Return to Cold Stream Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Real blood running from the lambs throat that a moment before had been led from the pen, eyes and ears alert, tongue moist, tossing a bit against the rope that led it, and unaware that in a moment all running would be done. The blood zeros and ones, of my cyber-universe are never so red and profuse nor the moments so profound.

NOTE:  On March 17, 2007, I posted my first image of this farm here.  Enter "Kallstrom," in the search box and find nine other images photographed at this farm.

Beans

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: The same site, a few days later, how different the compositional problem! 

Yesterday I made another trip to Forsaken Acres under uncertain skies. In spite of promising clouds in the south, I headed north, hoping for another chance to play in the soy rows' shadows. In totally clear skies, I could at least explore compositional possibilities as the shadows lengthened. However, Forsaken Acres turned out to be the one place in the valley under clouds; it was all shadows. Wisdom would have urged, move on, but the fun is sometimes in meeting the challenge.

How different these clouds from the puffs that were drifting roughly west to east across the valley when I was last here. They reinforced the frontal, planar orientation imposed on most landscape compositions from this field. Before the eastern silo fell it was too balanced, too frontal, too static, and I never shot from here. 

These clouds ran in great banks north-south and apparently disappeared or emerged from a point behind Forsaken Acres and somewhere up near Copake. On the right the cloud bank above the high Taconic Ridge was strikingly abrupt, a sudden, white wall following the ridge line south. I had noticed it as soon as I was north of Millerton. On another day I might have found a spot to shoot from in the sunny center of the valley, but I chose to continue to Forsaken Acres to shoot there again before the silo falls.

Once there, the bean rows looked like nothing without defining shadows, but without direct light it was easy to get down in the rows that had been visual chaos, and get personal with the beans. As I lowered my tripod, and the tops of the bean rows collapsed, the window of sky opened, and there were the great banked clouds doing just what I needed them to do. Down between the soy rows you can see the corn stalks from corn that had grown here the previous summer and contemplate the relentless mulching of eternity even as the banked clouds seemed to stand still above the changeless mountains.  

Today I passed Forsaken Acres again on my way home, and a large harvester was working two fields north of Forsaken Acres. It was a big, shiney machine that harvested many rows at a gulp. Tomorrow morning if I wake before dawn, will there be soy rows left to photograph? Once the soy is harvested, the rows will have little visual impact, I think, and I'm not optimistic the silos will last to the next planting.

Farmland

Rendezvous at Bash Bish Falls

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  The falls appear as if from heaven or some region so remote that it must always be hidden in mist. I'm sure there's a trail to the top, and if I were to get there to see how the water flows over the lip, I'm certain I would be disappointed. For now I'm content with the illusion and the magnificence of the cataracts' continuing descent as water cuts the deep ravine down to where men once mined and processed iron ore in the hamlet of Copake Falls. This is the western fringe of America's first great iron industry that flourished in the Taconic and Berkshire Mountains of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and into the Green Mountains of Vermont.

For something less than most of its life since colonial times up to today, this region around Copake, New York, has existed as, at best, a remote outpost of the nations fabric. Most outsiders know of it from having driven through it on Route 22. Even after the Revolution, it was run on a kind of medieval manorial system, and farmers were kept in constant poverty delivering service and crops to the descendants of Dutch landowners in order to continue farming the land their parents and grandparents had farmed. It was one of the compromises the founding fathers had made to Livingstons and Van Rensselaers to reward their loyalty during the Revolution. 

Then, for a brief moment, mostly in the last half of the 19th century, lead and iron mining brought three rail lines through the region, and they crossed just south at Boston Corners.  All at once it was a busy center where produce from local farms was loaded onto boxcars so city folk could eat, and trains loaded with iron and lead passed beside stockyards where cattle waited, and trains passed in all directions on their way to the centers of production. Soon railroads and plentiful water to power mills attracted other industries as well. 

