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02 February 2013

Lichen Moss, Crazy Creek, Missoula, Montana

Yes, yes, it's another moss photo - but all by itself, no 5-day series - promise (envision a teeny, tiny rainbow to add credibility).
Semi-huffing and puffing up the trail at Crazy Creek, I noticed this tufty, Dr.Seuss-ish moss all over the place. I realized that, a week earlier, I hadn’t seen any of this variety just a few miles up the road at Pattee Canyon. On my descent, a fellow hiker and his dog passed me (neither of them remotely huffing or puffing) but then stopped to ask what picture subject required overhead hyper-extension of my arms. This led to a conversation about the hanging moss, and my observant and well-hiked trail companion (the two-legged one) explained that Pattee Canyon used to be rife with even longer versions of the stuff until recent years. He’d encountered people picking the moss into big bags one season, and speculated that collectors had simply over-harvested or perhaps disturbed the balance of the growth cycle. That must have been the year moss crafts were all the rage. Gotta have that faux topiary. Because, when you think about it, nothing says class like indigenous moss hot-glued to a Styrofoam ball and skewered atop a homegrown stick.

01 February 2013

Brick and Branch, Missoula, Montana

Recent settings have had me taking photos of things above my head- odd wall outlets, fantastic moss, tree branch patterns. Since I routinely take 10-20+ shots of a subject, full reach extension has been a regular workout, kind of like holding the plank position for core strength. Good thing serendipitous subject matter was interspersed with a fair bit of walking or I might have ended up with Popeye arms! "Ah-guh-guguguh!" (which is supposed to be Popeye's distinctive laugh, not me desperately requesting a Heimlich manoeuvre.)

31 January 2013

29 January 2013

Power Up, Downtown, Missoula, Montana

My husband’s unbiased, spontaneous reaction to this photo: “What is it? It looks like some kind of alien spaceship…”. Perhaps this image functions like a Rorschach drawing, only with a side of colour. Hmmm…what does the alien reference signify?

Any other off-the-cuff contributions?

28 January 2013

Window On Time, Downtown, Missoula, Montana

Thanks to my oldest big brother, 8-track cassettes shall forever in my mind be associated with Donny Osmond’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” and a little white Toyota Celica that boasted orange and yellow pin striping. At least that’s the way I remember it from when I was, what, five? This tells you that I have pretty cool big brothers, to even have tolerated me to ride along with them anywhere and partake of such high school coolness. But isn’t it fascinating what memory snapshots the human mind selectively retains? I couldn’t tell you what colour shoes I wore on the first day of school, but I recall the detailing on my brother’s car. And building things with huge red and royal blue cardboard bricks that our kindergarten teacher stashed for indoor playtime. Five…that was a good year.