a wedding in Boston

Boston has been one of my favorite cities since I was a kid.  For the last couple days I was fortunate to be there to see some old friends and photograph two of them getting married.  John and Libby met accidentally at a hotel the night before freshman orientation at Alfred University.  Within a week or so of school they were a happy couple.  Now, over seven years later they are still together and now, as of Sunday, Oct. 3rd, they are married.  I had a great time photographing the event and was really happy to sit at a table with a bunch of Alfred people.  The wedding was in a beautiful church in Cambridge and the reception was in the Boston Museum of Science.  After the museum closed for the night, they let us go around and photograph the wedding party for a half hour.  The next day I hung out with another Alfred friend, Zara, and we went to Boston's aquarium.  It was wonderful to see her, too. It has been three years since I saw a lot of these people, and it was so great to see how beautiful the women look and how adult they have all become.  I hope more Alfred people get married so I can keep having reunions like this.

a jellyfish

a lionfish

a clown fish

thoughts on traveling west

Tomorrow I go back to work, ending my month long vacation.  Will this be the last time I ever have that much time to travel?  If I could do it over, would I do it differently?  Was it a success?  No matter how many times I visualize the future or prepare for different outcomes, life never turns out very predictable for me.  During college I never could have predicted I would now be into my third year as an educator at a science museum, running a planetarium or performing shows in a laboratory coat at schools around the state.  I also couldn't predict I would find a woman like Emily, for she inspires me and loves me like no other.  When I decided to take the road trip with her I was sacrificing other opportunities.  I chose to miss participating as an artist-in-residence at the Sweet Chariot Music & Arts Festival.  I also gave up volunteering to photograph Syracuse's Festival of Races.  Lastly, I had a good chance at spending a month in Pennsylvania at an art residency with my friend and fellow artist Kristen Egan.  I chose the road trip because I wanted to visit Emily in Canada and share in some of her life out there.  I wanted to see the stars and the clouds from the prairie and the West.  I also wanted to travel to the Rockies, because I've grown up with stories from my parents of the adventurous road trips they took in their twenties to Colorado and California.  I wanted to get lots of new photographs and to have my own adventure with Emily.  So was it worth it?  Of course.

We couldn't predict that their would be gray skies and rain almost everyday of our trip, but even if we had I would have gone anyway.  We may not have had much of an opportunity to see the stars or photographic clouds, but when we did they were beautiful.  And maybe that is one of the lessons nature teaches us.  I have to remind myself sometimes that nature is not like ordering fast food.  You often have to wait for great views or wildlife, which is part of what makes it so sweet when they do appear.  The two nights Emily and I were able to see the stars were the two most romantic nights of the trip.  The first evening we lay on our backs against the hillside of an ancient river valley and held deep conversation while watching the turning of the stars, moon, and planets.  At our next opportunity we used her bird telescope to look at the sky.  It was her first time seeing the Moon in such detail and she was spellbound by its features.  I stopped few times to photograph clouds, but twice I was given a real show.  When we stopped to go to a movie theater somehere in Ontario, I was able to photograph mammatus clouds from the parking lot.  These are a relatively unusual and fantastic cloud formations.

The land and people we saw were varied and wonderful.  Driving and hiking through the Rockies was breathtakingly beautiful, but the rolling hills of the prairie and the autumn trees and ponds of Canada's shield were also impressive and joy inspiring.  The ranchers in Saskatchewan, with there wonderfully thick accents and prairie oysters, were welcoming and good people.  Meeting them was one of my favorite parts of the trip. We also met with the hospitality of a generous Mennonite couple in Alberta, and stayed at a bed and breakfast and hostel run by other nice couples on our journey.  We met many Blackfeet/Blackfoot people in Montana and Alberta.  I met with Emily's graduate student friends and her advisor, and in Ottawa we encountered a great multi-cultural mix.  Ottawa not only had many French speakers, it also had enough pubs and old brick buildings to convince you that you where somewhere in Europe.

Emily and I saw a lot on our adventure.  There was a variety of cities, towns, museums and truckstop restaurants, as well as a variety of natural settings.  We saw many different animals, and almost all of these encounters were very close and special.  A wild goat got so close I could almost touch her (which was actually pretty scary and I had to jump into the van), and a wild pika ran right through Emily's legs.  We also watched some beautiful sunsets, took sips of water from cold glacier streams, and shared in awe and wonder at the natural beauty of our continent.  I don't know if we will get another chance like we had, but the experience taught me that I really want to see more of this continent and the world.  It also reminded me to be thankful for both the opportunity I had and for the gift of creation itself.  In order to honor this gift, and because I love it in NY in the fall, I will try not to waste this season indoors.  This is my favorite season of year, and though I can't predict the future I am open for whatever this fall should bring.

