The Sky Does Not Speak

Warning: unapologetic religion, of the Christian existentialist variety. You have been warned.

In his short essay “Pascal’s Sphere,” Jorge Luis Borges traces the history of the sphere from Xenophanes’s declaration that God was an eternal sphere to Plato’s insistence that the sphere is the most perfect shape, from Bruno’s description of the Copernican universe as an infinite sphere—its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere—and finally to Pascal’s very modern despair in such a view:

In that dejected century, the absolute space that inspired the hexameters of Lucretius, the absolute space that had been a liberation for Bruno was a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal. He hated the universe and yearned to adore God, but God was less real to him than the hated universe. He lamented that the firmament did not speak; he compared our lives to the shipwrecked on a desert island. He felt the incessant weight of the physical world; he felt confusion, fear, and solitude; and he expressed it in other words: “Nature is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

I do not know how accurate a description of Pascal this is; I do know that much of this description is fairly accurate when applied to me. I too yearn to adore God, but God is less real to me than the universe; I too consider our lives to be like those shipwrecked on a desert island; I too feel the incessant weight of the physical world, and respond with confusion, fear, and loneliness. I find myself alienated from that to which I declare allegiance, and I see this alienation—acknowledged or not—in all of us. A labyrinth and an abyss indeed.

But there is one way in which this description is inaccurate: I do not hate the world and I do not lament the silence of the firmament. Oh, there are many things about the world which I find deserving of hatred: the world is filled with limitless suffering, more than I can imagine or bear, and my scant incomplete knowledge of this unremitting suffering sits like a hole in my chest. But I cannot bring myself to hate the world, and its speechlessness in particular I find lovely. I look at the mountains piled above Vancouver, distant and stony; I look at the hummingbird flitting about my feeder, dependent on the sugarwater my neighbours and I provide but thoroughly indifferent to us; I look at the toiling ants on the pavement and the silverfish swimming across my bathroom floor, incapable of even perceiving me; and I am enchanted by them. Their indifference to me is the twin of my incomprehension of them, my inability to imagine myself in their place. They are wholly other to me, and in this they free me from my suffocating self-concern. In this they also remind me of the distance of other people, people with whom I am tempted to exaggerate my empathy and affinity. And they also remind me of God, the distance and self-sufficiency and ineffability of God. I am not sure why, but these reminders calm my soul. I bask in their otherness and at least feel connected, in this way, to the otherness of God. God may feel distant, but at least God's distance is near to me. The firmament does not speak, and for that I love it.

This is my reminder to myself: I can try to cross the silence of the sky, but I shall never truly know it; I can try to read the silence and the speech of friends and strangers, but I shall never fully understand them; I can reach out into the absence I perceive God to be, but I will never totally plumb those depths. And yet my failure to succeed perfectly does not encourage a failure to try. There is a beauty in trying.

The sky does not speak, and I shall listen.

Those Ghastly Mountains

Today is Earth Day.

I am an environmentalist, though not as effective at it or active about it as I likely should be. Most of my environmentalism comes from the heart rather than the head, though, as always with me, it is greatly affected by the latter.

The truth is that I love so-called natural spaces: mountains, swamps, forests, rain forests, badlands, beaches, prairies. If I ever have the chance to visit steppes, tundra, saltflats, deserts, or dead seas, I'm quite sure I'll love those, too. I love red pines and pond scum and thistles growing out of pavement. I love pigeons and moths and butterflies and jumping spiders and centipedes and goats and giraffes and leeches and hagfish and lionfish and hoopoe. I find all of them beautiful, even those most people find ugly or creepy.

I heard a story once about Northrop Frye visiting Vancouver. Vancouver is surrounded by mountains and temperate rain forest; from pretty much anywhere in the city you can see those mountains, but of course some places have better views than others. Frye was visiting friends and sitting on their back deck, and someone said, "Look at the view of those mountains," and Frye said, "Yes, aren't they ghastly?"

To Frye, the wilderness is horrible because it is inhuman. He considers the natural world to be hostile to human efforts, but I'm sure if you pushed him on it he'd consider that it isn't really hostile, but merely indifferent. It does not care about us one way or another. Neither a mountain nor an ant acknowledges me; as far as they are concerned, I do not exist. It's not an issue of power, precisely; I could easily kill the ant, or pick it up and keep it in environments where I could manipulate its action all I like. But it would still not care at all about me. Nothing I do could make it spare the slightest attention for me. It is this which Frye finds so ghastly, but it's also what I love so much.

