Hawley Bog. January 26, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: acid bog, Hawley, Hawley Bog, leatherleaf, northern pitcher plants, Ollie, sphagnum moss, spruce snags
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Up in Hawley, Massachusetts sits Cranberry Bog, A.k.A. Hawley Bog, which is the highest elevation acid bog in the State. It’s an expanse of floating mats of sphagnum peat, harboring large communities of leatherleaf, bog cranberries, laurels and azaleas, as well as some less common species of plants and trees.
I got up there today in poor weather and worse light, just in time for the beginning of the snow:
…which is expected to turn to sleet, then rain, later today. It didn’t make for great pictures, though the abundant towering spruce snags standing ghostly guard over the pall were impressive:
While this light isn’t conducive to landscape photography, it’s sometimes good for capturing details, rendering them in richly saturated hues. Such was the case with these Northern Pitcher plants, Sarracenia purpurea, which love to grow in the sphagnum moss:
They aren’t well served by this year’s thin snow pack; time will tell how they do going forward.
All of these were taken with Ollie, my 24-105mm L-Series zoom, on the box. I really didn’t want to change lenses in these conditions.
Beneath The Button-Ball Tree. January 26, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: black and white photography, button-ball tree, Cummington, deerfield river, maple tree, sycamore
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While waiting for my car to be repaired (again!) I wandered out behind my mechanic’s place to a big Sycamore tree and took this picture:
This is along the banks of the Deerfield river, and the shoreline here was drastically changed by Tropical Storm Irene, leaving water-worn cobbles of every size and description where grassy banks used to be:
That trio of stones may have been arranged by a neighborhood kid, as they’re right in the central village.
I took my newly nimble steed for a test drive, finding little of interest photographically until I passed through upper Cummington at the end of the day and stopped for this lone maple, which I thought would look nice as a black and white photograph:
So, a light day of posting here at LBT.
And so it goes, and so it goes…
The Upper Cold. January 24, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: cold river, Florida MA, snow
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The upper reaches of the Cold river lie in a deep valley, sheltered from the winter sun for all but a few hours a day.
I hiked down into that rift today, negotiating stream crossings, following bear tracks for a hundred yards (they were too melted out to photograph,) and finally descending the steep ledges hemming in the river.
The emerald green waters flowed nearly silently beneath pillows of snow clinging to the larger rocks, and I picked my way gingerly out among them, poking with my ski poles to ascertain the safety of my path.
I got only this for my efforts:
…not that it’s a bad shot, but I had hoped to come away with more.
Well, at least I got a little bit of exercise!
Fiber Farming. January 23, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, Politics and Society.Tags: fiber farm, goatherd, goats, Jacob sheep, llama, sheep
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It’s not uncommon in these parts to find farms where the primary product is hair.
Animals which get sheared for fiber (think “sheep” as a starter) are common in Western Massachusetts.
At a farm up in Hawley, goats and their man-servant:
Goats aren’t one of the fiber producers, but that guy is – tending stock is a job without Sundays or vacations.
Jacob sheep, noted for their multiple horns:
Generally four, occasionally six. That’s news to me, but then, I’m a country boy, not a farm boy.
A Llama:
These beasties were roaming free, but with short leashes attached, which I suppose would make them easier to get hold of, if (when) you needed to.
This place was also raising pigs and Guinea hens, the latter of which played Chicken with me in the narrow road. I knew my 4-Runner could win that one, but I really didn’t want to fricassee someone’s assets. Or hurt a birdie.
Rural life continues in these parts, but it ain’t a get-rich-quick scheme.
By the way, these were all hand-held with Gizmo, my 400mm lens, from the driver’s seat of my running car. They came out better than I anticipated without image stabilization (which is a whole lot more bucks that I didn’t have when I got Gizmo.)
The Elusive Honey Mole! January 23, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Bog Pond, Elliot, Fernando Duarte, honey mole, Pagan Sphinx, Savoy MA, snow, tilt-shift photography, tracks
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Tracks of a large honey mole* punctuate a couple of inches of new snow up at Bog Pond in Savoy:
“Honey mole,” you ask?
Why, yes… Honey mole! 
* OK, the back story:
Years back, when our daughters were Wee Beasties, my In-laws Maria and Fernando came to visit (they had retired back to Portugal.) When Gina and her Mom came back from a day out (if I’m remembering that correctly; I bet Pagan Sphinx will remember) and I got home from work, the Grrrlz were all excited. “Daddy, Daddy, Vovo Frenando saw a Honey Mole in our garden!” they squealed.
“A “honey mole?” I queried, not having heard of that one before, and wondering how Fernando would have known about it.
Fernando came in and explained that yes, it was a “honey mole,” and a BIG one – he held his hands about 18″ apart to indicate its size.
After getting a fuller description from Fernando, it became clear that he’d seen a woodchuck – and that “Honey Mole” was his broken-English approximation of “animal.”
Sadly, Fernando has passed on, but every time I see tracks in the snow I think of him and smile.
Thanks, Fernando.
