Refuge on a Country Road

Messing about with the world's greatest point and shoot: the Canon G-11 (now G-12, but who's counting?)

Above: Low Contrast setting, which opens up the shadows, and below, Normal Setting.

The shadows on the old barns are so deep that Low Contrast works to open them up and show more detail, which I like. Especially if I ever intend to paint these scenes.
 Boy, could I see a watercolor of this scene.  Here's the Normal Contrast setting.

 And here's Low Contrast. See how the detail pops out? It lets me see what's going on in the darkest darks on the bank and barn.  So I can use both shots as reference.

                                                                               


I hold the Canon G-11 an inch or so from the rusted hinge and shoot away, marveling at the razor-sharp detail it captures. From landscapes to macro views of wood and hinges, this little workhorse does it all. And on Automatic setting, it decides when I've gone all macro on it, and adjusts accordingly. It's like there's a little brain in there.

I keep walking and shoot back at the old barn before it disappears. I won't see it bathed in such beauty for another year.

How I wish I could conjure these leaves, this sky, for today, when the clouds hang low and weepy. But we've busied ourselves readying the yard for winter birds who will help keep our spirits up when the cold clamps down. Bill built a brushpile to shelter them from the wind and snow, and we put up three more feeders and scattered corn and seed all over the yard. A little thank-you note showed up--the first fox sparrow of fall, scratching about under the brand-new brushpile!

I'm always impressed by the haunting quality of sepiatone photos. In one push of a button, we rocket back 200 years...
and the best part is when you select an effect, such as sepiatone, from the Canon G-11 menu, it shows you what your photo will look like on the screen before you take it! I think back on the days of film, when such options were in post-processing only, when everything was a crapshoot and an expensive one at that, and can only marvel. I've been set free by the digital age. At least in a photographic sense.

Here we are on Tobacco Road.

with our antique barns and little antique doggeh. For a painter, these photos are very useful--they allow me to see relative values of dark and light without the confusion of hue.

I've photographed this little sign dozens of times, with its buckshot holes and its stenciled letters.

Let's get a closeup of those holes.

So many compositions in one small area of an old tired barn. I find such freedom in composing with a camera; it is so effortless compared to composing with a pencil, which I do all day these days. But I'm whistling down the wire on my new book, counting down the paintings left to do. Imagine having almost 160 works of art to do, and finally being down in the 30's. That feels good. Almost as good as walking slowly up Dean's Fork with your best dog.

Who's your best dog?

                                                                     You, Chet Baker. You.

The Roof Makes the Barn

Everyone should have a Dean's Fork. Everyone should have a place they can go that makes their cares melt away. It doesn't have to be Club Med; it doesn't have to be far-flung and exotic, although I think a lot of folks believe it does to truly be a getaway. Getaways are all in the mind. Heck, everything's all in the mind. Contentment, dissatisfaction; rapture or torture; they all live in our heads together, and it's our choice which to access, which to entertain.

Being a simple person, I am able to find my getaway on a dirt road in Southeast Ohio. I love all our dirt roads, but I love this one best of all. There's only one occupied house along it, and the owner's only there on some weekends--it's his getaway, too.

 I often take the kids, but sometimes I just take Chet. He ranges far ahead of me, but he stops and checks to make sure I'm coming along, and he often races back just to give me a kiss. The best kind of companion, he is.

 There is something to be said for perennially cheery and energetic companions. It's nice to walk with someone who's thrilled to go along. Boston terriers do "thrilled" better than almost anybody. I love his little white Michael Jackson glove in this photo, the glimmering gold of autumn's last leaves beckoning beyond.

 The shadows paint tiger stripes on the road. I never walk Dean's Fork without wishing it were ten times its 2.5 mile length.

 Beeches turn yellow before they go gold.

And after the gold, parchment tan, and the leaves hang frozen, curled, stopped in motion. I love that about beech leaves.

We hurry a little, headed toward our favorite part.  I'm playing with camera settings on my beloved super-deluxe point and shoot Canon G-11--above, normal contrast; below, low contrast. It's interesting to change the apparent weather with a push of a button.

It's so picturesque I can barely stand it. I want to stand in the road, throw my arms out and yell AHHHHHH!! but I might scare the wildlife.

 The barns, coming into view. Magic, mystery, old stories not yet told. I finally met the owner of this farm on my last walk--what a charming man. 74. Still wrangling cattle. Must ask him some questions about this homestead. We were too busy getting acquainted in that visit. I was so happy to meet him, to see the unseen hands behind this achingly beautiful farmstead. I had known it would be someone like this.

There were two Herefords still in the pasture on my last walk. One wouldn't come in with the rest when he came to take them to their winter quarters, so he had to leave another behind to keep her company. He said he'd get them eventually.

 I watched him working a huge baler off his trailer hitch and marveled at the things country people do by themselves. He'd get it in the barn and later onto his tractor alone, just one man, outweighed by his equipment as a mouse is outweighed by an elephant. I feebly mimic his resourcefulness when I wrassle my canoe and cargo carrier onto my car by myself. But the canoe weighs 26 pounds; the carrier weighs 70. It felt so odd to walk away and leave him to it, but I would only be a hindrance to his Sunday afternoon chore.

     It was not a drop-jaw fall, but it stunned me nonetheless. These heart-lifting leaves have all fallen; everything here is in shades of unrelieved gray and brown now. November has clamped down and December looms. Today, tiny flakes drift by the window, making me oddly reluctant to take my morning run.

I made hundreds of images while the leaves were still on the trees, and I'm glad I did, for I can visit them whenever I want, to remember the fleeting beauty of autumn, the kind of beauty that makes me fling my arms out and my head back and spin slowly in a circle.                                                                          

                                   
  This ancient slate roof is holding up well, and that's why the barn is still standing. The roof makes the barn, as my Dad always said. I need to build a good roof over myself for the days the rain comes down. Having a place like this stashed away, a place I can go to soak up its quiet is one way to do that. For the human heart, too, the roof makes the barn.
                                 

