Another Hike

 Life is Movement and a dirty car.

In most sections of this trail, I was the only one making human tracks.

The weather broke with sunny skies and tufts of brilliant white clouds. As much as I hated to, I left Charlie at home for a day of rest and headed out to my favorite close to home 'haunt' at the Reserve. I thought I'd try a different combination of trails that would add up to a 7 miler.

Though towards the end I skipped one section as the snow was deeper on that trail and no human or animal had yet walked it.

I opted for the short cut and ended up with 6.33 miles [according to Garmin]. The snow was not hard and not compacted. It felt like walking in sand. Also, our snow is only about 2 to 3 inches deep in most places but in drifted spots it was knee deep.

Part of the trail did involve walking on the road for a bit. 

Bridge 14 over the
Kickapoo River

During all the summer months, this backroad is full of tourist traffic and loud motorcycles  on their way to one of the state parks or to the biker/hiker/canoer bar that is located on the edge of the Reserve [Rockton Bar]. 30 years ago it was mainly canoers and equine riders that went to the bar-restaurant. They DO serve awesome food.

On my walk through this time, I didn't see a single vehicle. Maybe that is why I like winter hiking so much.

I didn't freeze on this hike. In fact I had to stop at one point and take my sweatshirt off and tie it around my waist. I got that warm by late in the afternoon.

The only other person I saw on my wanderings was Jesse the cop/land manager who was grooming the cross country ski trail [bike trail in the summer]. We waved.

I did have a few successful 'Landscape ICM' photos.

On a whim I did these. To me they are just interesting, I wanted them to feel like paintings.

The pines

Windblown

Lone oak

Valley Boy

 The temps finally came up Sunday but the winds were wicked. Charlie had been bugging me, so we got out for a walk along the neighbor's field. We could walk along the forest edge and get some protection from the wind.

Charlie stops to inspect the Log Skidder. There is a lot of waste with this logging operation. The wood they leave behind could warm thousands of homes. 
The Skidder was quiet and Charlie decided to go up and give the tire a bit of his doggy business. 

We dropped down into a very steep 'ravine' or what we call a dry run. It is like a narrow ravine shaped from years of run off. This particular one has a spring have way down its 1/2 mile length. In the winter the water seeps from the spring and freezes in layers over the boulders and mosses.

Charlie knows where I want to go and he keeps an eye out for anything and everything.

The ice from the tiny spring appears to be blue green. It could be from the 'gumbo clay' that it passes through.
I seriously don't know what gumbo clay is, but it is greyish green and can be molded when wet and falls apart when dried.

We explore, we take some cellphone shots and we head up the steep side of the hill. The climb out is 248 feet of elevation change. I do it each winter a few times because I find the blue/green ice so fascinating to see.

We did it once more. Into PeeWee's Valley to the blue/green ice and out. Below is a mini video looking back at what we climbed out of.

This is a shot from 10 years ago when Morris [my Jack Russell] and I explored it for the first time. Yes, the shot is terrible, it was from my old point and shoot camera and it is what it is.
However it shows how much this ravine fills with ice over the winter.

The ice is easily 4 feet deep.

Our tradition continues.

Last days of January

I needed to get out with Charlie as we were both going 'nuts'. It warmed up just enough to feel sort of okay with a face mask.

I drove the short distance to the local DNR land at Tainter Creek. My big surprise when I got there was that the DNR had mowed the flats down. The tiny bushy trails were gone and the area was cleaned up. I imagine it was time so that when Trout Season opened, the anglers [and people like me] could walk along the stream and enjoy its beauty.

Tainter Creek is in one of the most steepest valleys in our area. If we get a flood, this place is under water. 

Roads quickly get washed out and slowly get repaired.

2018 Washout:

But all is good now. We got there on the 30th when the sun was disappearing over the southwest hillsides. Part of the valley was sunny, the other half was in deep shadow.

Sign for this area

Most of this first walk was in shadows and between the shadows and the stream and a light breeze, things got pretty chilly.

We didn't make it all of the way around because 'someone' got cold. Probably from me stopping and taking so many photos of the ice and water.

And this little guy sat in the cold and ice to watch a squirrel tease him on the other side of the deep stream. 

I went back the next morning and left Chilly Willy Charlie at home to recover. This way the only feet that would get cold would be my own.

The warmth could be felt from the sunlight in the morning and the glow from the hillsides were reflected in any open spots.

It was simply stunning.

My feet did get a bit cold while standing in the deeper snow and squatting next to the stream. But it was all worth it.

Tainter Creek DNR land is worth the look.

In the spring the ephemerals are all over this valley. Blood Root, Virginia Bluebells, Dutchman's Breeches, anemones, Trout Lily's and so much more.

I've rarely ever visited this valley so close to home in the winter. I am glad I did.

My feet did warm up once I got to the road and walked back to the parking area. 

I'll go again once the weather makes another change.

Charlie?

He said he'd wait for the next big adventure which we had planned for Sunday.

Trying it again, different things to do...

On a cold winter's night.

First some steel wool

 

Add some crinkled foil behind it and a blue light.

Hmm, needs more color or something. Add some pink dried flowers!

