, eventually he took such umbrage at my own relentless camera work that he decided to seek more private quarters to bond with his new buddy.
Look out… comin’ through….

(Ready?)

Remember I said above that in the search for the newspaper clipping of me at the craft fair, I came across some surprising finds?

One of those was my third grade report card.

In the first term, Mrs. Eglington reported that while I was A-okay on the basics, she felt that I “…daydreamed tremendously.” This apparently did not bode well for my future, especially when combined with a tendency to be “…too self-assured for her own good.”

I now take the “daydreaming tremendously” comment as a compliment. I only wish I could grab back some of that assurance that my eight-year old self had in the possibility of those dreams when the unison droning of multiplication tables I already knew weren’t enough to hold my attention.

I wonder what happened to that pure confidence that anything was possible, not just for me, but for everything and everyone?

Ah… I see where it went. It came down to earth.

Well, Mrs. Eglington, in the spirit of “better late than never,” I’d like to respond, if I may.

Leaving aside your own inability to stay within the lines and a questionable subject-verb agreement choice there, I beg to differ with your conclusion about both my downfall and where I need to be.

I’m still skipping along just fine, thank you, and sometimes my feet don’t even touch the ground.

Your report on my prospects is returning to the back of the attic where it belongs, and Mary’s blue Merry Bear will stand guard over my keyboard, with her encouraging note on my bulletin board above my desk, where they both will remind me that I’m not in this alone.

Not by a long shot.

Kathy’s Valentine Cookbook

I don’t think it was necessarily intended to land as a Valentine’s Day gift on the day it was sent…

… but as an incredible gesture of love, it couldn’t have landed on a more perfect day.

Is there anything more wonderful than an unexpected brown paper package from home, sent with a familiar and cherished signature?
I was curious: what kind of book has a value of zero dollars? Surely anything worth sending at all would have some kind of value?

You have no idea.

It’s a plain white binder, painstakingly filled with all the family recipes that I grew up on and around. These recipes were originally written out longhand on index cards by my Great Gramma Lane, my Granny Lever, my mom, and many of her dear friends. There were newspaper clippings too, all tucked alongside the old red and white Betty Crocker cookbook and later organized into the little wooden recipe box my mom still uses.

Over the years, I have asked her to write out a few select favorites, not because I’ve been too lazy to write them out myself, but because as a kid I cherished the handwriting of those women, and I wanted to extend that line into my own kitchen via my mom’s handwriting.

I’ve never had a specific place to keep those treasures (until today, they have been mixed with other flotsam of memorabilia in the “I’ll get my gems and jewels organized one day” folder), but now I do.

On the inside of the binder, underneath one of my most favorite photos, ever, is a pocket for those cards. That’s where they’ll live now.

This is my mom and me in the kitchen of our summer cottage on Mississippi Lake in Ontario, Canada. I was nine, and this was the summer before we moved to Africa. Not only was she a natural beauty of spirit and face, she was a great cook, and a damn fine mother. Still is.
Plus, she could carry off a ruffled polyester nightie like no one I’d met before, or since.

I have had many wonderful eras of my life when I was welcomed and felt at home in “my” kitchen. This was one of those times, and so is now.

These recipes, which may look like they belong in a million other households are not just any old lists of ingredients and methodologies.

Those cheese balls, for instance, are a festive standard and MUST appear on Christmas Eve. The funny thing is, they aren’t really cheese balls at all, but are rather sneaky ways to serve olives to the unsuspecting (and hopefully un-allergic). The addictive melt-in-your-mouth sharp cheddar cheese bit is merely the outside pastry-like covering. This has, over the years, provided several memorable occasions of “Care for a cheese ball?” quickly followed by a “Whaaaa! There’s an OLIVE in here!” We haven’t forgotten a one of those and still laugh, although oddly enough, we always forget to change the name to “Olive Balls.”

The Mushroom Turnovers came to my mom via my friend Judi, who I think still serves them every at Christmas party she throws. Come to think of it, we also only ate the delicious and deceptively easy Sausage Meat Balls on Christmas Eve as well. This reveals something about the simplicity of family food in that era: we didn’t actually eat appetizers, except at Christmas. Even then, they were more a meal of tapas than appetizers, but I don’t think we knew what “tapas” were then. By the time the traditional French Canadian Tourtiere was served, everyone was so stuffed with food and the fond memories they evoked that we all ate as small a piece as we could to be polite, secretly knowing that tourtiere is actually better on the second day anyway, making Christmas Day lunch as wonderful as dinner.

I’m overwhelmed by how much effort and care went into this manually transcribed treasure. I got teary when I saw my dad’s handwriting on all the tabs and thought about how much work it must have been to type and format every recipe.

Rick got teary when he saw that the listing also included Mom’s table-banging recipe for Coquilles St. Jacques.

“Flossie” was my Granny, Florence, and her namesake “dillos” were the best chocolate peanut clusters on the planet.

Yes, Jane and Jennifer, I’ll share Gramma Lane’s pumpkin pie recipe. And Flossie’s dillos too, if you’re interested. (God bless cousins, near and far.)

Thanks so much, youse.

I now not only have a lifetime of wonderful cooking ahead of me. I also have generations of love around the table from behind me.