Flying through the sunrise

I had a lovely mini-vacation at Saratoga Beach here on Vancouver Island last week.  Maggie and I were up early to walk the beach at sunrise each day.  With the upcoming move, I've had little time to edit the several hundred photos I took, so here is a little teaser of our mornings watching birds fly through the sunrise.  Will try to post more in a few days:

Still here....

I don't remember moving ever requiring so much work to organize - and I'm not even doing my own packing!  Stuff to sell, stuff to buy, movers to arrange (done), painters to hire (done), appointments to keep, hydro, phone, water meter, post office, friends, medical people, etc etc etc. 

But amidst it all, I still find time to hike, and walk, and to enjoy beautiful sunrises - like this one, taken from my back door as I let the dog out the other morning. 

I will miss seeing those sunrises before the coffee has even finished brewing.  Have to walk a block or two at the new place to see them.

Enjoy the day!

January's Halcyon Day

Halcyon days:  a period of peace and happiness; an idyllic time; also, a period of calm weather during the winter solstice. ( Dictionary.com)

The day began like any other.  I dragged myself out of bed  at 5 AM, to the persistent mewing of a hungry cat and the excited chattering of a sheltie who needed to make sure I knew the cat was calling me.  I shuffled around doing the usual early morning chores: let dog out, let dog in, feed animals, make coffee, check facebook, make bed,  scoop litter box, have shower, get dressed, and, as it was Monday and one of my regular hiking days, pack my lunch and thermos into my backpack alongside my emergency supplies. The weather forecast was for a nice day - a welcome relief in a sometimes stormy, sometimes foggy, and often grey and wet month.

My friend and I planned to explore a park about an hour's drive away - one we had not been to before - and because I was not sure what the terrain would be like I opted to leave Maggie at home.  Handling trekking poles and a dog leash on unstable or slippery or muddy ground is a recipe for disaster for this falling-apart-at-the-joints body. So before I could head out hiking, Mags needed a good walk. And as we stepped out in the breaking dawn, magic began to happen.

The fog that had encased us the day before lifted, layer by layer, and the skies and seas turned orange and yellow with hints of purple and blue.

I love our island sunrises - they are frequent and beautiful and they chase away the winter doldrums like nothing else can do. Well, maybe like 'almost' nothing else can do, because the day just went from beautiful to outright fantastic.

Maggie fully exercised, fed, and toileted, I threw my gear in the car, picked up my hiking buddy, and off we went to Moorecroft Regional Park in Nanoose Bay.  Once a girls camp, then a United Church camp, it is now a beautiful ocean front park with well maintained easy trails, a meadow, a small swampy lake, an old cabin, rocky shores and small bluffs....and never ending views of tiny islands.

We tromped around the beaches for awhile,  admiring driftwood and windswept trees, and watching cormorants on a rocky outcrop.  They reminded me of tourists watching the surf  at Tofino - standing there admiring the view until that  surprise sneaker wave rolls in and drenches them completely.

Then we took the trail through a lovely forest with lots of bright sword fern. We checked out a few side trails, then crossed through the meadow and stopped by the lake to admire the mirror-image reflections of foliage in water.

Returning along the loop trail, we found ourselves back near the ocean, where we enjoyed the view of the snowy mountains on the mainland as we ate our lunch to the sounds of ocean waves, bird song, and the rustle of leaves.

It was only early afternoon, so rather than head home, we decided to check out a second but smaller regional park nearby -  Beachcomber Regional Park. There we followed the short trail down to a rocky beach with plenty of flat sandstone and shale rocks and tidal pools, and more incredible views.

We heard eagles calling, and turned to see a pair high in a tree above us, their eyes scanning the waters for fish

We watched the colourful Harlequin ducks, who look like someone has meticulously painted their feathers with intricate designs in grey and white and black and brown.

We chatted quietly as we admired the nearby mountain  (Mt Arrowsmith, I think),  and a bare tree clinging to a small rocky bank, and the many geological formations, one of which we likened to an anvil.

And then, as we were trying to decide if that was a seal or another rock beyond the Anvil Rock, the sea lions that had been barking in the distance for much of the morning suddenly gave us the show of a lifetime. First one, then three, then groups of five and six and three more and another five, on and on they came - an endless stream of sea lions slide past us not 30 feet from shore, some even closer as they skirted the overhanging rocks. And they raised their heads and barked at us, barked at each other, splashed and fished and played  and dove and barked some more.  Dozens of them, all coming from across the bay, down the shore, and congregating just beyond the anvil rock.

I live within sound of a sea lion colony and hear them often for their voices carry far, but never have I seen them up close, and even my best telephoto lens can only capture their general shape. For the eight and a half years I've lived here, I've wanted to see them at a distance more amenable to photographing their faces.