Animals, plants, fungus, geological formations: these are alien to me. Some have no life or consciousness at all; others have psychologies which are in some ways very similar and in other ways wildly different from human psychology. When I meet them I am meeting an Other more Other than any human could be. Such an experience is sublime (in its aesthetic sense, not the sense perverted and ruined by advertising, where it seems to mean something like sensual). But its indifference to me also forces me out of narcissism. It reminds me that much of the world does not care about me at all. I don't matter so much as I think I do. To someone as neurotic as I am, this reminder is always needed, and also always a relief.

It's that indifference that kills our Earth, though. The Gaia hypothesis is wrong in this way: if the Earth were truly concerned about self-regulating, it would be exterminating us much more vigourously. So as an environmentalist, what I seek to defend is the Earth's indifference, which by its own nature cannot make a defense for itself.

(But then, I also love dogs, who have evolved so that they can communicate with humans, and tigers, even when they are stalking humans--one of the most chilling sights, even when they're behind double-fences at the zoo--so it's obviously more than just indifference that I love.)

7 Quick Takes (76)

I'm doing a 7 Quick Takes for the last month or so. Wow. This should be fun.

1. I returned to Fort McMurray for a brief time to visit friends and family. I'm still here as I write this but I won't be here for much longer. As usual, I'm staying with the folks.

2. Twice now we have gone to Elk Island National Park. This is a lesser known park near Edmonton. We did not see a single elk in the park, but we did see numerous bison. The first time we stayed in Edmonton; the second time we camped in the park itself. It was sometimes difficult to sleep because the ducks and geese and frogs and coyotes did not observe the 11 o'clock quiet hours. So the frogs chorused and the geese honked and the coyotes howled and yipped. The second time we also visited the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village. This Village is one of those where everyone acts like a historical person, refusing to acknowledge that it's 2011 rather than the 1920's. I suppose many people find this sort of thing annoying but I rather enjoyed it. Perhaps it is because I liked to hear them talk in their fake Ukrainian (or, in one case, British) accents. I learned things about Orthodox church architecture, too; did you know that Orthodox churches have their belltowers detached from the church as part of a separate structure because they do not allow instruments in the church and the bell counts as an instrument? I had not known this.
This was all quite exciting, but in trying to take supermacro photos of water insects, I managed to get water on my camera which eventually culminated in its permanent damage. Now the photos it produces are wonky. However, it was an excellent final shoot for my dear camera. I got clear macro shots of spiders, frogs, dragonflies, and water striders. I might put some of these up at some point.

3. My summer plans, as I think I indicated before, include lots of reading and writing. I am treating this sort of work like a full-time job. You can go over my reading to date here, though I should also add that I have been reading some blogs, particularly Experimental Theology, philosiology, Unequally Yoked, and the best in us. (That last is more of a personal project of a friend relating to people he knows, so it may hold less interest for random Internet people. Perhaps it holds some value for you as a project, though--writing nice things about people he knows--so you may want to look at the mission statement.) I have also been reading and editing a manuscript for a friend's writing project. Where writing is concerned, I wrote a draft of an academic article and am now working on Creative Writing, though I must shamefacedly admit that I spend more time writing journal entries and letters. My tendency to go on theoretical diversions means that I am, at least, thinking.

4. Fort McMurray has been dreadfully smoky. There are forest fires all around us. The one in Slave Lake got news attention, but there is also an enormous one north of us. The wind often carried think clouds in to the city, preventing me from running outdoors. It's worrying and inconvenient, but at least our community hasn't been destroyed.

5. My birthday occured. The most noteworthy things concerning this event are going to see Thor, having a picnic in the park, and getting The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. If you are a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, I encourage you to see this series Dr. Beck produced giving a theological reading of it. (If I'm not careful I will start recommending it as often as Leah does a certain Harry Potter fanfiction.) If you are not a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, I encourage you to become one. Otherwise my birthday was very quiet. I will have a joint (half-)birthday party with a friend in Vancouver when I return.