1 sleeping giant, 1 guardian giant, 2 hostels, and 2 nights in a van

We are almost home.  Tonight we are in a hostel in Ottawa, just a few hours drive north of the NY border.  We are spending tomorrow going to some museums and then heading home the next day.  The last few days traveling through Ontario have been nice.  In fact, we have even had a day or two without rain, which is the first time sense we first got to Saskatchewan almost three weeks ago.  We've gone to a couple different nature parks, but spent most of our time in the van.  This includes sleeping in it the last couple nights.  The first night in the van we slept beside a lake at a marina.  Despite a few electric street lights and a bright moon, we could see the stars much better than in Syracuse.  We used Emily's bird telescope to take a look at the moon, the pleiadies, Jupiter, Uranus, and the Andromeda galaxy.  The moon was a few days past full and really looked fantastic.  Unfortunately it was so bright that we could just make out the Andromeda galaxy which was hiding nearby.  Clear or not, it was still awesome to see our galactic neighbor and know we were looking at light that had been traveling for 2.5 million light years.

Can you find the Big Dipper?  How about Arcturus?

This natural formation is called "The Sleeping Giant."  Can you see him?  The Sleeping Giant park is near Thunder Bay on Lake Superior.

In Ouimet Canyon there is an impressive natural stone sculpture that looks like a face with a neck and part of a body.  In the Native American lore this face is that of the giant Omett, who stands guard over the grave of his lover.  Wikipedia tells the story like this: "A long time ago, there was a giant Omett. He helped Nanabijou make mountains and lakes. Omett fell in love with Nanabijou's daughter Naiomi. One day, Omett was moving a mountain when part of it fell off and killed Naiomi. Omett quickly hid Naiomi. Nanabijou desperately looked for his daughter. When he sensed something underground, he sent a thunderbolt to split open the ground which created a canyon and he discovered his daughter at its bottom. He buried her there and to punish Omett he turned him into stone and put him on the canyon walls to watch Naiomi's grave forever."

  

When Emily and I stopped to see a movie in one of the city's we passed there were some great clouds.  These are classified as mammatus clouds.  It isn't the first time I've seen them, but it is the fist time I've gotten a good photo.  

We stopped on the side of the road because there were some great clouds overhead.  I really like this one.

View from the road.

Red Squirrel

Emily's van.  We had stopped to take some pictures of the lake.

Week Two: Glacier, Waterton, Blackfoot Buffalo Jump, Friendly Mennonites, Pulling Grass, and Eating Prairie Oysters

The second week of our road trip is over and Emily and I are back in her apartment in Winnipeg.   Since she is coming to the States for the semester and the guy who is renting her Winnipeg room is already here, we are sleeping in the living room.  I'm not complaining though, I think the carpeted floor will feel better than the cold hard ground of the Northern Rockies.  We are here for another day and then driving toward home.  We have changed our plans, however, and are no longer going to Chicago.  We are instead going to drive through Canada.  We will go through the northern part or Ontario then into Ottawa and back into NY via Alexandria Bay.  Our time in Montana got cut short because we had to do vegetation clipping in Grasslands for a couple days.  This gave us a few extra days, which is why we are taking the longer, more scenic route home.  If we are lucky its possible we will see some moose or even wolves or bears.

As you can see from the title of this post, a lot happened during the second leg of our trip.  When last I wrote we had a late start because of the snow and the cold.  We eventually made it back into the park and took a short hike to a tall waterfall.  Even though the waterfall was only one mile in from the road we spend four hours hiking, photographing, and climbing the nearby rockslide before returning to the van.  Climbing up the steep mountain slope was scary, but the view was worth it.  Emily is afraid of heights, but she climbed up after me and we sat enjoying the scene together.  On the way down she was nervous and careful, that is until I spotted an interesting bird near the bottom and she deftly scrambled down faster than me in order to get a good look with her binoculars.  The bird turned out to be a "dipper," which was a new one for her.

We camped the night in an area called Many Glacier and headed up to the Canadian side of the park, called Waterton National Park.  We took a nice hike there and slept the night in the nearby town of Lethbridge.  We stayed in the home of a very nice retired Mennonite couple.  Their daughter is Emily's friend, and she told us to call them up.  We weren't the first wayfaring strangers to stay at the house.  In fact, we didn't even make the first page of the guest book we signed before leaving.  After an early breakfast with the couple we went to a place called Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.  This is a historical site which the Blachfoot Native Americans and their ancestors had used to kill bison for around 5,000 years.  Basically the Buffalo jumps were cliffs that the Native people stampeded herds of 75+ bison over.  The interpretive center at the site was really nice and we got lucky because it was a special cultural weekend in the province of Alberta.  Not only did we get in free, but there were Blackfoot drumming and dancing performances, arts and jewelry displays, authentic Blackfoot food, and a tour given by a local Blackfoot member.

The last two days were spent back at Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan.  Because Emily is a graduate student, we had to stop there to do some work.  We spend a day and a half collecting vegetation samples on the prairie.  These will be used later to help understand the effects of cattle grazing on mixed grassland prairie vegetation.  The work was not much fun, but it was nice to be out on the prairie with Emily.  We made a good team.  

