Filtered Flowers

I have been so absurdly busy, that I've fallen behind in posts.  These photos are from June 5th - I've been meaning to post them ever since.  We participated in a walk to raise money for childhood cancer, sponsored by the Camillus Optimists Club, and organized by good friends of ours.  The walk was right nearby, on a section of the Erie Canal that I used to walk very often when I was a kid, but seldom traverse now.  I prefer less popular walk spots most of the time these days.

It was a lovely warm day, full of sunshine.  The trails were bustling with all sorts of walkers and joggers and cyclists and canine companions.  And both sides of the trail were laden with flowers.

With all the bright sun, I decided to experiment with my polarized filter.  This camera continues to do a wonderful job for me - I'm still extremely happy with it.  And the polarized filter?  An awesome toy!

A couple of comparison shots, to show the difference the filter makes.  These are all unedited, aside from a little cropping.  The filter is on in all these shots.  However, because polarization is actually parallel lines running across the glass, how you turn the filter makes all the difference in the world.

 Compare without polarization:

And with the filter rotated 90 degrees so the polarization is maximized.  A much sharper picture, right?  Suddenly the white of those flowers practically leaps off the screen.

One of the great advantages of polarized filters (or sunglasses) is that they cut out most of the reflections on the water, allowing you to see right into the water.  Here is a great illustration of that effect.  Without polarization:

Polarized:

Handy for spotting fish and turtles.

You can then take advantage of that feature, to set up the background for shots.  You can see that in the first pair of photos, but I think it's illustrated better in this pair.  Without the filter, the reflection on the water is light, not allowing you to see the delicate light lines on the spider web very well:

But with polarized filter, voila!  We have a web in all its details:

So, I love my polarized filter, and believe it was worth every penny.  And believe me, it was quite a lot of pennies.  I have lots more to learn about it, but am certainly enjoying the process.

And below are just some other shots I took throughout the day that I liked.

 

Believe it or not, I didn't even turn up the saturation on this.  Check out the fluorescent green!

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A Spring Stroll

It is such an incredible relief to have some warmer weather, finally.  Although, as I say that, it's raining, cold, dreary, drippy, and blowing.  Oh, happy spring.  At least we have been able to take advantage of the longer days and go for some after work strolls along the Erie Canal, even if they've been pretty sunless.

Simon, for one, is pretty much ecstatic about the lack of snow and cold.  He loves spring walks about as much as I do.  This is what tends to happen - Simon stops and whuffles with great intent, and then realizes he's fallen behind one human or the other, and takes off at a joyous sprint to catch up.

That expression is irrisistable, isn't it?  We wind up not keeping a very steady pace, because it seems like a shame to interrupt Simon's delighted ramblings and sprints.

Speaking of Simon running, all the bits of dog that flap when Simon runs are hilarious.  Check out the lips and ears:

I can't wait to take pictures of him running toward me on a sunny day, when I can get photos that aren't quite so grainy.

There's not a whole lot of green out yet.  The skunk cabbages are up, and we spotted a few violets and bloodroot, too.  But along the canal, that's about it.

Even all dressed in brown, the canal path is a lovely walk, though.

We found evidence of an overly ambitious beaver who moved through the area at some point in the past.

And since I love photos that mix industry and nature, I simply cannot resist shooting the old cars that rest along the trail.  At what point does garbage become old enough that it has charm?  Because these cars have crossed that line, at least for me.

About a mile down the canal path from our house, we come upon an opening that leads to an old landfill.  The landfill isn't active anymore, and thankfully doesn't smell bad.  At the top of one of the landfill slopes is a cell tower (at least I assume that's a cell tower).  To our delight, some osprey have nested on top of it this year!

No views of babies yet, but we could get a good look and mom and dad, while they warily eyed us back.

It's so nice to be back outside again, without having to bundle up to my eyeballs, and stuff hand-warmers in my mittens!

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I wish I were a runner

But I'm so definitely not a runner.  I always admire people who are runners.  Marathons?  How is that even humanly possible?  Or how about even the people I always see at the gym pounding away on the treadmills?  I am astonished by those who run for miles easily, without visible panting or strain.

