It’s very cold and icy where I live, so the creeks are frozen. A recent snowfall covers the ice. While I haven’t seen animals, except for birds and the occasional squirrel, I saw their many tracks all along the creek. Not sure what animal but it was small enough to follow the creek through the pipe under the road. It was fun to think of the creeks becoming a pathway for the animals.
Hey, how’s everyone doing? Just wanted to share about a new program in my area that I’m very excited about. It’s called the Witness Tree Program, where the town is mapped by trees of cultural and historical significance. This is something you could do with the favourite trees of your place. A new way of seeing for sure. Here’s the link to learn more - https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/25e09ebdd32a4a25b83a9876e4fc7545
An interesting challenge this week. Every day I look out onto the mighty Fraser River, without questioning or knowing her. She starts at Mt. Robson on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains wanders or thunders through central BC flowing south finally draining into the Pacific Ocean just south of Vancouver. At New Westminster, my home, the fresh water in the Fraser starts to mix with the salty Pacific Ocean as the tides rise and fall. Massive salmon runs, the most productive in the world, call The Fraser home; sockeye, coho, chum, chinook & pink. Qayqayt First Nation called this home, the Musqueam & Kwantlen used this site as a seasonal village up until the 1940s. The Qayqaut is the smallest First Nations in Canada and the only one registered without a land base. I saw a seal today & think I may have seen my first heron, although it is a bit early.
What a great description. Interesting how rivers are considered mighty. I would say the same about the Niagara River, although it’s much smaller than the Fraser. It’s slope makes it mighty.
....listening to a bundle of interviews with Stephen Jenkinson and pulled these words as parts of my musings for this week.....We don’t have a ‘carrying story’ When we fled Europe we lost home and in many cases lost peace of mind. We’re trying to figure how we can adopt ritual from our adopted land and hope that it allows us to be here. We’re looking for something, some way to truly land in our adopted our home. To plant both feet solidly on our current homeland.
A couple of years ago our niece was visiting and I drew maps to show her where things are. But street names went in one ear and out the other. If I drew the map and located the important things (where we get ice cream, the streetcar stop, the wading pool), then her references made sense and my niece developed a sense of place.
That’s my long-winded way of saying that we all have things that are important to us, and use those things as reference points. Mapping can tie landmarks together.
This week I also listened to an archived “Cultivating Place” podcast.
A map of the wood features things in the wood that are important to Christopher Robin (Nice for Picnics, Sandy Pit Where Roo Plays, Bee Tree, and, of course, Where The Woozle Wasn’t).
I decided to mark on a map places I loiter for photos visit, for photos, and see and if anything binds them (beyond my desire to loiter).
So, I’ve got the local cemetery, which we visit for walks and which contains beautiful patterns of lichen on headstones (also, we just found a headstone for a Black woman who was a freed slave and ran an Underground Railroad from the States to Canada).
I’ve got a hill that I use to photograph the city skyline, that archival photos show me has been used for tobogganing since Europeans settled here.
I visit s a set of disused rail tracks that lead to a disused rail bridge. An investigation led me to a history of the bridges that traverse my local Don River. This got me thinking about our neighbourhood, which was in many ways built up around the Don River, including an attempt to change the flow of the river, which is now being rectified through a flood-protection project in Toronto’s Port Lands district.
I discovered that a series of tall green exhaust pipes at the top of the hill is used to vent methane gas from a 1920’s landfill site beneath the park. This, I did not know.
I also learned that earlier, around 150 years ago, the place where I now muck about had fields of wheat, rye, barley, oats, asparagus beds, and the river flats were meadows with sheep. The area was industrialized and later the Don Valley Parkway was added, running along the Don River. That’s another story.
I also added to my map a huddle of sculptures I sometimes visit along the Don Trail that I discovered is by North Ontario sculpture Duane Linklater and collectively titled Monster of Permanence and Individuality.
The name of this collection of sculptures seems to sum up what I gravitate to, a mix of the wild and the things we create as ‘permanent’ that is then left to the landscape to take on a life of their own.
Thanks for the links, Tim. What a great idea to map the places you stop most frequently and then delving into the history of that place. It seems you’re discovering things about yourself and your place.
Hello, all - this 5 minute video from the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine offers a contemplation on winter landscape, place and photography. It is about the photographer Koichiro Kurita. https://vimeo.com/491297450
Thank you very much for sharing the Kurita video, Susan. I love his melding of Japanese and U.S. culture, and the relationship between photography and nature, both in the subject matter and print process. A true delight.
It’s very cold and icy where I live, so the creeks are frozen. A recent snowfall covers the ice. While I haven’t seen animals, except for birds and the occasional squirrel, I saw their many tracks all along the creek. Not sure what animal but it was small enough to follow the creek through the pipe under the road. It was fun to think of the creeks becoming a pathway for the animals.
Watching the changing animal tracks on our frozen backyard pond is one of my favorite things about winter. Each time it snows, the paths change.