Because until 1857 Boston Corner was legally in Massachusetts, the authority of the law was on the other side of the Taconic Mountains, unable to enforce its jurisdiction, and Boston Corner became famous as a lawless area where the illegal practice of boxing contests drew crowds. On October 12, 1853, when John Morrissey defeated Yankee Sullivan after thirty-seven rounds in a bare-knuckles, championship match, it drew a crowd of 10,000, they say, and ended in a brawl of seconds, but the local hotels were packed and people camped and boarded with local residents.

Because the railroads made them accessible, Bash Bish Falls and the remote mountain lakes and streams brought adventurous tourists, fishermen and honeymooners from the city. They came and stayed at one of several inns in the valley below and climbed or rode beyond the local industry and into the mountains to the falls and to mountain lakes and streams. Today it takes a bit of research to figure out where most of the railroad beds were; one is now a bike trail, but the mountains have well-maintained trails and remain largely as they were.

Even today, if you want to go anywhere east, you are met with the same Taconic wall that has always made this region remote.  Driving south you'll barely notice Boston Corners long before you reach Millerton where you can cross east into Connecticut. Going north you'll want to get up to Hillsdale before crossing east into Massachusetts, or you can continue up the dirt road past Bash Bish Falls and sniff your way through winding forest roads that might as well climb over the rainbow, and you may not meet another car until as much as an hour or two later when you descend from mountain mists into the valley on the other side.

Autumn Candy

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  I can't recall an autumn to match this one. It exploded early along the perimeter of wetlands in gold, orange and red and along stone walls where the poison ivy blazed. October 5th has been my marker since we moved to northwestern Connecticut thirty-nine years ago; That was the start of fall display that year. We lived on a hilltop in New Milford and watched it blaze on all sides.

It turned out that year, 1974, was one of the earliest years. This year on October 5th, Saturday, all the hillsides were coloring , and it was hard to drive down most roads without wanting to stop and photograph the riot. I took this on September 30th on my way to Waterbury. I could not proceed without stopping, walking the perimeter of the pond and making pictures. To the charge that I am making eye candy, I plead guilty.

Sunday the rain began and now we have winds, and I expect there will be less of the season left when weekenders return. It's been a good autumn, and some of it will outlast the storm.

As Clouds Digress

NOTE:  My thanks to Christine Reichman in Alaska who has successfully convinced me that the two spots in the trees on the far, right shore of River's Edge just might be two eagles. If I knew that when I took the picture, I quickly forgot.  Thank you, Chris.

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  I suppose it's hard to deny the photographic urge to look for "pictures."  That may describe what newspaper photographers do for a living, and I mean that with deep respect for their art, but it is an un-useful way to describe what I and many other photographers do. While the pictorial focal point of the silos is essential to the "picture," much of the joy in photographing that afternoon came from exploring the many ways of playing the evolving shadows cast by the setting sun, the patterns of the soy rows and the bold features of the land&skyscape against each other and against the rectangular canvas of the camera while the day drew to a close.

If I didn't truly enjoy walking, I would be a very different photographer or maybe not a photographer at all. I bagan the afternoon at a point in the background on the left, behind the distant soy field and the distant row of trees in this image. It was a good high point from which to look down on the soy rows. If I can use shadow to give the field texture and direction it will be useful to any finished composition. I walk to find the places that might let me do that best.

Unfortunately, from my starting point the silos were too small and the soy row delineation too dim to lead the eye, at least under current light. I walked down a soy row, sometimes shifting lanes. As I walked I was especially mindful of other elevated places and of the direction of the soy rows in relation to the silos. I also looked for any anomalies of interest around me, but I didn't shoot again until I had crossed the soy field and stood due west of the silos, off the left edge of this image.

From there, shadow covered the foreground soy rows. I often find it effective to shoot from shadow into light, and I composed images where the shadow's edge added a strong diagonal to activate a composition. I sought bold shapes and colors that might reach through the shadowed soy rows to enhance the immediate foreground, but the rows ran the wrong way, and where the soy was bright, it was also flat.  I turned and looked down two or three rows to a large shed, formed and exposed several more compositions that ran with the soy rows and then continued walking even as the earth kept turning and shadows were lengthening.  I had timed my walk because I knew the next section held the most promise.

