Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay

September is gone and October is suddenly here. The days have gotten manifestly shorter and slightly cooler and I’ve been eyeing my winter running gear with a little suspicion and loathing, not looking forward to the day when donning and shucking the gear needed to run 5k takes longer than the run itself. Waking up in the dark has started to take its toll on my cheerfulness and resilience, too, reminding me of the imminence of seasonal attitude and energy downs-wings.

I am not a creature of the dark. and it takes a tremendous amount of energy to not only survive the winter, but to venture out into it.

But that’s what makes the difference, you see, venturing out. It can’t be the effect of sunlight on skin, since I’m normally swathed in layers of wool, silk, spandex and Gortex. I can only guess that it must be the effect of sun in the eyes, coupled with endorphins and the same sense of purpose that the Jesuit missionaries got when heading into hostile territories. Running in winter in the snowy parts of Canada (and Vancouver, I’m NOT talking about YOU) requires zeal and determination, along with the right gear and some good friends. If you do manage it, though, it counteracts the effects of darkness. Even running in the dark (and we do a lot of that) makes the world brighter.

Heading Home

When you run outside in winter, you become attuned to exactly how long a day is. Running certain familiar routes demonstrates concretely that the days not only get shorter, as you hit those mile markers in progressive darkness, but also shorter, as the days lengthen in the depths of winter. When the first tiny glimpses of spring show up, you see them and feel them. Runners are among the first to divest themselves of layers of clothing when the thermometer girds its loins for the great leap over zero (Celsius). You notice the sudden appearance of random patches of grass long before everyone else and dash off-trail to succumb to the hydraulic pressures induced by spring stream songs before anyone else notices the snowbanks diminishing.

And suddenly, just as suddenly as it was winter, it’s spring. And time for hillwork……

Heading home on the row boat in Exploits Harbour. It’s remarkably difficult to row and take pictures simultaneously.

I woke up this morning in the middle of a dream, in which I was trying to find a boat to take me to Exploits Islands. I could read all sorts of wonderful symbolism, about stress and escaping from it, into this mental meandering. It probably has something to do with Exploits being a place without the complications of daily life in a city.  Perhaps it’s also to do with the fact that I’ve been thinking about the roofing job we’re getting done there and delighting in having found a competent contractor who likes working on this remote island devoid of electricity. Or maybe I’m just really tired and want to go to that place that sometimes feels more like home than the home of my every day.

Whatever the case, I woke up as the phone was ringing to advise me that the boat was on its way and I’d be on the island in a matter of an hour or so.

Only the phone ringing in my dream was the alarm clock sounding off on my reality to tell me that it was 6:30.

Thank goodness it’s Friday.

The Dolphin II

I posted a version of this photo earlier in the summer, while on Exploits Islands, but I wanted to pop this one up now for several reasons.

Firstly, having limited bandwidth on the island, the resolution of the photo originally posted was not great. Looking at it on a tiny phone or camera screen did not reveal to me the  lack of crispness. So I’m reposting the photo here and replacing it in the original post. I may do this with several of the better shots as I go along.

Secondly, I did a small amount of digital touching up and I like this shot more now. I liked it before, but now it’s a little closer to my mind’s eye.

Finally, it rather suits my mood today. This picture feels to me like a moment of dynamic tension, caught by the camera. The boat is lifting and lowering on the swell just a little, the line is almost taut and the diagonals in the composition add a sense of impending action. At least, they do in my mind. Add to this the warmth and clarity of the shot and you have precisely my mood today; waiting for things to start happening and excited and confident about the whole situation.

Amazing what a little sleep and exercise will do for a person, isn’t it?

Velvet skies, the view from our deck at night on Exploits Islands. 14.5 minute exposure with a wide-angle lens.

I’ve been plotting out a series of pieces and am started in on the skies and basic layouts for them. Sifting through photographs to jog my imagination has been a great help, since the skies on Exploits are a little different from the ones I find on the Avalon Peninsula. The clear nights are deeper and have more texture and the sunny days are bluer and richer somehow. Painting them requires a different touch of paint on fabric and different drying conditions, as well as a preemptive plan as to how the resulting fabric will be layer, stitched or otherwise manipulated to capture this depth.

(One of) The Manuel House(s) on Exploits Islands.

After yesterday’s little hurricane, it’s nice to look at blue skies and normal wind levels. We weren’t hit too badly, although our shed is ninety degrees north of where it ought to be.