This Afternoon… January 21, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, Love and Death.Tags: barns, Coven of Tractors, Lizz, old barns, tractors, trucks, vines, Williamstown
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…in Williamstown, Lizz B. and I checked out a farm southwest of town and found some interesting out-buildings on a cold and somber day:
This is another one of those places which was doubtless once grand, but now its half-dozen buildings are held together by the vines which are taking them apart:
Their weathered exteriors look ancient:
…but their insides remember better days:
We got chilled to the bone, lost patience with out toes, and retreated for a heated drive to another place I know, a farm for sale below Mount Greylock:
Lizz homed in on an old truck I’ve photographed before:
…while I explored farther afield, having been told their was another grand old beast in the woods down below.
And so there was – a long lost cousin of the truck up above. They told it not to go down to the Wooly Swamp, but it wouldn’t listen, and now it’s paying for its youthful impetuosity by spending eternity mired in muck and entangled in thorns:
I do hope you children are listening!
Back at the ranch, we looked inside the larger barn to find a coven of tractors casting spells on all who entered. They made me render them in black and white:
I swear, I was powerless against their magic…
We’ll doubtless be back to this place soon.
The tractors insist!
Slithering Snow Snakes!!! January 20, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: blowing snow, Cape Cod, Hawley, sand dunes, snow, wind-blown snow
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Four inches of new snow overnight, combined with persistent winds up in the hills, turned many a high meadow into sculpted ‘scapes, including this one on Grout Road up in Hawley:
I hung onto my tripod to keep it from taking flight with the wind as the world whirled dizzyingly by, snapping these shots at 1/800 of a second in an attempt to freeze (!) the charging armies of ankle-deep spindrift. Elliot might have served my quest for accuracy better, but given his less-than-weather-sealed articulations, I stuck with Ollie for these shots, choosing f:20 for best depth of field and manually focusing about a third of the way into the scene.
Here’s another shot, perhaps compositionally cleaner:
I was gunning for the erosion forms just above the center of the frame, but they were obscured by blowing spindrift. Oh well.
This looks amazingly like a dune on the cape to me; boot the white balance up 2000 degrees, and we’re at the beach!
Pardon my Trompe-l’oeil pretensions, but that snow photo looked enough like sand dunes that I wanted to see how it made the leap. 
We’re expecting a few more inches overnight and into tomorrow morning, so I might have more of these (such as they are) to share in the near future.
But I promise, no more Cape Cod In Hawley shots.
Forge Hollow Meeting House. January 19, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Love and Death.Tags: Forge Hollow, Forge Hollow Meeting House, Hawley MA, monochrome photography, symetry
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Here’s a rather austere snippet of the Forge Hollow Meeting House taken this January:
It’s like a reflection about a vertical axis, but not completely so. Finding what’s not reflective is like a puzzle which is still surprising me.
Beyond that, this photo asks me questions. How were those two doors used? One in, one out? His/Hers?
I don’t know, but I thought I’d throw this out to you before I throw this out. I don’t see it in a frame, but I’m glad I got to see it.
Get Alowng, Little Dawggie! January 19, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Love and Death.Tags: calf, Hawley, Rawhide, runaway calf
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The other day as I was tooling up West Hill Road in Hawley, I was “chickened” by a calf trotting down the road at me. He was followed (loosely) by a woman walking, who stopped when she saw me approaching.
So did the calf. He stopped, looked left, then right, then back at the woman behind him. Then he attempted a slow-motion walk-around, stopping along side my car long enough for me to snag this sheepish cow-shot:
…all the while, with me doing my best Frankie Lane impersonation, intoning, “Keep movin’, movin’ movin’…”
He did a prudent about-face (wouldn’t you???) and went back up the road, with Gil Favor* here dawgin’ him all the way back to his pasture gate.
Turns out the woman in the road had been walking by when the calf wandered out into the road and was scared my way. She retreated as I approached, and between those two circumstances, Li’l Beefer got home safely.
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
*I hope those of you too young to remember the TV show “Rawhide,” where Clint Eastwood got his break as a co-star, will forgive my dust-farting indulgence!
Berkshire Ramblin’ January 18, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature.Tags: Buckland MA, Hawley MA, old barns, snow, winter
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Here are a few shots from my recent wanderings, wherein I reveled in our newly-bestowed winter.
A Buckland barn viewed through a screen of thickly falling snow:
This pair of uncharacteristically-colored silos always makes me smile, paired as they are with the adjacent Family Plot.
As the snow thinned, I got this shot of barn doors wearing their Winter Whites a ways farther up the hill:
This, by the way, is very near where the snow-covered piano sits out under a tree.
And later on in Upper Hawley (on a road which is wisely much less traveled,) a simple shot of a winter scene with the skies clearing just in time to not produce a sunset shot worth sharing:
Prudence should have turned me back, but the way forward was mostly downhill, so it couldn’t get that bad, right?
Right???
I love it when there are no power lines or guard rails, and just enough of a track to assure me that I’m not the Last Living Fool in the world.