It took a bit more than five minutes to move from the point where I took this picture to the point where I shot "Dairy Farm, 2013."  I made nine exposures from three locations. It was a small part of the 30 minutes spent crossing the soy field where it paralleled the barns, a relatively short distance in which I made 214 exposures until my final choice came down to these two images that risk redundancy - perhaps much ado about nothing, but "film" is free, and and you never know what's there until you get there and sometimes not even then.

After that I moved in close and photographed, whatever it means, until the sun set.  Two of those images were just posted. I never had time to get back out and rephotograph the soy rows with longer shadows. Perhaps I will get another chance. 

I suppose this is a long way to try and clarify why it's not quite adequate to think of landscape photography as, "shooting pictures," though I may be the only one who cares. 

Veedol

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Anyone of a certain age sees this logo with a bit of reverence, while those of another age walk blankly by. Does my generation, born just after WWII, lie at the divide? 

What I remember best, was Flying A gas stations whose logo was an upside-down version of this Veedol logo, and whatever the "A" stood for (Initially it stood for "Associated Oil Company), Veedol and Flying A had become the same company. In the front of the Flying A gas stations and beside the pumps one saw racks of Veedol motor oil. The company was Tidewater, founded, according to some accounts, in New York City in 1887. If my grandfather had bought a Model T, Mr. Ford would have recommended Veedol motor oil to him, and he might have visited a Flying A service station.

I don't know when Flying A gasoline stations disappeared, but I couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 years old, city bred where gas stations are scarce, without the farm boy's familiarity with working motors and car parts. However, the logo's glow of reverence was sufficient that I remember it almost 60 years later, one more relic in the attic of our cultural inheritance.

Shadows Cast

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Everything riots for its spot in the sun, though the spot be a filtered, shadowed reflection. I recognize the plants that are armed against me with surreptitious schemes to make my skin bristle and itch. In the past, they have kept me out. Now, with a bit of care I can avoid them, though I watch for snakes and for spiders in what's left of my hair, and enter the place where a man spent long days building his farm, first adding a small silo until he could build up his herd. He had chickens too, and horses.  He saved his pennies, lived modestly in the small farmhouse where he burned wood through the winter to keep his family warm.  Whether saint or scoundrel, inside the barn he has left not a trace of who he was or of his daily routine except for the double line of rusting, milking stalls where the roof is collapsing under the weight of vines. Behind them, in a field now planted with drying soy, his cows grazed until milking time, and when he was done with his chores he went home to rest.

Dairy Farm, 2013

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: It has fallen. It took me awhile to notice, though I should have spotted it immediately. They were the three watchtowers of earlier photographs. Now one was missing, the sentry at the eastern end of the old dairy barn - the barn sinking into the earth under the weight of vines and the toll of the seasons - roof so low I had to stoop inside - like the other buildings: large chicken houses and sheds that seemed made of dry sticks and disappeared into the brush. There's a farmhouse too, though it is surrounded by a thicket such as a fairy godmother or witch might conjure to shield a sleeping princess. The first time I visited I named this farm, "Forsaken Acres."  Sunday I walked on the broken shards that were the silo, and I was surprised how little rubble the great tower left when it fell, only a few cart loads of broken, orange tile.

How do I feel about the tower's demise? I try to imagine the sounds of steam locomotives hooting through this valley from all directions when there were cows milked here twice daily - Sealtest days. The silo was an awfully good prop that caught the light well, and there were more good shots to be made with it. The railroad track is long gone; even many of the rights of way have disappeared. The missing silo opens new compositional possibilities as long as the western silos hold. One looks tenuous. When it goes there will be little reason to come back to photograph here.  I'll miss that; one can see a great distance from here.