6. A little while back I saw the next installment of Pirates of the Caribbean. I realize that not many people liked it. It certainly was not as good as the first. Notwithstanding that, I enjoyed it, mainly for the mermaid-missionary sideplot. It was good that they excised the Elizabeth-Will story from the series; it had reached its logical conclusion and any further story there would be of incredibly shoddy value. They needed to have a morally steady character, though, and the missionary filled this admirably, I think. He is certainly less annoying than Will was. I also find mermaid myth and lore fascinating (but I mean the old stuff, where they're fay, wild, ammoral creatures as much as amorous ones, where they can get human legs without having to make a deal with a witch, where they can't quite decide whether to drown you or love you). While the Pirates of the Caribbean version wasn't exactly like that, I was still pleased. In fact, I was rather OK with the depature made at the end. (For excellent mermaid-related storytelling, please visit Hark! A Vagrant's mermaid story. In fact, visit anyway. World history, canonical literature, and Canadiana have never been more awesome.)
In related news, I'm coming to understand that my tastes in what makes a movie good vary significantly from almost everyone else's. I tend to gravitate towards elements I like without seeing the chaff that is the rest of the movie. If I like that element strongly, I like the movie. If there is nothing outstanding, I tend to dislike the movie. If there is something else that is not simply unartful but outright repulsive, not much can make me like it.

7. I have watched a few TED talks which I want to recommend. In no particular order:
Mustafa Akyol's Faith versus tradition in Islam
Kathryn Schulz's On being wrong (this is crucial for anyone who has an overwhelming confidence in their own rightness, aka most people on the Internet)
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Dan Meyer's Math class needs a makeover (on making mathematics a good sell)
Nate Silver's Does race affect votes?

Please visit Jen at Conversion Diary, host of this fine carnival.

Photosynthesis Like Colour

I'm in the midst of writing (and grading) finals, so I haven't a lot of free time to spend posting. One of those finals, the one that is currently stressing me, is about Thomson's The Seasons and Erasmus Darwin's Loves of the Plants. This means that I am writing about nature and botanical literature. In the spirit of that, I thought I would type out a passage from Wade Davis' One River, in which talking botany becomes something like aesthetic mysticism. I will warn you that there's a swear (gasp) in it, as well as something that reads, when out of context, like pantheistic psychedalia near the end, but otherwise it's quite fascinating:

As the afternoon wore on, the conversation turned to botany and in particular a new book that made a great fuss about house plants responding to music and human voices. For Tim the very idea was ridiculous.
"Why would a plant give a shit about Mozart?" I remember him saying. "And even if it did, why should that impress us? I mean, they can eat light. Isn't that enough?"
He went on to speak of photosynthesis the way an artist might describe color. He said that at dusk the process is reversed and that plants actually emit small amounts of light. He referred to sap as the green blood of plants, explaining that chlorophyll is structurally almost the same as the pigment of our blood, only the iron in hemoglobin is replaced by magnesium in plants. He spoke of the way plants grow, a seed of grass producing sixty miles of root hairs in a day, six thousand miles over the course of a season; a field of hay exhaling five hundred tons of water into the air each day; a flower pushing its blossom through three inches of pavement; a single catkin of a birch tree producing five million grains of pollen; a tree living for four thousand years. Unlike every other botanist I had known, he was not obsessed with classification. For him Latin names were like koans or lines of verse. He remembered them effortlessly, taking particular delight in their origins. "When you say the names of the plants," he said at one point, "you say the names of the gods."

Photograph © 2010 Christian H

7 Quick Takes (XLVI)

1. I almost didn't write this today. I've had the day off, and yet I forgot about this entirely. Because of my haste, this will be disjointed.

2. On Wednesday I awoke at 3:10 to prepare for work. My shift started at about 4:00. We were moving a house and were working so early so that we would be on the roads when they were abandoned. It was not broad daylight at 4:00, but it was certainly light enough that it felt more like day than night. Solstice is soon, and the light just keeps coming.

Anyway, that was quite a day. It was also pretty cool to see the house coming down the street on a truck.