Adams County Morning

 I traveled over to Adams County, in the heart of Amish Country, to give a talk to the board of the Ohio Nature Conservancy on October 1. TNC is planning an ambitious project to build a land bridge between the Edge of Appalachia preserve and Shawnee State Forest. This is the heart of cerulean warbler country. There could not be a better time to acquire and preserve mature mesic deciduous forest in the stronghold of the cerulean warbler's range. I'm so excited about this acquisition project, which is proceeding without delay. Just look at these hills, cloaked in oaks and hickories, at the mist rolling up from the hayfields.

 I spoke to the board about all the threats facing cerulean warblers and other Neotropical migrant songbirds: mountaintop removal mining primary among them. And it was a balm, the next morning, to drive out and through the best remaining cerulean warbler habitat going. Ceruleans sing so persistently and abundantly in Shawnee State Forest that when I was there three springs ago we were laughing and calling them "trash birds," these endangered little scraps of blue.

 We were making a long caravan, snaking through the Blue Creek valley south of Peebles, Ohio, when I saw a deliquescing tobacco barn that begged to be photographed. I stopped, and the caravan went on without me.

 But I had an ace in the hole: my old Facebook friend and brand new flesh and blood (I like to say corporeal) friend, Tricia West. Tricia grew up on a tobacco farm near here. That's why we decided to have our photo made in front of skeins of drying tobacco.




We decided to turn this unfortunate event (being separated from the TNC field trip) into an expotition. And we did. We wound through the valleys and found Sunshine Ridge Road, for which TNC's "Sunshine Corridor" project is named, and we marveled at the fabulous habitat all around us.  It was so exciting to know it would be preserved forever.

 Tricia pointed out the tobacco barns, airy structures made for drying wet tobacco that's hung from the rafters. The long dark line on the left of this barn is tobacco, drying under black plastic in the field. It's then taken and hung up in the barn. Tricia said each plant gets handled a lot between planting and the final stripping of the leaves from the stem.

 

You can just see the warm brown tobacco between the cracks in the siding. I love knowing these seemingly decaying barns are active, working structures. I also love thinking there might be barn owls in some of them. Tricia said she grew up with white owls screaming in the rafters of her barn, and didn't think anything of it. Well, she said sometimes they scared the bejabbers out of her, but...Now that she's a birder, she knows how incredible that is. You can count the remaining pairs of barn owls in Ohio on one hand. And it's all because barns like these are falling down and being replaced by metal pole barns, tight as a drum, with no way for any ghost owls to make their way inside.

 This grand old house belongs to some of Tricia's relatives. I was seared with the feeling that, but for chance, this could have been my family's house, too. I wondered how it felt to drive by, recognizing a house like this from your childhood. I yearned to have memories here, too, but mine were only made today.

 The house is in beautiful repair, not a single detail anachronistic or jarring. So beautiful.

 And right next door, the little store owned by her family. How I would love to make this a studio, not change a detail. Well, maybe drown it in flowers, put a Boston terrier on the front porch. That's all.

Tricia called this the greenhouse. Green it was, with a  huge black walnut dropping alarums on its roof.

 Too soon, it was time to leave, and I raced for Whipple, snapping photos out the car window. There are so many cemeteries in Amish country. All of them lovely.

I don't know why I like this photo so much, taken as it was from my car window. I liked the laundry flapping on the line, and tried to snap it, but the G-ll was sluggish and I got a sugar maple in the way. And it was perfect.

 A lonely field, more black walnuts having taken off their summer dresses, standing naked before the winter.

 A barn, being taken over by trees.

 As so very many are. I love the ruins, but I love more to see a barn doing its job. A trip to Amish country reminds me that somewhere, there are barns that aren't slated for demolition, barns that contribute and are appreciated.

 

Hackleshin Road, a nice name for someone who likes raptors. And before I knew it, I was home, a wonderful adventure behind me. I want to come back and see the Sunshine Corridor grow and grow! Thank you, Ohio Nature Conservancy, for this gift to the planet. 

Barn Wabi-Sabi

Maybe on our next walk we'll ford the creek and poke around this gorgeous barn. We had miles to go, so we forged on.

The next barn was close to the road, and we dove into the detail on its old sides.


I'm not sure what this material originally was--rubberized cloth? but it had aged into a fascinating, fungal texture.

Oh, I loved this sign. You can't make a sign like this. Time has to make it. Time, and some yahoos to shoot it for you.


There were some Herefords just across the fork. Chet was all a-tremble, but at almost five years old, he knows better than to go after them.

No leash necessary, just a warning word. Good boy, Chet. Keep moving.

Mether, someday I may go round those cattle up when you are not looking. But now you are looking. And you are right. I am not a cattle dog. I am a chiptymunk dog. Until someday when you are not looking.

A field daisy defies the frost. I can't remember seeing a fall with so many blooming daisies.

Are you coming, Mether? Or are you going to crouch down by the flollers all day?


Yes, Chet Baker, but I have a few more flollers to crouch by. These milkweed pods will do nicely.



It is tricky keeping the horizon straight when you're crouching. Or maybe I'm drunk on rural beauty. Or maybe it's that these barns are all off true by more than a few degrees. Everybody's staggering here.

Not least me and Shila, at the end of the five or six miles. But there's more to come. We're only a quarter of the way up the road.

For those who are still wondering, wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept of beauty through age, weathering, imperfection, impermanence. It is a scarred and twisted bonsai, a wise and knowing face, a beat-up ballerina's foot, an old Ohio barn.