Other Worldly

Standing in the middle of Willband Creek Park, with hands thrust deeply into warm pockets, it really felt like we were on another planet. The light was flat as the transparent envelope of fog gently lifted and drifted northward. The sun was valiantly attempting to burn through the misty sky but was continually being challenged by more rolling banks of fog.

And everywhere around us stood spiky frost encrusted stems and branches who had been gently touched all night by both freezing temperatures and high humidity. The last time I had photographed this place was last fall, on an early chilly morning, when the spider webs were hanging with dew and the orange light of the rising sun was turning everything to diamonds and rubies. The same flocks of water fowl were there, too lazy to fly south for the winter, but now wishing they had as their webbed feet slipped and slid, trying to find purchase on the glare ice.

At every turn there was a photograph, now into the sun, now with the sun at our backs. I touched a spiked branch as I knelt with my camera, and the silver shards crumbled and floated like dust to the earth in a dry heap. What appeared to be sharp and icy was so transparent as to almost be an illusion.

There have been other times when I was immersed in unnatural light, that condition that a photographer is always looking for, but usually ends up creating on his Adobe Photshop program, but this was one of the best. At one point I released my camera to its neck strap and simply stood in the midst of the rare beauty. All I could do was utter a short prayer, "God, thank you for allowing me to be here, now, with these eyes you have given me to behold your creation."

Tomorrow I will post the last of the frosty photos. Please click on them so you can better see what God did that morning.