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Melting Ice

A pied-billed grebe beside melting ice at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

A pied-billed grebe surfaces beside melting ice at Rest Lake in Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Unlike the melting sea ice, the melting lake ice isn’t alarming, as during our mild winters it rarely freezes in the first place. A cold snap froze some of the shallower and smaller lakes and ponds, but it was nothing compared to the snowstorm that in a week would bury us first in heavy snow then thick ice when it melted and re-froze.

The Sea Was Angry That Day, My Friends

Patterns in the ice look like waves

Today’s post is a tribute to four things that have brought me joy.

The title is one of my favorite lines from Seinfeld, spoken by George in the episode “The Marine Biologist”, when his little lie that he was a marine biologist, told to impress a woman, snowballed and led him in the end to having to rescue a whale in distress. Thinking of my favorite lines from that show still make me laugh all these years later.

And whales are on the mind as I’ve been reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for the first time, I’m a fifth of the way in and have been enjoying it so far. It’s unfair as a modern reader to judge the whalers of the book by the abject slaughter that was to come, but even so, though I have yet to meet Captain Ahab or Moby Dick, and I don’t know the story of the book other than Ahab’s pursuit of his obsession, I hope the great white whale devours everyone by the end, save for Queequeg and Ishmael (who as the narrator I assume survives). I also hope that the whale can take to the land, and even the skies, scourge of wickedness no matter where it lies, no matter where it hides. Take care Captain Bildad, when you hear your a knockin’ at your door, that the great white whale lies not beyond!

That’s what Melville was known for, right? Superheroic whales? Shame the book was a failure during his lifetime, the opening line of “Call me Ishmael” is one of my favorites of any book for reasons I don’t yet understand myself, but it hooked me from the get go. I’ve been reading the novel on the train on my iPad, which has quickly become my favorite computer. It’s also the one I’d probably give up first if I had to, as I don’t use it for photography, but it has made riding the train so much more enjoyable than in years prior. And it’s gotten me reading books again. So hats off both to writers of novels and the engineers who designed the magic computer that lets me hold so many in my hands.

And finally, a tribute to the little refuge that is Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge where this picture was taken, not of the seas but a small section of ice in a quiet channel that froze in this rough pattern compared to the smooth ice that was all around it. I’ve spent more time than I’ll admit publicly in this spot looking for bitterns or whatever else might come by, and on this cold winter morning was treated to a variety of a patterns in the ice.

The Green Smile

A stream meanders through the Quinault Rain Forest

While I love the old growth sections of the rain forest with its massive trees, I love the younger forest too reclaiming this little section of the Olympic peninsula in the Quinault Rain Forest. I stood beside this meandering stream, swimming in a sea of green, a smile on my face. A little ways away young trees grew, covered in moss of course because this is the rain forest, while ferns grew in the open spaces below. Ferns whose ancestors first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago, before the flowering plants, but some of which have survived through to today. Some of which I grow in my yard, wood sorrel too, my little reminder of the forests that hold my heart.

Ferns grow below moss-covered trees in the Quinault Rain Forest

The High Heat of Summer

Our cat Trixie sleeps at the top of the old cat tree

When I took advantage of a big sale back in March to buy my new camera and lenses, one of the lenses I decided to try was the Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8 lens. It’s a full-frame lens but on my crop camera behaves more like a moderate telephoto, a useful lenses for taking portraits of people, but that’s not something I do. I do take portraits of the pets of course but I was worried it would be too long of a focal length for indoor use. Still, I had loved it from afar and decided to give it a chance and was playing around with it for these portraits of Trixie at the top of the cat tree.

I often don’t like shots with an overly shallow depth-of-field and I could take it or leave it here. I’d like a little more depth of field on Trixie but I do like the way it renders the out-of-focus stained glass in the background, and I like the way the slightly compressed look of this length of lens puts the focus on her but still with a sense of the background for the room.

The old cat tree is in front of the large picture window in the living room. It’s actually three windows, two smaller ones on the end that slide open and big fixed one in the middle. There are pull-down shades sized to each window as well, and the big shade she is sleeping next to is pulled down, while the other two were open, letting the sunlight reflect off the brown walls and bathe her in warm light. For the shot below I moved slightly to the right to include the context of the window, which I knew would blow out because it was so much brighter than the rest of the room, but I love the way the lens handled it, two similar shots and I like both but the slight shift gives each a different feel. As does Trixie’s ‘smile’, really part of a yawn, which seems part warm and playful and part ‘my ancestors devoured yours’.

It was quickly heating up on this summer morning when I took the pictures, but when the Little Furnace curls up in my lap, that’s when I feel the real high heat of summer. Not that I’d ever turn her away, my little Trix, and of course Sam and Boo are always welcome too.

The Curious Smile