3. On Saturday (I think it was Saturday) my mother and I went for a walk down in the Conn Creek Greenspace again, this time walking along the length of the South Conn Creek until we reached the road again. We've never walked that far before. Once you get down there, you see a number of old (and not-too-old, perhaps) beaver dams which terrace the creek. It's a fascinating, beautiful, tumbled and jumbled sight down there. There's no way to capture the whole of it in photographs; it's too long and stretched out. Maybe I'll go down there with a camera again, though, and see what I can do.

4. This week we started at the Marine Park again.

5. In the craziness of Wednesday, I somehow missed out on my course registration for university. I didn't remember until Thursday (yesterday), and when I went to apply I found that the only Renaissance course, which was important to my program, as that's my intended specialty, was full. I wound up registering for a number of courses I hadn't planned on taking, and being rather disappointed. Today, however, I got myself on a waiting list and was assured that, one way or another, I would likely get in that course. And even though I wound up in a number of courses I hadn't planned on, I'll likely still learn and enjoy myself. I might even learn more than I would have going into the courses I had planned on taking.

6. Also in the university-bad-news department, I didn't get into residence. The house-hunt is on.

7. Yesterday and today I read Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. I have a few notes on Dan Brown. First, he isn't really much of a writer. Second, the time-frame of his novels tends to be within one or two days. Third, his novels are so fast-paced that I think they can be best described as reaching their climaxes in the thirtieth chapter and finishing their climaxes in the one hundred twentieth. It's just all continuous climax, with no break or building of tension (because it hits crescendo so early and just holds it). Fourth, they are very formulaic, and so once you've read a few, you can predict many of the sudden twists in the rest. Fifth, those sudden twists you can't predict are, in fact, clever. When he's not cliche or outright counterfactual (see The Da Vinci Code), he can actually pull off some clever twists. Admirably clever twists. That combined with his ability to make that continuous climax gripping, means that his books are in the end a fun if meaningless way to spend an afternoon. Longer if you space reading between other tasks.

But then, I tend to appreciate the good in books while many many other people cannot do that in the presence of a whole lot of bad. If a book has one redeeming feature, I might enjoy it for that feature. Harry Potter, for instance, is poorly written, but I can appreciate its moral value. His Dark Materials may be anti-Christian and closed-minded, but I can appreciate its conviction and its beauty in writing and storytelling. The Chronicles of Narnia may be bigoted, but I can appreciate their smart narrative, their moral character, and their archetypal power. Recognizing the bad does not prevent me from enjoying the good, and enjoying the good does not prevent me from recognizing the bad.

I'm not perfect; some things really do turn my stomach too much for me to read the book. Other things bore me too much, such that the good doesn't seem worth the time. But I try to be willing to appreciate a work for its strengths and not its weaknesses. Funny how much easier it is to do this with books than with people.

See Jennifer Fullwiler, the host of this meme.

7 Quick Takes (XLV)

1. Last Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I was in Canmore with my folks. From there we visited Banff National Park and Yoho National Park, doing an assortment of interesting things involving wild animals and mountain tops. There are obviously pictures of such activities scattered throughout this post.

2. A few more birthday presents came rolling in. They were all in the form of DVDs. My folks had ordered Clint, and it finally came in. It's a collection of 35 of Clint Eastwood's films, along with a documentary called The Eastwood Factor and a small book based on a biography of the man. I am pumped.
There were also DVDs from Friend in Windsor, namely Hollywood Homicide, The Bank Job, and 1408.
Also, I had order the album Epicon by Globus with an Amazon.ca gift certificate my brother gave me, and it just came in today....

3. I am liking this Epicon CD. I had heard a number of their songs already through Grooveshark. Well, to begin with, I saw some time ago a Youtube video which compiled bits of a number of "epic songs," and one of them was Diem Ex Dei, which I thought sounded good. Then Jon introduced me to Grooveshark, and I thought the whole song was pretty good. This led to finding more songs by Globus, and, eventually, my buying the disc.
I listened to the album straight through; Jon has said something to the effect that the order the songs are presented is part of the album as a discrete musical composition, and that they are meant to be listened to in that order. At least, while each song does and must stand alone, there is an overall structure to the album itself.
It is the same, I assume, as reading a book of poetry or short stories in the order they are presented.
I am trying to learn music.
Also, Jon, I think you know what reprecussion all of this has for you and your forthcoming travels.