I took these photos in July, on Exploits Islands. The shot above is of one of the more dramatic and colourful houses on the islands. It’s extremely well-kept, too, which makes it even more picturesque. As you can see, it’s a fair distance up from the water. Not too bad, mind you, by comparison with the building in the shot below.

The schoolhouse on Exploits Islands.

The old schoolhouse is being revamped as a cabin and the picture above was taken from near the yellow house. It’s a long way up to haul groceries for a visit and an even longer way up to lug clapboard, paint, roofing materials and other things necessary in the restoration of an old wooden building. I have nothing but admiration for Ted Stuckless and his wife, Joann, for attempting this feat. It’s one thing to get materials out to the island and quite another to move them from water level almost straight uphill 400m or so. You need strong backs and dogged determination.

A profound and lasting love of the islands helps, too…

Filed under: D7000, Exploits Islands, history, Life, Newfoundland & Labrador, Notre Dame Bay, Photography, photos ]]> http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/09/12/blue-skies-ahead/feed/ 1 VickyTH (One of) The Manuel House(s) The schoolhouse on Exploits http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/08/23/raisin-the-roof/ http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/08/23/raisin-the-roof/#comments Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:57:32 +0000 VickyTH http://seastrandsstudio.com/?p=3003 ]]>

Finding someone willing and able to put a good roof on an old house in the middle of nowhere can be a real challenge.

Our property from the shore – The boathouse, house and woodshed from where the wharf ought to be. The boathouse and house were partially painted at this point.

Fortunately, Exploits has several skilled contractors able to handle such jobs and we were lucky enough to convince Dirk Muir to give us a hand. With a new roof, new paint job, and next year some new clapboard on one side, a new prefab chimney, and (if I’m really lucky) a new wharf, deck and staircase, this lovely old house will be all set. Of course there will always be things to do, but I’m looking forward to having the big ones under control. (Well, most of the big ones. The rear sill really needs a little TLC, too.)

Getting ready to roof! Photo credit, George Collins. (Thanks, Gee, for snapping this and sending it. You truly made my week!)

Sections (the easier ones) of the trail are like this now.

For eighteen years, John has been coming down to Exploits with me. Actually, that’s not strictly true. The first year he came down with me but trips of subsequent years were as much his as mine. One of the more obvious compatibility tests before our marriage was whether he could love this remarkable place that is more home to me than anywhere else and love it for its own sake and not just mine. We’ve been married for sixteen years this summer and he has become as much a part of me as Exploits is and has helped me find a new and deeper love of this place that holds a piece of my soul, so I guess he passed with flying colours.

Some portions of the trail are like this. Many dead falls and a few washouts.

In any event, from the first visit, I had told him about the lighthouse on the other island, about the trail across the island to that lighthouse, about my childhood memories of having tea with the lightkeepers (before everything was automated) and about the potato gardens near the other end of the trail. I told him about how Dad would haul us kids along the trail at least once each visit, always (to my memory) in the pouring rain and how I never knew if he actually wanted to get us out of the house for Mom’s sake, genuinely enjoyed the walk in the forest or was escaping Grandma. I strongly suspected the last reason as being the most powerful, as a child, and since a walk in the woods with Dad was a rarity, these memories stuck fast.

Some sections had so many dead falls that we would walk five steps, climb, walk five steps, climb, walk five steps, duck under, etc.

I made the walk several times as a teenager, following the old trail out and back. Once I followed the telephone/telegraph wires, a route I do not recommend, as it traverses every bog on the island. When I arrived at the light, the keepers took one look at me, fifteen years old and black to the waist with swamp debris, and promptly put the kettle on and fished out towels, which I am sure they had to burn after. I was a mess, but it was fun.

Pieces of the old boardwalks, bridges and stone edgings are still there, but they are more hazardous than helpful. This was one of the few that you could step on without peril.

But John and I never got there together. In 2002, the station was automated, but prior to that, keepers were brought in by boat or helicopter (mostly boat) and the trail gradually fell into disrepair. It was used by locals, but the government, having resettled the community in 1967, wasn’t putting any more money into road maintenance.

The kids enjoyed signs of beavers in the area. We found some very, very freshly cut pieces (cut in the last day or two) as well.

We made several attempts to get across, but each one was thwarted by fairly trivial obstacles. Once we were driven out of the woods by the blackflies and stouts (you may call them deerflies or horseflies where you are). Another time there was a knee injury. Yet another attempt involved a very tired three-year-old and her even more tired mother deciding it wasn’t worth it. You get the picture. As with Woolf’s Ramsays, there was never a good time, always a doubt, a reason or an excuse and it just didn’t happen, and so the aura around the trip grew in our minds.