Here are the links to some prior blog images made at Forsaken Acres:

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2010/05/watchtowers.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2009/10/forsaken-acres.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2010/06/photographers-journal-i-often-find-it.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2009/12/idea-of-farmhouse-no-2.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2010/03/idea-of-farmhouse-land.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2010/07/rolling.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2010/05/photographers-journal-once-home-place.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2010/07/rolling-no-3.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2009/12/todays-photo-idea-of-farmhouse-no1.html

http://rothphotos.blogspot.com/2009/10/ansel-adams-you-dont-take-photograph.html

River's Edge

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:

Imagine

Standing at the river's edge

Between infinitely expanding space

And dimensionless vacuity

Singing silently

A shaft of river grass

A tree in the forest

Drowned Land Swamp, study #2, "Cornucopia"

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  The Drowned Lands Swamp Preserve lies along county route 3, near where it crosses Punch Brook, and the best view of the swamp is from the long bridge where the road crosses the brook and the swamp.  Just now the swamp is ripening into autumn and the sun was finding all kinds of ways to make the textures dance. 

It was not the first time I had tried photographing the old barns with the rusted roofs and wondered how to get closer. For that reason, it took me a moment to realize they were being upstaged by a splash of red like a feather duster.  Whether or not the image has profound import, one of the pleasures of a day of photography is finding a spot of such rich resources: a pair of leading characters surrounded by a chorus of textures in a pleasing palette of colors, a nicely lumpy sky, and a guy in the light booth working the spots.  I spent 30 minutes repositioning my camera to place textures and features in different relationships to the rectangle. Of many possibilities, in the end, I must choose one. One wants to say, it is the only possible one. Most of the time that's not the case, but one must process and finish it as if it were.

When I was done I again tried to circle the swamp on local roads to locate the old farm.  I never found it.

Drowned Land Swamp, study #1

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  I took this photograph on Sunday at the Drowned Lands Swamp Conservation Area in Ancram, NY. It reveals no miracles and would win no prizes, but it is a good day's work, the best of the day's shoot, and merit's inclusion, therefore on "Today's" photo. 

As a photographer, I find myself increasingly drawn to photographing situations of high contrast, situations where the contrast pushes the limits of my photographic technology. I suppose part of this urge is technical: Can I set the exposure precisely? Can I manipulate the RAW file so as to draw out everything that has been captured, and achieve the spatial/compositional effect desired? The lure is far more than technical, however. I like high contrast situations because light/dark is a recipe for drama and a structure for design. There is mystery in shadow and revelation in shine, and stories can flicker to life in the contrasting of exterior and interior; there is polyphony in the contrary tug of the thing concealed and the thing revealed.

So I was not disappointed when I followed the trail to the spot labeled, "overlook," and found only this paltry window on the valley and swamp.  Though the view was barely photographic, I was drawn by the reach of the trees, of everything around me to grab as much of the sunshine as possible, and I would make what I could of the bit of poetry provided where the fronds and leaves edged at the light. No, the reach of it all came afterward; first was registering the violence of the diagonal slashes of the tree's trunks, and I set my camera to be sure I could include all three and composed the rectangle broadly. Only then did I consciously note how everything leaned together and how the tones had to be set.

A Moose with a Wandering Eye (or "The corn was as high as a...")

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: I thought at first it was an accident, cars stopped both sides of the road, but down below the road, at the back of a field he stood, as if amused by the crowd that had gathered. I'd like to think he was waiting for me, the guy with the tripod-mounted Nikon and 300mm telephoto lens, and I suppose it's possible that even the moose community has to put out a press statement, stake their claim to the area around the Shepaug Reservoirs, deliver their bit of PR. He was certainly a handsome spokesmoose.