4. Soon summer students and I will be headed to the Marine Park again. If you have been following me only lately, you can learn more about the Marine Park by clicking the "marine park" label and skimming through the entries.

5. I read Water for Elephants on the way to Canmore. I highly recommend this book. I cannot stress this enough. It's about an old man in a senior's home remembering his years as a young vet for a run-down circus in the Great Depression. If circuses, the Depression, veterinary practices, love triangles, or well-developed characters appeal to you, read this book. Otherwise, read this book.

6. I also recently watched Lions for Lambs. I enjoyed this movie; in case you haven't seen it yet, it contemplates the American presense in Afghanistan from a number of points of view, some of which obliquely but importantly related. Furthermore, the structure of the film itself is interesting, in that it revolves primarily around two interviews (an idealistic professor with a faltering student, an old-school liberal reporter with a young Republican senator) and two injured American soldiers stranded in the Afghanistan mountains. The action of the film covers just over an hour, less time than the actual movie itself (the difference being made in overlap between scenes and some reminiscing). It's about courage, idealism, activism, hypocrisy, looking forward, looking back, and making a difference. (And it has Maryl Streep, Tom Cruise, and Robert Redford, if that makes any difference to you.)

7. I am spending more time with Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. I think my forays into postmodernism have resulted in a more fervent return to metanarratives. (This may be simply reactionary, but nonetheless I do have reasons for this return.) I think Frye's ideas will be useful for my upcoming graduate thesis, provided I wind up doing what I think I'll wind up doing, which is why I'm saying I'm re-reading his book.
But I'm also just so impressed with Frye's vision. Whether he succeeded or not, you have to give the man credit.
For those who don't know, Frye put together a diagrammatic structure of all literature. He created axises and categories; he scanned the breadth of world literature, looking for patterns and teasing out structures. He looked at words in fiction and discerned how many layers of meaning they possessed. Frye took many of the theories of criticism of his day and synthesized their observations. What he came up with was a vast structure into which, he believed, all literature could be fit, from lullaby lyrics to political satires to Victorian novels to Ethopian oral literature to Hindi scripture to hagiographies to free verse to horror films. It's pretty impressive, and freakishly accurate. (Though there's that quotation about being surprised about finding something where you hid it...)

I guess that's seven.

Visit the host, Jennifer Fulwiler.

Note: apologies for the weird formatting with the photos. I had tried to make them smaller, but Blogger wouldn't have it.

Planaria

In murky ponds your flattened lengths you hide,

Your heads like tender diamonds gazing dim

'Long logs you use as cover for your slim

And soft bodies, your vision feeble-eyed.

Your race's many members creep in streams

Around this world, yet we the treading swains,

Whose errors cut upon you ample pain,

Do little know your cross-eyed, broken dreams.

Yet every brokenness will yield another

You, from your wound; each fragment blooms into

A separate self. A cloven head's now two

That share a body branching. Quarrels mother

You clones who split your lengths by pulling free;

You worms will grow through love--and injury.

Yup. Planaria are funny little critters.

This is more emphatically a draft than usual. If anyone is out there, interested in contributing, I have a question: do you prefer the fourth line as it is, or would you prefer to see it, "And soft bodies, with tiny muscles filled inside."? Further, would the twelfth line be better as it is, or rendered, "That share a branching body."? Other critiques also welcome.

I had wanted to do more with this, but I often find that sonnets hold less than I anticipate they will, so I have to make due. Perhaps I could write another planaria sonnet, one that should follow immediately after in the sequence, which discusses how sexual reproduction is more genetically beneficial than asexual reproduction... and, yet, asexual reproduction seems to directly benefit those planaria who get injured, since they reproduce their genes exactly. It might be worth another sonnet.

Actually, an aubadina might work well for this subject. Shame it's not a real tradition.

Tetramorium caespitum

or, Pavement Ant

You march with many sisters, Amazon.
Across your desert mount you track your twin
In rushed obedience to now begin
The second hill to bring adherents on
This upper plain, for war against your foes.
Of your six limbs you give but empty care;
For queen and colony alone you bear
The unexamined burdens, senseless blows.
If thinking were your province, then would you
Forsake your bloody kind? Does thought condone
That social animals desire to be alone?
Would reason force the end of selfless crews?
What fate's the maid's who lacks a queen to give
Her harvest to, and guards her chance to live?

