Tag: photography

No mind

Katharine Asals1 Comment

Early this morning a dream of a deer, come to the door of a house I was just leaving.  I  thought he was an unusual sighting in a suburban neighbourhood as he turned and ran away revealing a fox tail rather than the little white cotton puff.   Excited, I turned to my host, who seemed non-plussed, as though deer were frequent visitors in his neighbourhood.  But when I went out again to the street, the deer was back, his expression deliberate, gesturing with his head for me to follow him around the corner, where it turned out an old friend was giving birth.

Today on Facebook, I see that a photo I took up north weeks ago is featured on the Ontario Travel page.

I took a lot of photos while I was up north.

I loved the experience of it.  Of getting up early, heading out into the morning light and feeling a kind of no-mind creative process – different from writing. Different because it seemed like the best way to connect with my surroundings was to be empty, to just be present in my body in the space…..waiting, feeling, breathing, sensing.

Riding and walking the trails around Collingwood, I found it easy to get very quiet inside myself.  I’d heard in the past about “walking with your power animal”.  It sounded faintly pretentious and I wasn’t sure really what was meant by it.

But I started to feel it.  I started to feel like that’s what I was doing.  Walking as if.  Walking inside the animal.  Walking AS an animal – listening, smelling, feeling the light shifts in the air.

Rustles and snaps of twigs in the brush, in the forest made me stop and listen, waiting to see who was there.  All senses poised as carnivorous predator, hunting for the next shot.

Strangely enough, sometimes it seemed as though the hunted waited, wanting to have their picture taken.

Heat in the city

Katharine Asals5 Comments

Waking up my son this morning and looking out the window into the little activities in the back yard – squirrels crossing on the squirrel highway of telephone wires, various birds here and there gathering food and such – the peaceful putterings are suddenly interrupted by the massive swoop of a hawk diving into the back yard beyond where the strange white dog lives.

A moment later the hawk is up, perched on the fence between the properties, lingering a moment, huge, and then he flies off, giant wings carrying him out of the yard, a small brown shape clutched in his talons.  A mouse?  A bird?  Looks too small for a mouse, so perhaps a robin as they are plentiful in these yards.

Last summer I remember O, the (ex)husband, saying he’d seen a hawk swoop into the back yard and catch a pigeon one day when he was home – so it seems they do go in for birds.  And perhaps it is the same hawk.

The presence of a hawk wouldn’t be surprising of course if we lived out in the burbs, near fields or a marsh, but we are right downtown.  Just 2 weeks ago there was a shooting at the gelateria around the corner – the memorial flowers are still wilting outside the cafe where the man died.

Talking with my boy after the fact we figure this must be a good yard for hungry birds and animals in the city.   There’s so many trees the woodpeckers like the range of insect sources, the squirrels and birds have been feasting on the saskatoon-berry tree for weeks.  Someone a couple of yards down seems to have a crabapple tree cause the squirrels drop half-eaten little apples as they pass by on squirrel highway.   All this fecundity, the well-fed life must be appealing for the larger birds of prey as well.

It is the beginning of a hot day here – hot for us Canadian types at least.  34 degrees now in the early afternoon and rising, but with the humidity feels like 40-something.

In the hammock with the camera, seeking out birds in the trees I realize they are hot too, their beaks open, panting.

The sprinkler seems like a good idea for everyone – for the plants, all a little parched and shrivelled from so many days without rain, for the birds if they dare come near the sprinkler….

And they do, having a veritable sprinkler party, flying and darting through the water, catching the lower streams in their beaks and drinking, splashing around in the puddles forming in the dips and valleys in the earth.