I always have this feeling that running is sort of the ultimate workout.  It's possible I think that because it's so damn hard for me.  Even when I'm at my peak mountain climbing fitness and can readily hike 8 miles up and down a 4000 foot high mountain in a day at a good pace, I still am a supremely sucky runner.  I gasp, I pant, I stagger, I feel like my lungs are going to explode, and all I can think about is how much I want to be able to justify switching to walking instead.  Ugh.

I am, however, on a fitness kick, and I really would like to lose the extra 8 pounds I've packed on this past winter so that my clothes fit again, and so I'm not carrying an extra 8 pounds up and down mountains.  Think about that - 8 pounds is the equivalent of a lot of extra gear.  I would like to convert myself into a finely tuned physical machine.  (Ha!)  Oh, how far I have to go.

Running is a quick way to get in a workout when I don't have time for more.  Plus, damnit, I'm stubborn, and I want to be at least a tolerable runner who can manage a 5k without humiliation.  I'm a long way from that.  And, I figure every minute of running I suffer through will cause me to do better in sessions with my trainer at the gym.  It's all about saving face.

So, since it's a nice evening, I went for a run when I got home from work.

The Erie Canal path is a great place for a run.  Well, let's face it, in my case it's just a jog.  The fine gravel of the path is easy on my shins and knees and there's enough wildlife to distract me at least a little.  On occasion.

One of the many drawbacks of running along the Erie Canal, though, is that I can't take my camera.  And it's always then - when I am without a camera - that I spot the best and most photographable wildlife.  Tonight as I staggered, gasped and cursed my way along, I watched dozens of birds of all different varieties.  I scared a bunny into zig-zagging down the path ahead of me for a stretch.

Then I heard a faint "plop" from the canal, and as I am always looking for an excuse to stop running for a moment, I paused to investigate.  There, swimming a few feet away from me, was a muskrat.  I simply adore muskrats, or "scrats" as my husband calls them.  They're about as stinking cute as any critter can get.  Before we bought our house, our old daily commute took us along Onondaga Lake Parkway, where there are always dozens of muskrats feasting in the lawns and swales along the road.  The sight of all those little drippy munchy brown bodies was the highlight of many a day.

Muskrats also often call to mind the time when a student wrote a letter to the editor of my college's newspaper about the "giant rat" that was living in the college's pond.  She was appalled, and wanted the administration to "do something" about it.  The responsive letter to the editor was hilarious, with some outdoorsy students mocking the city folk who mistook the cute little resident muskrat for a terrifyingly giant rat in need of extermination.  I chuckle every time I remember that little exchange.

Today, after my friend the muskrat swam across the canal and wandered up the other bank and disappeared, I went back to my grudging jog.  While he didn't make the jog any less painful, at least he provided a bright spot in my evening.

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Too blue to be true

This past weekend was decidedly colder than some we've experienced lately, especially if one was exposed to the wind.  The sun was delicious, though, so Saturday afternoon we spent a few minutes along the Erie Canal trail just to see what was greening.

It turned out there was a lot of fresh glowing green.  It's amazing just how fast everything turns all different shades of green in the spring.  I particularly love how the trees get all spotty when their new leaves start to emerge.

The fresh bright buds against the sky made the sky seem an unbelievable shade of blue.

The colors were so bright they were almost neon in places.  Whenever the colors are that intense, I always think that if I painted a painting using those colors, people would think it was too bright to look real.  Sunsets often have that effect, but new growth and blue April sky can apparently be too intense to seem real, too.

Moss on the top of a post, outlined against the sky:

Since the wind was mighty cold but the sun so hot it was quickly thawing the frozen groceries in the car, we didn't linger long along the trail.  However, we did spot one odd thing that I cannot for the life of me explain:

The other side of it:

You can click on the photos to enlarge them.  It looked like perhaps a pellet of some kind?  It was super lightweight and stuck together into a tight little dry ball with some kind of saliva or mucus that dried clear and shiny.  It was composed largely of iridescent beetle wings.  There was some fuzzy stuff that looked like it might have been fur stuck in there, too, although it could have been some kind of plant matter.  I wished, not for the first time, that I had a good macro lens for the camera so I could show off its detail better.  It's on my (rather long) wish list.  I should have adjusted the aperture on the camera to get more of it in focus, but didn't think to do so until after I was home and downloaded the photos.