I had just finished a full day of shooting, and in my mind I had put away my gear, even though the gear was in reality spread across the back seat. The inevitable decision: to stop or not to stop? I passed the crowd then rushed to park, grabbed my stuff, found a spot to set up; aim, focus, shoot, while the moose waited and seemed to be looking calmly from face to face among the crowd that had gathered. It was not entirely clear who was the more beguiled, the moose or us.  He allowed me just enough time to get off three shots before he began slowly to walk away, frequently turning back to check the little pink faces of the natives on the hill behind him

The area around the Shepaug Reservoirs is a large natural preserve. There are two or three miles of forest to cross between the corn field and the lower reservoir, and the reservoirs are similarly buffered on all sides. There is room there for many moose and much else, but it is on the bleeding edge of sprawl and whenever there are such sitings, I think about how small that area is, and I feel the constant march of lawns closing in. Each year there are more small driveways burrowing into what was previously unbroken forest, cutting a nearly invisible tunnel ending in a clearing, house and lawn.  We bore our way into the forest as surely as any beetle.

Alas, so poor am I as a news reporter and naturalist that I had to check with my daughter to be sure it was, in fact, a moose I had photographed. The truth is that he was probably lured out of his refuge, not to have his picture taken but by the ripe corn which will soon be harvested.  I'm told this is also mating season when the bulls, normally solitary, go in search of mates. 

Grass-Fed

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Follow the road north from Winchell Mountain, and you'll come to Ancramdale, the center of an agricultural community where farmers produce everything from milk and cheese to Alpaca yarn to aged meat and whiskey. I've been photographing farms and fields in the area since 2009, but yesterday Ancramdale farmers held a kind of "open house," and Jane and I went from farm to farm to learn about the area. This is Fox Hill Farm where the Lampman family have been farming since the 1880s. There was an established farm here before the Civil War. Today Fox Hill Farm raises and sells grass-fed beef and beef products. I took this photo several years ago, and I keep trying to get back to photograph here in the afternoon as the herd is brought across the street, into these fields for their fresh grass dinner.

Blue Yonder

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  The clouds opened like the loosening of a knot, but the birds had already been singing.

The Great River

Hudson River Schooled

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Climb from the Harlem/Route 22 Valley into the hills along its western side, and you'll find mostly horse country until you get up north near Winchell Mountain. It's the highest spot around, a broad spread of corn fields and grazing land for the dairy herds of Pleasant View Farm. Whether or not it is quintessential, this image is an unexceptional glimpse of quiet countryside; unexceptional except that readers of this blog who pass through the area will be trying to recall exactly where it is, and others will know it instantly. It is a place where you can often see people stop to take in the view or just let off steam. One might even put a dot on maps at this very spot and mark it, "Pleasant View."

Before I started photographing in this area I occasionally scorned the work of the Hudson River School painters, but the quiet grandeur they found here is irresistible.  From this gap in the hills where the road passes near the broad top of the mountain, we can see across the Hudson Hills and past the great river to the Catskill Mountains whose crests are 30 miles away and the better part of a two hour, hilly drive. It is easy to forget that we are looking out across a scurrying suburbia of traffic lights, honking horns, and trips to the dentist.  There, along the river's edge especially, the traffic snarls along Route 9 can be maddening.

Sometimes there are cows in this field. Though they might add to the composition, a look at the sky and you ought to realize that any cows in the field now, will be lying down beneath the trees, on the hill to my right, waiting for the weather to change and radiating karmic energy with, I'm certain, no notion of scurrying suburbia.

The End of Hanover HIll

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Mute witnesses to their own raw demise.

Lone Tree

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  A photographer friend once lamented to me not having found her, "Lone-Tree-on-a-Hillside" shot, and I thought to myself, I've shot mine, and it was true even though nobody had seen it but me. I'd shot it, but each time I tried to render it, the finished image fell short of what I thought it could be.

I shot this photograph in May of 2008.  The tree used to stand across from Hanover Hill Farm, but the tree fell long before the barns burned.  I had noticed the tree before the afternoon when it caught the breaking storm clouds. I set the image aside for further work as soon as I reviewed the day's shoot. It was not long after that when the tree fell. It's been on the workbench since while the landscape of which it was a part has vanished forever. 

Of course, one can have more than a single, "Lone Tree," shot, but I've met more than one photographer who believed every serious shooter should have at least one. Classically, it is an exercise in cloud photography, at least once one has found the lone tree and the hillside.

