The bog, when frozen, opens up. Its interior becomes visible, its skeletal system, clear. Water that normally runs for one day and disappears the next freezes, yet the movement of the water is traced in its odd shapes and layers of frozen surfaces. Some plants are frozen inside the ice, like bugs in amber. Their colour remains bright and life like. Most of it will thaw and just go on with what it was doing before the sudden freeze. Birds fill the lower branches of the bushes and brambles, searching for seeds. They call back and forth. I don’t know if they are sharing what they found or warning others to stay away. The low winter sun casts shadows which in the spring are never disappear. It reminds you that we are moving, not the sun. We’ve got it all wrong.
Flooding in the Delta
The rain stopped early today and we went down to a woodlands along the Pacific coast. There the high tide and strong winds blowing inland Brough a flood inland. Pathways throughout the woodlands were flooded, some were like little streams. What all the salt water will do to the cottonwoods I’m not sure.
Along a Pathway in the Forest.
Near The Wire Fence in the Forest.
There is a wire fence in the forest, I suppose it is to keep you away from the edge of the river, and away from the protected areas of the forest. Here the light barely comes through. Still, things grow, sometimes smaller and slower than you would expect. But they grow.
In the Forest at Sunrise.
Early this morning, right at day break, I returned to the small woodland at the delta of the Fraser River on the Pacific Coast. Some trees had recently fallen from the parameter of the woodland and light was streaming in where I have never seen it. Where five years ago there had been a Sturt of growth of vines and seedlings, all of those were gone. They had dried out, and crumbled to the ground. I wonder what happened then that brought about a change inside the dark forest, and why it has stopped.
A Towel by a Tree in the Bog
The Forest Next to the Highway
A pathway runs along the highway, just behind a break of trees, allowing light to flow in from reflections on the road, stones and water.
Following the power line through the forest.
The creek by the bog.
I’ve spent many hours following this creek along the edge of the bog, but have focused mainly on the area near the centre of the bog where the beavers flood the pathways and their are dark, heavily covered pine forests. Here the creek is next to the rail line. Trains come through at faster speeds than you would expect. Overhead a large bridge leads to an island and then back to the mainland, and the smell of cedar trees being cut in a nearby lumber yard fills the air.