Sense of Place – Page 55 – CommonPlace Nature

Day Twelve: Persimmon Leafscape

Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 122014

Bright mid-morning sunshine greeted my arrival at Piney Woods Church Road today. The road was no longer covered with flowing water, and yesterday’s water droplets were gone. Still, I found plenty to photograph, including various vines, resurrection ferns, and reflections in the water remaining in roadside ditches. Toward the end of my walk, a persimmon leaf, still attached to a sapling and still mostly dark green, beckoned me. I took out my +10 macro lens — one that actually has to be pressed into the subject of the image in order to achieve focus — and took several images of the leaf. The result is this leafscape, vibrant with color in the midst of a drab Georgia winter.

Persimmon Leafscape

Strange Leaf

Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 112014

Eleven days into my Piney Woods Church Road project, and already I feel compelled to break my self-imposed rule of only posting one photo per day. I find this image so haunting and disturbing that I feel compelled to share it, yet I find it too dark for my 365 project. What makes this picture so troubling? It is only a shriveled oak leaf, somehow caught up in the tendril of a greenbrier. Or is it?

Day Eleven: Stuck in a Rut

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Jan 112014

The tumultuous thunderstorm of early morning had passed, and the fog was lifting. I arrived at Piney Woods Church Road to discover, quite literally, a river running through it — flowing down the roadway and into the very same ruts that had been covered in ice just a few days before (see Day Seven). Now, the rut held a lovely pattern of ripple marks, sedimentary structures formed by the action of water flowing across the silt of the roadbed. I tried to take a photo of the ripple marks without any reflections present, mostly for my own appreciation as a geologist. But each time I attempted to do so, I ended up in the photograph, regardless of which side of the rut I stood, or how wet my feet became in the process. Ironically, the result was this delightful self-portrait.

Day Ten: Stop Action

Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 102014

As my project duration moves into the double digits (365 definitely feels like a long way off!), clouds have returned to the Georgia Piedmont. On a highly humid day (near one hundred percent), I ventured to Piney Woods Church Road in the early afternoon, in search of fog. There were light patches that helped soften the background landscape a bit, but nothing particularly enticing to photograph. Instead, though, I quickly discovered the potential of photographing water droplets suspended from the tips of leaves and branches. Using my plus four macro lens, I took dozens of droplet photos as I walked toward Hutcheson Ferry Road and back. My first — and last — photographs were taken of droplets on the leaves of cedar trees growing along the edge of a property bordering the road at its intersection with Rico Road. Facing the intersection, I framed my photos to include the brilliant red of the stop sign, out of focus in the background. Returning along Piney Woods Church Road, I wondered if it might be possible to take the same photograph, but include a vehicle driving by. The result (on the second attempt) was the image below. I have titled it “Stop Action” to reflect the juxtaposition of the car racing by with the “frozen in time” feeling created by the water droplet, with the stop sign adds further to this visual contradiction. I am tempted to add that this is probably one of my most didactic photos I have taken lately, recommending that we “stop action” from time to time in order to notice the ephemeral and the beautiful all around us. How often have we allowed ourselves the time after a light rainfall to wander the land, admiring the lingering water droplets that cover pine needles and honeysuckle vine tendrils like tiny jewels?

Day Nine: The Moss at the End of the Road

Backyard Nature, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 092014

By the time I set out on a late afternoon saunter to Piney Woods Church Road, the leaden skies had given way to a fine mist — not quite fog, and not quite a drizzle, but approaching what Thoreau called a “mizzling” rain. It was certainly not a day for sunset opportunities. Indeed, it was one of those days that I knew, sooner or later, would happen. Throughout most of the walk, I was accompanied by a small voice in my head, telling me that I was running out of photograph opportunities, and how silly I must be for thinking that this short gravel road outside Atlanta would somehow yield a trove of images and experiences. I persevered nonetheless, dutifully photographing a rock with lichens and mosses (not in sharp focus) and a single red greenbriar leaf against a background of tan-brown fallen leaves from last autumn. I photograph both of these every day now; be watching for when they appear in this blog. I was tempted to turn back early, satisfied with either the rock or the leaf, but I continued to where Piney Woods Church Road meets Hutcheson Ferry Road. Standing in a ditch beside the intersection, I took this photograph of moss with clinging water droplets, using my +4 macro lens. I am reminded, for some reason, of a rolling Irish landscape. Perhaps because it seems always to be raining in Ireland…..