Hanover Hill Autumn

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Many of the photographs I take are initiated by a tacit, "Once upon a time," and because they are photographs that capture an instant, there is often little narrative to color the melancholy initiated by that well-worn phrase. For me the melancholy of Hanover Hill Farm connects to the years in which my camera and I skirted its borders to catch its distant gloom, and to the years after the barns burned when I could get onto the property for angles on the ruins. This one was taken in December of 2011, and I recall the walk and my hope to capture a sunrise or sunset shot from this wrinkle in the corn field. Just at this point the land dipped and the wall permitted a view of the ruined house. I never did catch it in sunset or sunrise light before it was bulldozed. My "Once upon a time..." was filled only with land, houses and barns that clearly proclaimed something large and earnest once went on here, something that would have grabbed the attention of all passers by. That it was distantly visible from surrounding hillsides enlarged its mysteries. Occasionally I struggled to write down my, "What if's."

A year ago I received a call from a gentleman inquiring if I had any photographs of the farm. I guess he was a cattleman, knew the history of Hanover Hill and Peter Heffering who ran it. How between 1968 and 1973 Peter Haffering rented the property and established himself as a legend in breeding Holstein cattle, before taking his operation to Canada. The gentleman had contacted me seeking a suitable photograph as a personal memorial to Heffering's work. For him, this was sacred property. For me, learning a bit of the story and learning of the man's reverence deepened the colors of my, "Once upon a time..." though the image was already fixed in a place apart from Heffering's Hanover Hill.

You can read more about Peter Heffering and Hanover Hill: here.

Hanover Hill from Hiddenhurst

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Contrary to my usual practice, I'm posting this more as a curiosity than because I found it a satisfying photographic composition. I've only done that twice before, and at least once I regretted it.  For me this image has a special force that I want to remember. 

The previous post was of Hiddenhurst Farm. In its day, the size, grandeur and historical significance of Hiddenhurst was matched by only one farm in the area, Hanover Hill.  For many years they remained as empty relics of their eras and worthy subjects for photographic exploration, Hiddenhurst, silos catching the setting sun like a gleaming, princely castle on its hilltop, and Hanover Hill, the brooding neighbor, a rusted blot on the dark hillside.

This is Hanover Hill from Hiddenhurst Hill through my longest lens, the equivalent of 600mm on a full frame camera, an attempt to get closer. Since I began photographing this area I have scouted every perch and pathway that might yield a shot. Like everyone else, I was chased by the lone tenant who leased a small house on Hanover Hill property, chased even if I was on the public highway or on another persons property. He was notorious for the way he kept watch and aggressively went after people on his ATV. 

Well, in truth, once I talked him in to letting me explore a bit. I may be the only photographer who ever succeeded.  I thought I had it set that I could come back later; I only did a very brief inspection. Weeds covered everything, and I knew shooting would be a major project.  However, nowhere have I seen such high, vast haylofts, and cow stalls that went on forever. What pictures they would make! When I returned he had forgotten his offer but from then on remembered my face, and every visit increased his rage though I photographed from the public roadway. It made for an unpleasant shoot, so I soon gave up trying; and then the barns burned to the ground, and the man was gone. 

After that I could photograph pretty much as I wished so long as the hunters weren't around, and I photographed there often at the end of 2011 and in 2012, but the amazing barns were gone. The House on Hanover Hill, taken after the barns burned, was chosen as the poster shot for the Sharon Photography Show this year, and after the barns burned I took many photographs inside the house, but as expected, that too has been bulldozed and now all that is left of Hanover Hill is a field of rubble in the middle of cornfields, and this image in my mind of Hanover Hill from Hiddenhurst. For me, it's kind of haunting.

Hiddenhurst Spotlight

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Today's Photo returns to images I took in 2010 in the valley that lies along the New York side of the Connecticut border.  This time we are below Millerton.  This is the area that has traditionally been called "the Harlem Valley," but to me it seems it is the same valley with the section that runs from Millerton north to Copake; to me it is all the Harlem Valley, the land of Borden and Sealtest.