Forficula auricularia

or, The European Earwig

Your body lithe, you swim in dying leaves,
A hunter seeking moribund remains,
In reeking flowers, dumps, and swollen eaves,
Devouring pests and, lacking them, our grains.
Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds,
Which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
Not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
Though still provoking fear with pinching crown.
But 'neath the wintry earth you lay your clutch
In chambers underground, and tending turn
Your eggs to forestall mould, and mother much
Those white nymphs who in spring your ways will learn.
From humankind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death, you raise up life.

4 March 2010, Fort McMurray

For some reason earwigs have always fascinated me; their bodies seem so graceful, their browns so glowing and clear. I used to be afraid of them, but I'm not any more. If they pinch me, it's my own fault for handling them. However, I recognize how other people are afraid of them. I've wanted to write a sonnet on them for some time and, after researching them on Wikipedia and letting the ideas percolate for a few days, something finally came to me. I was meditating on the form of the sonnet, and the above structure resulted.

Lines broken to reflect pauses in reading:

Your body lithe,
you swim in dying leaves,
a hunter seeking moribund remains in reeking flowers
dumps
and swollen eaves,
devouring pests
and, lacking them,
our grains.

Translucent legs and vested wings your weeds
which nightly you parade as ghoulish gown,
not down those tunnels that your naming reads,
though still provoking fear with pinching crown.

But 'neath the wintery earth
you lay your clutch in chambers underground
and tending turn your eggs to forestall mould
and mother much those white nymphs
who in spring your ways will learn.

From human kind you've found but constant strife;
Yet buried under death
you raise up life.

Cepaea nemoralis

or, The Grove Snail

You little nomads, keep your secrets banked
Inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
And hide within those rounds your patient lores,
Enclosed among your kind, disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom, slow-footed news.
At leafy caravanaries you trade
Among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
To them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl
Your body; prongs are, like the point, in air,
A question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me, one bred
In a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

I wrote this on Monday (the 15 of Feb), on the Winter Road between Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray. One of the things I miss about Ontario are the snails, especially the yellow ones, which from Wikipedia I gather are Cepaea nemoralis, or grove snails. I have written about the snail's wisdom before, but I decided to try the idea again. Actually, I like some of "Eulogy for the Garden," but not the whole thing. It needs a lot of work yet, and that's something I will some day give it. In the meantime, I'll expand the snail bit in a sonnet and not free verse. As the New Englander says in The Tommyknockers, "Real poims rhyme."

Re-written, so the line-breaks match the pauses:

You little nomads,
keep your secrets banked inside your yellow Atlas-shoulder stores,
and hide within those rounds your patient lores,
enclosed among your kind,
disliked, unthanked.
Or pass between you glacial wisdom,
slow-footed news;
At leafy caravanaries you trade among your gradual people, from gardens strayed;
to them reveal your gospel, them, in conch-like pews.
You are tucked, your puckered foot is bare.
I pluck you from my palm and you unfurl your body;
prongs are, like the point, in air, a question mark, your shell the inward-questing curl.
Why trust your tender self to me,
one bred in a speed-mad world from which all wisdom's fled?

The Fort Chip Adventure: Where We Take the Winter Access Road North

These photos are of the Winter Access Road stretching north of Fort McMurray to Fort Chipewyan. Some of them will be blurry, unfortunately, because I took them from a moving vehicle. These may seem repetitive, and I'm sorry about that; I tried to stick to different types of forest or terrain.

Notice what the sign is attached to.

I am posting a disproportionate amount of pictures of the Delta (below) than of the Sand Hills (above) because I think many of my readings will find the Delta more visually unique than the Sand Hills. Also, we stopped more often on the Delta, leading to better photos.

Here we are entering the Delta.

In this photo there is a ptarmigan.

If you can, look closer at the photo below; you will be able to see Fort Chipewyan in the distance.

Winter Photography of the Conn Creek Greenspace

I once promised to put up decent winter photography from the Fort McMurray area. Here I am fulfilling this promise. Facebook friends, you may have seen these already.
It might be worth mentioning that as I took these pictures I was playing with the ISO and exposure time settings.