All it took was a halcyon day in January and a serendipity stop at a little regional park an hour from home.

Life doesn't get much better than this.

Another teaser?

Sometimes it takes me a lot longer than I anticipate to edit photos and form a cohesive post, especially when it has been a fabulous day for photos and experiences. I end up spending hours just reliving the day looking at the photos and being unable to decide which ones to use and which to leave out of a blog post (because I'm quite sure you don't have time to scroll through 372 photos with your morning cup of coffee!).

So excuse me if I still don't have the post up from Monday's amazing day. The shots are edited (ie, the out of focus and boring ones are discarded, and the basic cropping and adjusting is done), but I still have to select and watermark and organize the ones for the blog.  Meanwhile, here is one of several photos from the start of that day- ducks enjoying a Crofton sunrise.

Ducks enjoying a Crofton winter sunrise,
as the mist lifts from the water.

On a dark and dreary winter's day

Today was one of those miserable west coast winter days - rain, rain, rain and dark, dark, dark.  Fortunately our winter days are not cold like the days our friends back east are experiencing, and the dark and wet ones are interspersed with dry and sometimes sunny ones.  So on those rainy dark days like today I remind myself of two things - spring is just a few weeks away here on the island, and even before it arrives, there will still be magnificent moments.

I've lived in many places in BC, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, but I don't think I've ever lived any place where we so frequently have such amazing sunrises as we do on the east coast of Vancouver Island.  Often, the day will start with a wondrous display of colour and reflection and by the time most of the town is up and about, it is overcast once more.

Being the morning person that I am, and with a dog I love to walk as soon as I've had that first cup of coffee, those brief but beautiful sunrises are mine to capture, a thick slab of joy to get me through the day, a memory to draw on when the rain and darkness seems oppressive, a promise to look forward to once more in the days ahead.

This was my world morning before last;  if I'm lucky, it shall be mine again tomorrow.

Sunrise to Moonrise on a Summer Solstice

Today  Ms. "I-don't-get-up-before-noon" Mitzi decided to change things around a bit and wake me up at 4:45 AM.  I'm glad she did, because as I stumbled outside with her, I got to witness the sun coming up on this the longest day of the year:

Once Mitzi had done her business, she headed right back to bed.  Once I had finished taking thirty or forty sunrise photos, I was wide awake and figured there was no point going back to bed.  By mid morning, I regretted that decision.  I don't do well without my beauty rest.

Yet here I am, after midnight, still up. This year's Summer Solstice coincides with a full moon - which in June is called a Strawberry Moon as it heralds the beginning of strawberry season.  And the Strawberry Moon and the Summer Solstice occurs on the same day only once every 70 years.  Once in a lifetime.  Now how could I go to bed knowing that?  How could I miss a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to photograph a Summer Solstice Strawberry Moon?

The sky was not cloudless, so I kept photographing in the hopes that I'd capture a rare moment in time when the moon would not be partially hidden by cloud.  And I kept trying different settings, and trying to keep my hand steady (you may remember the last time I tried to photograph a full moon using a tripod I broke the camera when it fell to the ground), so I accumulated sixty or seventy photos before the cloudless shot appeared.  And after all that, my favourite photo (from a very quick perusal of them) isn't the ONE shot without cloud cover, but this one in which the moon has two stripes of cloud across its face:

And now I'm off to bed.  I sure hope Ms. Mitzi sleeps in!

Can I get away with this?

Can you stand another sunrise photo?  From the same morning as the last sunrise post?

I had intended to do a longer blog today.  I have the drafts of several prepared, but all still need a lot of work.  And Ms Mitzi, whose days are nights and nights are days, had me up four or five times last night, wanting to play, to snack, to go pee, to see what Allie (who was banging cupboard doors and playing with Rudolph the Red Nosed Mouse) was up to.  So at 4:30 AM I finally gave up trying to sleep and put on a pot of coffee.  And while it wasn't a productive day, it was a day in which there was no time for a nap.  So now, at 9:30 PM, I am simply too tired to revise those drafts or to create something new.

But just because I know I have at least two readers who come here each morning, coffee mug in hand, hoping I have posted something new, I feel an obligation to provide something to kick start their day at least a few times a week.  So, if you can stand one more sunrise, here's a shot I took on the same morning as last day's post - this one using the telephoto at full extension to capture the rising sun illuminating the North Shore mountains on the mainland, far far beyond the containers anchored near the Crofton log sort and mill.

It always amazes me that something which is actually an hour's drive north followed by a two hour ferry ride east can sometimes seem like it is just across our small bay, reachable by canoe or kayak or a nice gentle swim.  Oh the beauty of our world through the telephoto lens of a camera!