If this is seen as a single area, Hiddenhurst might well be considered its most iconic monument.  I've photographed it many times and from every direction, and doing a search of the blog for "Hiddenhurst," will turn up many images of it that have been included here.  No need to repeat what I know of its history that is already recorded here.  It must have been spectacular when the fields around these barns were filled with dairy cattle.  It is the place to go when the sky is photogenic or when it is performing magic.

Headwaters

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:   

Wild Ride

Winters tumble stones

that wrestle twisting roots,

and forests heave to stay

the tumble of time and

the flow of summer storms,

the oscillations of cosmic winds

and restless eruptions of human soul.

To be as nimble as the stream

and as rooted as rock.

Eyelash Falls, Shepaug Headwaters

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Consider the complexity of 1/320th-of-a-second in the cataracts search, multiplied by the number and trajectory of collisions and by the length of the journey to the sound and the sea and the years through which the stream has wandered through New England hills to reach this moment captured in a photograph and delivered to you in packets over the internet, chaos at work.  

Shepaug Headwaters

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  For nearly 35 years I have lived in the narrow valley carved by the waters of the Shepaug River and just a bit over a mile from the dam that holds back its headwaters, and yet until several years ago I had never seen the two artificial lakes that are close to the river's source or the two dams that were built there in the 1930s. The waters were dammed and diverted by Waterbury under coercive legislation passed by the Connecticut legislature in 1897 that gave Waterbury wide powers to draw water anywhere they chose.  They say it was a sign that Waterbury industrialists had seized control from the landed gentry in the fertile hills.  

The only active road into the area passes over the dam with signs clearly marked, "keep out," and a station beyond.  So firm is the warning, it has left me, so far, utterly intimidated.  However, I kept looking for other ways in via forgotten roads that once crossed the valley, and several years ago I had success.  Last week my friend suggested a visit might be productive now after recent rain. This picture of Shepaug headwaters was taken then.  

The trail leads back to a spot I have named eyelash falls for two small falls at the point the trail reaches a small stream. The stream bed is made of large rocks and boulders, and often there is no sign of water except the constant rushing beneath the rocks.  At a point where the boulders become too large to easily climb over the stream divides in a tiny delta, and arrives via several small waterfalls at the side of the Upper Shepaug Reservoir, sometimes called Cairns Reservoir.  It is a vast lake, and one could easily believe it was somewhere in the wilderness of Alaska. It was therefore a surprise later to come on two deflated rubber row boats in a spot where the woods had flooded, and then we saw two canoes neatly left, and we knew others had found, perhaps made, this trail.

Next goal - to reach the upper dam.

Red Tin Roof

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Today I drove deep into New York's Columbia County in search of photo adventures. On the way home I found myself passing through Copake and so drove route 22 through the valley of all the recent blog posts; I passed each of the farms, but today's photo is new. 

The barn with the red tin roof has caught my eye for years. It is just south of Copake, before the other barns. I've even stopped to photograph it, more than once, I think, but never with seriousness.  There is a pull-off just beyond the trees where people stop to take in the view. I always stopped there, even though from there the barn is face on; one needs the angle to catch the roof peaking.  Today I pulled off before reaching the pull-off, and I shot until everything came into alignment. 

I've seen it with cattle, a herd of black angus, when the sun was low before the valley's shadow crept up, and I recall that there was magic in the way the black cows  caught the golden light. I was in my car and heading south and the sun was falling.  I'll look for alignments here again some time, but I'll leave this on the blog as a marker and a defense against the chance of subdivision.

Willow Brook Farm

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL:  Still in 2010, further south, looking north from the hilltop above Willowbrook Farm as a storm skirts my perch and with thanks to the Benekes for permission to shoot.

Pass through the doorway into the hayloft of the large barn below, and this is what you will see, photographed for an earlier TODAY'S.