As you approach the end of the trail, near the lighthouse, there are a few small boardwalks and bridges, made of some rather impressive lumber. I found out later that they were made by the Coast Guard from extra scraps used in the construction of the stairs and helipad.

Each year I would say, “We must get across to the lighthouse,” and each year we would either not have time or make an abortive attempt. It was getting rather silly. After all, it only looked like 2k each way on my map. So the day before we left this August, we rustled the kids up and I decided that we would get across to the lighthouse come hell, high water, insects or whiny children (the last being the most likely). We rowed across, tied up the boat and started in.

The kids were initially eager. After all, it’s a lighthouse. Who doesn’t like a lighthouse? While there was the usual, “I’m tired. Are we there yet?” “No, we’ve only walked 800m. Keep moving,” conversations, the kids pretty well all took the walk, which turned out to be 4.6k each way from the wharf, in stride. Unlike the Ramsay children in Woolf’s book, who moaned the whole way, if I recall correctly. There was a brief incident, which almost led me to believe that there was some manner of jinx on our ability to get to the lighthouse, in which a child leapt off a rock and came down hard on an ankle, but he was able to walk it off and the adventure continued..

Garnet, with the lighthouse in sight!

It was, in fact, calling it an adventure about three-quarters of the way across, that gave the kids their second wind. When we finally caught a glimpse of water and then the lighthouse buildings, they charged on ahead happily.

The foundations of an old lighthouse keeper’s house, at Surgeon Cove Point.

The existing keeper’s house is locked and privately owned. There was no one there at the time. The tower, however….

Surgeon Cove Point Lighthouse, Exploits Islands. Do you see a lock on that door? Nope. Neither do I.

…was open!

Towering

So a few of us went up inside to enjoy the view.

Going up!

Some of the glass panels were cracked, which made for interesting photographic effects.

Fractured.

Feathered

It was pretty cool to get inside. It was a small tower, but still nifty.

Looking down from the second story.

We took a nice long break on the helipad, after which John “celebrated”, in a strangely male way, a trip he’d been wanting to tak for eighteen years. He said it was a relief in more ways than one and enjoyed the view in the process. The kids laughed themselves silly. I do not entirely understand men.

Break time on the chopper pad.

And then it was off home again. When I was really small, it was uphill, both ways. I vividly remember this fact, which is why I was surprised by the return trip this time being downhill and quick quick.

Rowing home. Our house is the grey saltbox one at right, with the bright blue stairs and doors.

When next we go out, we’re going to tote along our bucksaws and a tent and make certain parts of the trail more passable. However, since it took us eighteen years to get out there, I wouldn’t hold your breath on us getting to it next summer.

Should you make the trip, wear good footwear and be prepared to get it wet. Take plenty of water and be sure to pack a lunch; it’s a marvellous picnic spot!

Heavenly. The image post-processing, after I lightened a little of the shadowing in the foreground and adjusted the colour to reflect my view of reality. I also removed the distracting glare from the solar panels (found in the images below, towards the right of the photo). As well, since this image was uploaded to Flickr and I’m using normal high-speed internet (as opposed to the relatively more expensive cellphone data transfer), I was able to upload a higher-resolution image.

After a month of posting pictures straight off the camera using a smart phone that let me see only very tiny images, it’s rather nice to have the desktop back again.

The Nikon D7000 has some digital manipulation software contained within the camera body and let me do some things like correct horizons that weren’t straight or crudely alter contrast and shadows, but it’s not terribly sophisticated. The biggest constraint lay in my inability to see how pictures looked when on a large screen. Working from the phone, I could not spot, for instance, that images turned out blurry when large.

It also turns out that the screen on my D7000 shows images as far brighter than most computer monitors do, so my editing jobs sometimes looked darker than I would have liked, once uploaded.

The processing possible with the internal software of the D7000. As you can see, it’s better than the original, but not nearly as sophisticated as the image at the top of the page.

So it was a learning experience, but it at least let me add content to the blog sporadically and kept you all in the loop.

The image as it came directly off the camera

As you can see from the image above, processing can make all the difference in the world.

The Boathouse: Before

The effect is lovely and having a tidy-looking, dry building in which to work on projects, store wood and, of course, keep boats, it just fantastic.