Day Eight: Sunset with Branches and Clouds

Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place 2 Responses »

Jan 082014

Some of my photographs, such as the ice mural from yesterday, are very much premeditated creations. It was a brutally cold Tuesday afternoon, and I expected to find interesting ice patterns somewhere along Piney Woods Church Road. Once I saw the marvelous examples of frozen ice bubbles in rut marks, I knew I had my image for the day. Today’s photograph, on the other hand, was much more serendipitous. I anticipated a few clouds at sunset, since tomorrow is predicted to be mostly cloudy. What I did not anticipate (or discover, until I got home and reviewed my photographs) was the image below. It looks as if the tree branches and clouds are interacting with each other — the tree branches somehow pushing the cloud edges away.

Day Five: Winter Weed (and Cow)

Agriculture and Husbandry, Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 052014

Yet another gray-sky afternoon, but much milder than yesterday — I delighted in the warm (mid-50’s), moist air that is the precursor to an arctic front expected to sweep through Georgia overnight, bringing rain turning to snow by Monday morning. I spent my time along Piney Woods Church Road mostly experimenting with my macro lenses. My favorite shot of the day contained, yet again, a cow, though it plays a cameo role in the background. I am weaning myself slowly from cows. Tomorrow, I promise myself, will be a cow-free day.

Day Two: Wind Bird

Natural History, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 022014

Another cloudy day. The morning rain had passed, and with the cold front moving through the wind was picking up, the chill gusts numbing my fingertips and setting leaves and branches into motion. After several attempts to capture close-up images of mosses, lichens, and ferns, I decided to embrace the wind instead. Looking across an open pasture about two-thirds of the way from Rico Road to Hutcheson Ferry Road, I saw this turkey buzzard gliding on the wind currents. The same wind that made macro photographs well nigh impossible for me had granted this crow an opportunity to soar amid the breaking clouds.

Day One: Devouring the Forest

Backyard Nature, Piney Woods Church Road 365 Project, Sense of Place No Responses »

Jan 012014

A grim, overcast day greeted me for the start of a new year and my new project documenting the Piney Woods Church Road landscape. So much for plans to begin with a sunrise. Instead, I leisurely made my way to the road late in the afternoon, an hour or so of what passed for sundown. Glancing into a grove of trees between Piney Woods Church Road and Rico Road, my eye was caught by a loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) that has most likely been killed by the southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis), an insect measuring only 2 to 4 millimeters as an adult. Closer at hand, a young pin cherry (Prunus pennsylvanica) growing beside the road has been disfigured by crown gall, a woody tumor caused by the bacterium, Agrobacterium tumefaciens. All around me, tiny organisms were slowly devouring the forest.

Ground Truthing: Measuring Piney Woods Church Road

Backyard Nature, Measurement, Sense of Place No Responses »

Dec 262013

Measuring the length of Piney Woods Church Road, 26 December 2013.

Measuring Piney Woods Church Road, 25 December 2013.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” — Lao Tzu

Where does the journey of 0.44195 miles begin? Answer: At Rico Road, or at Hutcheson Ferry Road, depending which way one is headed — southwest or northeast.

Yesterday, armed with a 165-foot measuring tape and aided by my wife as trusty field assistant. I ventured out to Piney Woods Church Road, to measure the extent of my daily journey in the year ahead. I am not quite sure why I decided to measure the road’s distance. It’s length has long been an object of mild curiosity to me, given that I have walked it with my wife and our various dogs over a thousand times in the past seven years. But, as my GIS-trained wife wisely noted, I could obtain a fairly accurate measurement without leaving the computer, thanks to Google Earth.

Part of my inspiration came, as it so often does, from Henry David Thoreau. In Walden, Thoreau explained his decision to sound the depths of Walden Pond. “There have been many stories about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves,” Thoreau observed. “It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.”‘ And in a similar way, I have journeyed Piney Woods Church Road so many times, and never set out to find out its actual distance.

There is also a term in the remote sensing field, “ground truthing,” which refers to double-checking measurements and observations made from satellite images or aerial photographs by going into the field. I am intrigued by the phrase, because it acknowledges (in this age of technological wonders) the benefit of walking the ground and measuring the road itself.

After the first couple of 165-foot increments (measured very slowly, unwinding the tape its full length, then winding it up again and moving on), we fell into a rhythm. I held one end of the tape, my wife the other. In turns, we would walk the full distance, pulling the unrolled tape behind us. When it was my turn to stand and hold the tape still, I would listen to the shrill whistle of the fiberglass tape sliding along the gravel, breaking the stillness of the late afternoon air.

Our last measurement was only a partial one. After traveling fourteen times the length of tape from where we began along Rico Road, the last tape length was only 23 1/2 feet, to the edge of Hutcheson Ferry Road, where the stop sign reminded us to go no further. The total distance, in feet, was 2333 1/2. Taken twice (out to Hutcheson Ferry Road and back to Rico again), my daily journey in 2014 will be 4667 feet, or 0.8839 miles. There is an additional distance, of course, from my back door to where the road begins. Perhaps I will measure that, too. Someday….

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