So I added some reddish orange light to bounce off the foil in the background and left the blue light shining up from below.

Use a mister or a spray bottle to add water droplets.

It took a few adjustments to find something I liked and
I picked this one.

and this one....

a small change in the position of 

the colored lights and the steel

wool

changes everything.

I'm still working on perfecting something with the steel wool. I am making good use of it though as it is also handy at cleaning rust off from stuff!

👌

Now the ICM has me so intrigued so I thought I'd look up some more info on it. I ran across a guy named David Day who does ICM Still Life photography in a studio setting. That intrigued me because seriously the constant freaking cold days is wearing me down.

He uses pieces of plants, layers of tissue paper, paper, rocks, bark, and anything you can think of to shoot with ICM. Some of it is really out of this world, but you can really use your imagination and 'see' something.

Anyway he used some colored electric wire in one video. It made me curious so I searched the house for something like his wire to try my own ICM still life experiment.

I ended up going into my junk drawer and finding some different colored twist ties. I clipped them together and lit them from the side with a flash light. It was nothing like David's set up, but heck, I'm always up to see if I can do something similar.

So, these were two of my favorite ones from Thursday night. 

The writing on the one twist tie looks like stripes in the shots.

Do I know what I am doing? 

Nope.

But it sure is fun!

I liked this ICM better because it wasn't like doing  a landscape shot. I'm still working on the landscapes but thought I'd give this a whirl. 

So I took a lot of shots. Some I missed the subject completely. Some I were just awful. It takes a lot of practice and muscle memory to do this.  Moving the camera around a small object while the shutter is open isn't that easy.

But the results can be wild.

I also tried some of the dried pink flowers.

What I found is...

Less is more. 

So I just pulled the flowers apart until I had a little stem.

Another thing I noticed, is having more than one color is very helpful. There was a brown undyed flower in this little stem and I like how that color showed through.

Last. Dried tan flowers with a green stick and the clip with the orange end.

Happiness is experimentation.

Long ago I used to work with fractal programs, so abstraction is not something that is foreign to me. This is a bit more fun as I'm not dealing with formulas.

I guess I am just pretty cheap to entertain in the evenings. Junk drawer twist ties, pieces of flowers, flashlight, and a camera.

Cold fingers, cold doggy, and the look

        The screen shot below is from my watch that was tracking my walk through the forest the other day. I did one mile but then arrived home and decided to get the chores done. I literally forgot to turn the 'Walk' tracking off.

The orange line on the left was me taking sleds of hay out to the mules and putting the hay in a protected area.  The stuff off to the right was me caring for the pony. 

I bring the old fella warm water three times a day and keep his hay feeder full at all times. He gets special 'calf' hay which is easier for elderly equine to eat and digest. Little Richard is somewhere between 33 to 35 years old.

The blue in the middle? My activities in the house, doing the bird feeders, and apparently doing things indoors. 

I must be a very restless sleeper too as when I woke up in the morning, the walk tracking was still on and I had 3 miles of 'walking'.

Note, I do not sleepwalk, so I must be a very active and restless sleeper.

I finally did get off the farm. The temps moved up to 9 F or -12 C. Charlie gave me such a mournful look that I decided to take him with on a walk near Weister Creek. I had an idea in my head to take a shot of a trail through the trees, snow, and open field both still and ICM. 

Most of the tutorials for Intentional Camera Movement discuss not taking shots in bright situations as they don't work well. 

So a bright sunny day with bright white snow was probably not going to work. Of course when I am told not to do something with photography I like to try and break the rules.

Below is the wide trail through the stand of trees. In the summer, it is a walking trail only and in the winter it is a snowmobile trail. This runs alongside Weister Creek which attracts trout anglers all season long.

Below is Weister Creek trail in the summer 
shot in Infrared. Going
through this particular spot is very 
scenic in the summertime.

It took about 20 ICM shots before I found one I could probably use. I didn't care for the full blown blurred look as I wanted to 'picture' the trail too.
I blended two shots together for the end which I ended up really liking.

Maybe my ICM will not be full blur but a nice pleasant way to direct attention. Plus! I did it a full blown sunny day. I did have to use a Neutral Density Filter to get the exposure to slow down to 1/4 of a second.

I froze my fingers and got one shot I can live with after about 20 tries.

It was unfortunate that Charlie stood still by me while I did this as he got cold too. So I picked him up and walked back to the car where we were out of the wind.

The goofy dog then decided to take the trail and ran happily forward. He is so familiar with the trail that we take often that he just assumed we were there for more walking.

I let him go and in about a half a mile he stopped and started doing the cold foot hop. We were done and I carried him back.

I know all about booties, blankets, and coats. Charlie back feet are tiny compared to his front paws which are meaty and thick [for digging]. I should have known better that anything below 19 or 20 is too cold for long snowy walks for him. 

But the guy gave me such a look when I was gathering my stuff to leave I couldn't resist. 

We did drive around to check out some other scenes and then drove home to cuddle.

The hardest thing about having a pet is how much my heart strings can be pulled by them. It is hard to see his face turn grey. 

He is suffering from missing Rich too. Rich was always here for him. Being alone is difficult for him. Definitely separation anxiety.