The Boathouse: After

Filed under: Boats, D7000, Exploits Islands, Newfoundland & Labrador, Notre Dame Bay, photography, photos ]]> http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/08/16/before-and-after-2/feed/ 2 VickyTH The Boathouse: Before The Boathouse: After http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/08/14/home-again/ http://seastrandsstudio.com/2012/08/14/home-again/#comments Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:02:14 +0000 VickyTH http://seastrandsstudio.com/?p=2971 ]]>

Moss & Rowan at Gull Island Cove, Exploits Islands

We’re home again, in Torbay, Newfoundland, after a marvelous trip to Exploits Islands. I haven’t even started looking at the photos I took; the mountain of laundry and Things To Do being somewhat prohibitive at this point. I’ll pick through them gradually in the coming weeks.

Jane Green's house in lower harbour (below where the bridge used to be).

Paddling up and down the harbour in our rodney or punt is a great way to get a different view of houses. Since the marine highway here predates the terrestrial cart track, most of the older houses are built to be accessed by boat first and road, second.

The sun sets larger over the water.

One of these days I hope to build a small sailboat for use here. A kayak or two wouldn’t go amiss either. All I need is time…

Watching stars from the front deck. More shooting stars than I can remember.

Since the bridge fell into disrepair and was subsequentially blown up (one of the great disappointments of my adulthood is not being there to see it blow), I don’t find myself on the other island all that often. It used to be possible to walk from our house to the lighthouse without setting foot in a boat.

Since the bridge’s demise, I’ve been over there far less. Generally once a year I row over and walk around to see how things have changed. Today we dodged rain showers and I managed a couple of shots of some of the older houses.

Like our island, things are changing. There are new houses going up and old ones have finally fallen (or are about to). Feeling nostalgic, I shot in monochrome with an orange filter today.

Dirk Muir kayaks home as the sun sets at Exploits. Dirk built this skin over frame boat himself and has sorely tempted me to take a stab at boat building.

John and I painted the front of the house today. It’s a long way up and involved an abundance of ladder work at heights edging on nerve-wracking, but it’s done. I still have to caulk the windows and do trim, but trim is for next year.

Kathleen & Ritchie Taylor's new house.

So I took an evening wander to stretch my legs and had a thoroughly lovely time.

It started with Dad and the new outhouse. Sometime in the mid-eighties, after a long boatride across the bay to Exploits, we all trooped sprinted up from the dock to the outhouse. Dad and Uncle Peter had built a new one in the spring and there’s nothing quite like “going” in a new outhouse. It’s clean, doesn’t smell and there’s a lovely draft flowing to air you right out. As a child, staring into an empty stench-free pit held quite an allure, especially knowing the alternative.

So we dashed up over the hill en masse admiring the new (and as of yet, unpainted) structure and came to a screeching halt on the walkway. Hanging right over the doorway was a massive, humming nest of humongous wasps.

Wasps love new wood and it really shouldn’t have surprised anyone. The urgency of the situation was reaching a critical state, though, and Dad decided to DO something. He suited up in full raingear, gloves, rubber boots, an old curtain draped over his head and gathered around the neck and a large straw hat to top off the ensemble. He then grabbed an ice cream tub and jammed it up over the nest. Predictably, the wasps were not impressed. Pretty soon Dad was standing, arm upraised, with a bucketful of furious wasps. Fairly deftly, with a determination fuelled by desperation and hydraulics, he slid a board between wood and tub, lifted down the vibrating bucket and, realising the precarious nature of his dilemma, hollered, “What the hell do I do now??!”

“Run to the beach!” we all screamed back helpfully. So off he galloped, our paternal mummer, curtain streaming behind him, dancing down over the dozen staircases, wasps in hand.

“Now what?”

“Put it in the ocean, upside down and stick a rock in it. Wait for the tide to come in!” Happily, it worked. Took us a week to work up the nerve to tip that bucket, which was less time than it took Mom to paint the outhouse.

Fast forward twenty years. My brother is in his first apartment. A wasp flies in through his window. His first thought; “What would Dad do?” Apparently what Dad would do involved a skidoo suit, gloves, boots and another curtain. I was laughing so hard when I heard that I forgot to ask what happened to the wasp.

When we arrived this year, we discovered that the woodpeckers had knocked a nice hole in the siding. The birds were no longer in evidence, but a cursory poke revealed other inhabitants.

In the family tradition, John assumed the mantle and dealt with the wasps. Thankfully, we had plenty of wasp killer and he was able to do the job thoroughly. He dressed up for the occasion, though, in keeping with the spirit of the event.

Dad was so proud.