The last thing I'll tell you is that I have been informally inducted into the Saskatchewan rancher community.  While in Grasslands we went to eat dinner with the Highsaw family.  The last time we ate with them they joked that they would cook up some prairie oysters for me.  "Prairie oysters" is the polite way of saying "calf nuts," which is what they are.  When they neuter their calves, the ranchers keep the testicles to fry up later.  This time when we got to their house they hadn't forgotten, and I didn't leave before having eaten three of the battered and fried oysters.  Emily took a photo of me eating one.  If I get a hold of it, I'll post it on here.

This little guy is called a "pika."

Glacier National Park

We arrived at the park and set up our tent just as the sun went down.  Our first experiences were a little glum.  We drove around around looking for a campsite in the armada of RV's and after getting the tent out we were soon told that we couldn't use our little stove by the lake.  Then it rained during the night and was pretty cloudy and drizzly in the morning.  So, we were a little grumpy and bummed at the start of the day's adventure.

Things started to change pretty quickly though once we started hiking.  We hiked about a mile into a pine forest that was really nice.  The "Bear Country" signs were a little scary, but there were a lot of other hikers around, so we weren't too nervous.  In the forest you couldn't tell what the weather was anyway, so that was pretty nice.





Later we took the "Going to the Sun Road."  This road is a real accomplishment, and it is full of amazing views.  The best part of the trip yesterday was the trail to the Hidden Lake.  First you take the Going to the Sun Road up high into the mountains, and then you hike out from there.  I don't think my photos or descriptions can really do this trail justice.  There are ponds, valleys, meadows, and more mountains all up there, all world above our own.  We were at the level of the clouds and not only watched a cloud engulf a nearby mountain top, but it engulfed us too.  This trail was cold and it rained and even hailed, but neither Emily or I would have traded it for anything.  The trail led to a lookout with a view of a hidden valley and a hidden lake.  The view was so expansive that even my wide angle lens couldn't get most of it.  I made a montage that shows a bit of what it looked like.

After being soaking wet and cold, we decided to spend the night in a bed and breakfast.  I'm glad we did because it snowed all last night and has only just finished.  It is September and it looks like Christmas.  We are getting a very late start today and are a little reluctant to go hiking.

camping in Saskatchewan

After staying two nights in the East Block's field station, we moved on to the West Block for a night of camping. The East Block isn't really open to normal visitors, but the West Block has a public road that winds through it.  We pulled over on the side of the road and set up our tent about 100 yards away, about half way down into an old river valley.  As I first walked to the edge of the valley and crested the ridge, there was a group of about ten deer about a stones throw away.  The buck led the group away from me and out of view.  I didn't feel to bad about taking their sleeping spot for the night because it was definitely the most beautiful campsite I've ever had.  We finished getting our tent ready just as the sun's light faded and Emily and I spent an hour or so lying in the grass watching the stars appear.  The clouds couldn't seem to decide whether they wanted to come or go, and so our view of the stars continued to change while we watched.  Jupiter was shining brightly in the east and the moon turned a deep orange as it made it's way to the horizon.

Today we spent the day driving through the park and stopping to explore its various features.  We made it to town, Val Marie, in the afternoon and decided to stay at the inn.  Val Marie has to be the smallest town I've ever been in, second only to the one we ate in yesterday, called Mankota.  The people here recognize Emily and are very friendly.  We ate at the inn at a table with staff from the Canadian park system.  I keep eating cheeseburgers, which I don't do often at home.  It is great to see the cattle here given so much land and to know the food your eating was raised the right way.

Tomorrow morning we set out for Montana.  Emily and I have never seen the Rockies before.  I know it will be an awe inspiring experience for both of us.  We will drive through the Blackfeet Reservation, which is bigger than Deleware, and then camp for three nights in Glacier National Park.

The lichen on the rocks had some fascinating patterns.

birthday on the prairie

Yesterday was my 25th birthday and I spent it exploring the prairie.  Emily does her graduate research out here in the eastern block of Grasslands National Park, so we are able to stay in the field station for a couple days.  When we arrived on Saturday night it was late and we were tired, so I didn't see the park until the next day.  I awoke to a land I had imagined so many times and yet my visions never came close to its real beauty.  Emily and I went out on a 4-wheeler and she brought me to some of her favorite places.  As we drove down the dirt paths birds often flew up around us and ahead of us.  It was like we were in an old Disney movie.


This park is one of the most pristine mixed-grass prairies in the world, and aside from some cattle, dirt roads, and fences, it looks and functions much like it has for thousands of years.  There are some differences for sure, like the eradication of the bison and the loss or diminished populations of other animal species.  But even though the spirit of the prairie has been scarred with these loses, it still shines with beauty and life.  In one day I saw cattle, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, rabbits, hawks, a prairie dog, and some tiny frogs.

Last night we had a delicious home cooked meal at the house of a very nice family of ranchers that live up the street.  Emily became friends with them this last summer when her car got stuck in the mud near their place.  We are heading out of this part of the park today, but when we come back in a week or so, I will try to get some photos of them.

Emily and I stopped on the side of this hill to relax and take in the view.