Any of my faithful readers have any ideas?

After we left the canal path to drive the rest of the way home, I made my husband pull over next to a bit of swamp so I could take some more photos.  The colors were just as magnificent in the swamp, with the water reflecting that unbelievably blue sky.

Last year's cattails were glowing in the sun:

There wasn't as much green in the swamp as there was along the trail, but just above the water tiny new cattails were starting to emerge:

If you look carefully, you can see a Canada goose sticking her neck out standing on a log in the center of this one:

We had to watch carefully for a few minutes before we could find the source of the echoing tapping sound emanating from a patch of cattails.  The culprit?  A downy woodpecker, pecking on one of the hollow reeds:

Have I mentioned my abiding love of swamps?  I especially adore them this time of year, when the frogs are gregarious and the mosquitoes few and far between.  I always find myself wanting a pair of waders when I look at a swamp like this - standing on its edge just isn't quite close enough.

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The Canal that Once Was

On Sunday, my husband and I took a stroll along a section of the Erie Canal path that we had never walked before.  It's a stretch not too far from our house, but I guess just far enough that we'd never walked there.  It was a cloudy, gray, cold day, and there wasn't much wildlife out and about (aside from snowmobilers).  The tracks in the snow were hard to read because the snow was so fluffy.  So, instead of reading traces of wildlife and wood, we wound up reading the impressions left behind by humans instead.

Along the trail we stumbled on the ruins of some old buildings.  Two of the structures looked like they were supports for some kind of trestle, although whether for a road or railroad or even something else, we could not tell.  The insides of the square structures were completely full of crisscrossed steel cables, so it looked like their sole purpose was structural support.  The date "1891" was chiseled in one of the stones.

We could not have gotten through the undergrowth to prowl about the buildings during another time of year. For one thing, the number of poison ivy vines was staggering and made me twitch a little. For another, the brush must be very thick in summer months. Plus, the snow helped fill in some of the rough terrain and covered over some of the garbage, of which there was a lot.

Mixed in among the supports that looked like trestles were some other buildings that looked like they had once had some kind of industrial purpose.  I could not even guess what that might have been, although surely there are plenty of locals who must know what they once were.

If I figure out what those were, I'll update this.

The length of the Erie Canal must be filled with old houses and industrial buildings, abandoned when the Canal stopped being the major thoroughfare across the state.

Further down the trail we ran into old structures from the Erie Canal itself.  In Memphis, Carpenter's Brook runs into and crosses the Canal.

A number of the old structures are still standing and in good condition, although whether they actually date from the Canal (which was originally completed in 1825 and expanded several times after that) is unclear. They may have been rebuilt far more recently.

It's amazing to me that these are in such good condition, considering the velocity of the water coming in from Carpenter's Brook. Those structures take a beating.

Looking at these made me want to go take a look at the aqueduct in Camillus, so we drove over there after our walk. When I was a kid, my family often walked the stretch of the Erie Canal east of Sim's Store in Camillus to the Nine Mile Creek Aqueduct. For some reason I was fascinated by the whole concept of an aqueduct, which struck me as being a very Roman sort of thing to build. The aqueduct was in ruins, and looked like it is shown here:

The canal was full of water to the west of the aqueduct, but was just a little swampy and filled with weeds to the east. It was a great area for bird watching, incidentally. But I always desperately wanted to know what it would have looked like if the aqueduct were still working.

To my delight, the aqueduct has recently been reconstructed, as much as possible using historically accurate materials and methods. The canal now lies smooth and full across the aqueduct.

I'm completely fascinated by it. The thing that impresses me the most is how watertight it is. Here's an original drawing of the aqueduct plans:

That's wood holding up all that water. Just wood and some glue! And darned if it doesn't work extremely well. You can see from this shot that it does leak some (see the icicle) but not much!

It was great fun to see history recreated, and actually know what it was like back when it was new. Usually I'm just left to use my imagination.

Anyway, poking through ruins generally got me thinking about the traces we humans leave behind. Tomorrow I'll put up another post reflecting on the sometimes very fine line between human construction and nature, and the way we humans tend to look at our own history as reflected by what we build.

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