I love the idea of animals following the creek through the pipe under the road
Hey, how’s everyone doing? Just wanted to share about a new program in my area that I’m very excited about. It’s called the Witness Tree Program, where the town is mapped by trees of cultural and historical significance. This is something you could do with the favourite trees of your place. A new way of seeing for sure. Here’s the link to learn more - https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/25e09ebdd32a4a25b83a9876e4fc7545
For those of you interested in maps, I’ve been enjoying the emails from Bloomberg Map Lab in the past year. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-03/share-your-hand-made-maps-of-life-under-quarantine?srnd=citylab-maplab
An interesting challenge this week. Every day I look out onto the mighty Fraser River, without questioning or knowing her. She starts at Mt. Robson on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains wanders or thunders through central BC flowing south finally draining into the Pacific Ocean just south of Vancouver. At New Westminster, my home, the fresh water in the Fraser starts to mix with the salty Pacific Ocean as the tides rise and fall. Massive salmon runs, the most productive in the world, call The Fraser home; sockeye, coho, chum, chinook & pink. Qayqayt First Nation called this home, the Musqueam & Kwantlen used this site as a seasonal village up until the 1940s. The Qayqaut is the smallest First Nations in Canada and the only one registered without a land base. I saw a seal today & think I may have seen my first heron, although it is a bit early.
What a great description. Interesting how rivers are considered mighty. I would say the same about the Niagara River, although it’s much smaller than the Fraser. It’s slope makes it mighty.
....listening to a bundle of interviews with Stephen Jenkinson and pulled these words as parts of my musings for this week.....We don’t have a ‘carrying story’ When we fled Europe we lost home and in many cases lost peace of mind. We’re trying to figure how we can adopt ritual from our adopted land and hope that it allows us to be here. We’re looking for something, some way to truly land in our adopted our home. To plant both feet solidly on our current homeland.
A couple of years ago our niece was visiting and I drew maps to show her where things are. But street names went in one ear and out the other. If I drew the map and located the important things (where we get ice cream, the streetcar stop, the wading pool), then her references made sense and my niece developed a sense of place.
That’s my long-winded way of saying that we all have things that are important to us, and use those things as reference points. Mapping can tie landmarks together.
This week I also listened to an archived “Cultivating Place” podcast.
https://www.cultivatingplace.com
The podcast featured an interview with Katherine Aalto, who curated an anthology of women who wrote about landscape (the book is titled Writing Wild).
Bear with me. Aalto also wrote a book about A.A. Milne’s 100-Acre Wood, drawn by E.H. Shepard for Winnie the Pooh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Acre_Wood#/media/File:Map_of_the_Hundred_Acre_Wood.gif
A map of the wood features things in the wood that are important to Christopher Robin (Nice for Picnics, Sandy Pit Where Roo Plays, Bee Tree, and, of course, Where The Woozle Wasn’t).
I decided to mark on a map places I loiter for photos visit, for photos, and see and if anything binds them (beyond my desire to loiter).
So, I’ve got the local cemetery, which we visit for walks and which contains beautiful patterns of lichen on headstones (also, we just found a headstone for a Black woman who was a freed slave and ran an Underground Railroad from the States to Canada).
I’ve got a hill that I use to photograph the city skyline, that archival photos show me has been used for tobogganing since Europeans settled here.
I visit s a set of disused rail tracks that lead to a disused rail bridge. An investigation led me to a history of the bridges that traverse my local Don River. This got me thinking about our neighbourhood, which was in many ways built up around the Don River, including an attempt to change the flow of the river, which is now being rectified through a flood-protection project in Toronto’s Port Lands district.
I discovered that a series of tall green exhaust pipes at the top of the hill is used to vent methane gas from a 1920’s landfill site beneath the park. This, I did not know.
I also learned that earlier, around 150 years ago, the place where I now muck about had fields of wheat, rye, barley, oats, asparagus beds, and the river flats were meadows with sheep. The area was industrialized and later the Don Valley Parkway was added, running along the Don River. That’s another story.
I also added to my map a huddle of sculptures I sometimes visit along the Don Trail that I discovered is by North Ontario sculpture Duane Linklater and collectively titled Monster of Permanence and Individuality.
The name of this collection of sculptures seems to sum up what I gravitate to, a mix of the wild and the things we create as ‘permanent’ that is then left to the landscape to take on a life of their own.
Thanks for the links, Tim. What a great idea to map the places you stop most frequently and then delving into the history of that place. It seems you’re discovering things about yourself and your place.
Hello, all - this 5 minute video from the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine offers a contemplation on winter landscape, place and photography. It is about the photographer Koichiro Kurita. https://vimeo.com/491297450
Thanks for introducing this wonderful (anew to me) photographer to us all, Susan.
Thank you very much for sharing the Kurita video, Susan. I love his melding of Japanese and U.S. culture, and the relationship between photography and nature, both in the subject matter and print process. A true delight.