For the rest of us

a long walk with a camera has marked my Christmas day for many years now, a relief from the spectacle of expectations the season can become.

Instead, a collection

freely offered, free to share

no waste no cost no strain

a labor of love for life

take from the earth only beauty

call us all home again

pause & wonder at the everyday miraculous

And bow when gratitude, unbidden, comes.

MaY PeAcE PreVaiL on EaRtH

Mid-Atlantic coastal salt marsh reverie

Mighty phragmites and their neighbors blowing in the wind during Autumn hawkwatch, Cape May County NJ. (click any image to enlarge).

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” H.D. Thoreau, Walden (1854)

at the shore

Atlantic Coastal and bay beaches from South Jersey to Assateague Island.

Cape May Point, a shoreline and a wartime relic that appear timeless.

Wind drives seaward; all the sand here has been trucked or pumped in repeatedly. Waves once crashed beneath this WWII battery fortress leaving it perched in midair atop the grid of wooden pilings that form its foundation. Storm after storm sent waves breaking over the historic duneline behind it, flooding the Cape May meadows and eroding the beach into steep cliffs, until the state of NJ had no choice but to rescue Cape May Point and this landmark by spending a fortune every few years since the early 1990’s to maintain and re-nourish these doomed beaches.

Up close a symphonic pattern of curving grasses, a brace of rebar, lime weeping, a garland of goldenrod nodding overhead.

Coastal defense of a bygone era, shored up with imported sand, festooned with sedges and grasses where the ocean once laid claim. And will again.

Notice the image below “What Is It”, of the bunker suspended in midair with waves breaking behind it. The original 1940’s shoreline extended far in front of the structure and included gun turret mounts and other buildings. Beyond the bunker, midway down Cove beach toward Cape May, once stood the town of South Cape May. Remnants of that place sometimes wash ashore after a Nor’easter storm, bits of broken china, tile or brick. The rest of it lies underwater.

Around the point from the bunker, Delaware Bay beaches in the Villas, a far cry from the creosote bulkhead bound and filthy shoreline found here in the 1960s. Less beach but now backed by replanted dunes in place of the unsuccessful armored shoreline

Remnants of coastal mixed cedar dune forest set between the front Delaware Bay beach and the cattail anchored brackish wetlands behind. Saltwater slowly encroaches as sea level changes impact the estuary. A drive north on Route 47 up the western side of the south Jersey peninsula will take you past areas of drowned forests and fishing villages like Reeds Beach, Fortescue and others that are slowly being claimed by the rising tide. People who’ve lived long lives on this coast witness these changes firsthand. For others interested in the forecast for the region, this Rutger’s University study provides a wealth of information.

• 

  2009

• 

  2019

October Sundown

On the way home last night, only tool with me, the phone.

Wisconsin River autumn at Boscobel, fog and light enchanted.

Climate Changed: High Water on Sanders Creek

Another installment of an ongoing series witnessing the impacts of climate changes in the Midwest. Torrential rain and persistent flooding have made a sobering mark this year on the lives of many: lost crops, flooded fields, landslides, damaged homes, railcars and river barges at a standstill, hope at a premium and longstanding lifeways called into question.

Normally placid, Sanders Creek meanders through Boscobel. In a matter of hours it morphed into a raging, cataract just as full moon arrived this month. The roaring of the water a block away drew me out into darkness.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Night Watch

Posting this pixelish, lowlight phone snap because it cracks me up… the second car was invisible to the eye 🙃.

Erasure

All that remains of the 19th century Dubuque, IA generating station, tabula rasa, a blank slate. A lost generation of industrial architecture. Generator. Genera. Generous. Sui Generis. General. Genetic. Generic. Be generous, time flies.