And So it begins

Blogging is going to become a rarer even as I am spending more time in Dial-up country. Added to that is the shear amount of work I have found my self doing. For the sake of my mental health I have been keeping busy playing at being a woods man. Learning the fine art of sharpening a chainsaw and then attacking trees with it. I am driven by honest need. when I came home two or so weeks ago I had a small firewood stash one intended for infrequent short visits. Faced with a impending shortage I have kept my self hacking away in the woods most days. I am pleased to report that the wood pile is growing much faster then I am burning it but I have a long ways to go.

All that hard work is proving fun. Time has been found to enjoy the natural and nonnatural beauty of this region.
This post is being posted a week after I had planned to as it did not load the pictures the last time I was in town

All Good Things...

I write this sitting in the great center of civilization that is the Nakusp Library. The free fall that has hits the stock market has had a very strong impact on the company I was working for. I just received a note that the camp will be reduced to 2 people crew this winter and I am going to guess that it is going to be a long recovery.

I am not going to complain. I had a run of nearly two and a half years of solid employment, I was in the back of my mind expecting to be placed on the expendable list at any moment. It was an interesting time. I did not perhaps record it clearly enough in this venue as I had worries about leaking information and respecting the privacy of my coworkers. In this time I have learned to understand Newfie speed mumbling, and met folks form a large slice of Canada.

I have gained enough material resources to have the means to enjoy a healthy amount of time off to catch up on some living.
Not feeling inclined to write a long essay I will leave it at this and post some photos form the time up there.

And The Sun Also Rises

And The Sun Also Rises.

Its that time of year when the sunrises. Now the sun rises here all the time but this time of year lends it self to the right mix of cloud and solar aspect. A weather system was coming up from the south this morning making for a rich sky scape.



Now I have posted images of the morning light shows before but they bare repeating. This morning nearly an hour was killed between 0730 and 0830. In difference to my previous attempts at capturing these images I moved away from trying to capture a perfect copy of reality.



I did not plan it that way but I got annoyed with the automatic modes displaying the colours as either too bright or two pale. In an effort to correct my cameras bias I moved it to full manual. After some fiddling it proved as satisfying to alter reality by controlling apature and f-stop I was able twist the colour and light away from reality to something that starts to get closer to art.



I especially liked cutting down on the light in take for the effect of darkening the colours adding rich tones that I did not see with my eyes.

Northern Lights Squared

Blessed be Mehdi's novelty seeking soul. I was peacefully reading Salt, a world History, more on that in an up coming norther lights entertainment report when I got a diversion. I was informed that the northern lights where out. Now I have seen them a few time out here. Often they are active too late at night or it is deep winter and I can not be talked into going outside. Tonight was neither. And quite honestly it was the best I have ever seen them. A shimmering green ribbon across the sky. I do not have the interest or even the time to commit 1000 words in there place I will provide 5000 words worth of photographs.

These photos were possible because of the high level of control I have with my Canon G9, manual over rides for nearly every thing nearly never used. A tripod and long exposer times let me get enough light on the my chip with out it turning into a bury mess. I experimented with use times as long as 15 seconds, which proved too long as the brightest parts of the Aura became white with light saturation on the chip. Even imperfect experiments are worth it for a show that good. Enjoy.

Lake land

Now that I have recovered from the lost sleep and general tiredness of 1400km commute in 2 days I have the resources to write again. As is too often the case I find my blog posts lagging a week or two at least be hind real life. This is no exception.

As can be seen in my last post I got s Kayak. Because I was living in dialup country I did not attempt to make up any posts with the pictures from those adventures. Of which there were many pictures.

This time off turned out to have been my most expensive one since I got my car, not matching in for dollars spent but taking the biggest chunk out of my cash in a long time. A boat and dental work will do that. I managed to spend time at some of my favorate places on and off the water.

This post is really about lakes, all the ones I found my self on. In the first boat post I was on Wood lake out side of Kelowna, I have since found my self on Kookenay lake , The middle and lower portions of Arrow lake, Slocan lake, and the larger of the Champion lakes near Fruitvale. As well as Summit and Box lakes near nakusp. I am feeling lazy so I will leave it for you to figure which lake is which.

Afloat

Well I am back in the south. That means a chance to spend some of the money I have earned through my excessive working.
Today after some trial and a little error I bought a kayak. Due to having the chance to try out a few models at the beach this morning I found my self wanting a bout that was a big step up in both materials and price. Knowing that I could not have enjoyed the original boat I had in mind I coughed up the extra money and got me a boat I could really love rather then just like.

So having set my self up with a vessel and the odds and end needed to get out on the water with I headed off to a small local lake, Wood Lake out side of Kelowna. It was calm save for the wakes of the speed boats. I was out on the water for over 3 hours.
The latter half saw me with some company as I had came a shore to adjust my seating and in typical style got chatting.

So now I have some pictures to share of the boat and the lake

Changes

Well I am going home tomorrow morning. Yay me. And I will be entering a fossil fuel powered time machine, other wise known as jet. It is at this time of year as in spring that the differences in latitude show up most strongly.

Up here nearly all the leaves have turned nearly all at once. We had the first short lived snow fall over lunch a couple days ago. We're having crispy days with frost and ice on some lesser mud puddles. But this time of year is also when I start to see my favourate sunrises that many of you readers have seen.




I have this rotation for my physical and mental heath tried to go for walks on a daily basis. Well I did not go out daily I did manage to go for walks more often then not. This gave me a chance to photograph some of the wild life as on those days I remember to bring my camera. If I brought my camera with me every time I would have filed up my hard drive by now so its best if I for get it more often then not.




So enjoy the change of season, I my self look forward to moving a few weeks back in time to more gentle early fall.