Sunrise reflected on North Shore Mountains

Some things are worth getting up early for

Sunrise this morning, shared with a heron.
Photo shot  from Crofton Sea Walk, looking east across Osborne Bay to Salt Spring Island,
with the tip of Mt. Baker, WA, USA seen on the right.

If this is winter solstice, can spring be far behind?

I breathe a little easier once Winter Solstice occurs - the days will now get longer, and within a few weeks we'll be seeing signs of spring her on the island.

In celebration of the solstice, Bessie (a visiting dog, in case you missed Sunday's post) and I headed down to the beach to watch the sunrise.  It was cold out, and the thin coating of black ice on the roads and sidewalks made for challenging walking - especially with one hand grasping the leash of a dog that pulls like a certain team of reindeer, and the other hand tightly clutching my precious camera. One fall and disaster could occur to the contents of either hand.
But we made it to the Seawalk (though the seawalk itself was too icy to walk), and for the next hour Bessie and I awaited the sun.  Why is it that when I spot the beginnings of a good sunrise from my backyard, there is no way I can reach the beach before it is over, but when I purposely get up early to shoot it, it takes forever to rise?

A low, thin bank of clouds covered the low spot on Salt Spring Island through which, on a good day, one can see Mount Baker.  And the winter Sun, low in the sky, managed to first stay behind the clouds and then behind the mountain.

But just as I was about to give up, I saw a touch of red dusting the tops of  the clouds:

First hint of red - look closely! 

And while it never developed into the riot of colour we so often get at sunrise, it cast enough red and gold to make the wait worthwhile.

Low clouds over Salt Spring Island

A bird flies in the sunrise

Golden morning

Sunrise over Osborne Bay

I was distracted, sadly, by the black lab with blue and white eyes that a person living near the seawalk lets out unsupervised morning and evening to roam the town and do his business wherever he pleases, mostly in the little park near the ferry terminal.  That dog, appropriately named Bandit, attacked Mitzi on one occasion and relentlessly stalks and follows us despite my calls to Animal Control.  Today, Bandit bounded out of his home and down to the parking lot where he immediately spotted Bessie, and she him.  Fortunately, another person did his best to distract the dog and encourage him to move in the other direction, but it still meant I missed a few good shots - sunrise colours change so swiftly, and distraction is not a photographer's friend.

Bandit! Go Home! 

Still, I got a few shots, and then Bessie and I hied over to the other side of the docks to watch the cargo ships and tugboats at work,  and the seals, kingfishers, and various ducks searching for their morning feast.

Cargo ship in first morning light

Tug boat in the harbour

Kingfisher Silhouette

Soon the sun will rise earlier, and set later, and we shall be hunting snowdrops and crocuses and daffodils. And I can hardly wait.

Hurry, Shiloh, Hurry!

Sometimes having dogs and loving nature are not compatible interests.  Like this morning.  Shiloh was pacing, ready for her morning walk.  I put her harness on her, attached her leash, and stepped outside to see this through the crack between my neighbour's house and garage:

Oh. My. Goodness.  It was shaping up to be an amazing sunrise, and I wanted to watch and photograph every second of it from the best vantage point ever - the beach.  The beach is less than two blocks from my house.  But sunrises change by the millisecond and I was going to have to be quick if I wanted to catch the most colourful of the crimson and orange and yellow swoops and swirls on camera.  And here I was heading out on a walk with my almost-seventeen year old dog.

The solution, you'd think, would be to stick Shiloh back in the house and hotfoot it to the seawalk.  But you don't know Shiloh.  Her walks are the highlight of her day and she was already bouncing down the driveway.  
And then she decided to become The Slowest Dog On Earth.  She sniffed.  She snorted.  She shuffled and shimmied.  But she did not move forward at a pace faster than an earthworm in molasses.  So a lot of the first shots were taken enroute, complete with trees and powerlines and more than a few cars.  After all, it was rush minute in Crofton, with island-hopping commuters heading to the Crofton-Saltspring ferry.

Shiloh even decided to have a poop right in the middle of the largest intersection in town.  Not that it's large by city standards, but construction on that corner means walking diagonally from sidewalk to park in order to get to the beach.  And she chose the very middle for her business.  Thankfully, ferry patrons had lots of time and were goodnatured about waiting while I stooped and scooped.

We eventually reached the waterfront, but the seawalk was very frosty and too slippery for this old blogger or her old dog, so we eschewed the best vantage points and stood at the edge of the parking lot.  The reds had all but disappeared from the sky, but the yellows and oranges were more pronounced than ever, spilling across the water.

As the morning sky lightened and the sunrise faded, we headed back, wandering through the green space above the marina enroute, and catching a few last shots.

Then Shiloh hotfooted it back home, with nary a sniff or stall or struggle.  Sigh.