More than a tree

The tree saw today cut thru the dead wood with ease.


The tree had been dead for a year and had been left to stand guard over the west half of the yard.  The red wing blackbirds had used the tree as a lookout over the ever expanding marsh outside the fence line.  The goldfinches hadn't mind that this resting place was bare of leaves last season either.


My wife saw that the bark was peeling away on the tree today and mentioned maybe it was time to get someone to take it down.  That was my cue to handle the situation.  So, while she was taking a shower, I grabbed my saw and headed out to take care of business.


It really wasn't that old a tree.  We picked out this aspen and had it delivered 7 years ago this June.  My wife's mom was visiting at the time and she helped me place the tree in its new home in our backyard.


The ensuing seasons of drought and wind must have been too much for this tree.  Aspens prefer to live at much higher altitudes and this particular tree apparently could not cope with the conditions down below here in Windsor, Colorado.


So, with a kind of sad finality, I took down the aspen today.  There is a strange hole in the sky where it used to stand.  It looks empty, but it will be replaced with something.


As with all things in life, change is inevitable.  We will give the aspen a Viking funeral and burn it in the fire pit someday soon, because it was more than a tree.

A Thermos Full of Love

While watching a survivalist show on TV called "Dude, You're Screwed" tonight, I got a little chilled.  One of the experts survived 4 long days in freezing temperatures soaked to the skin.  At the end of his ordeal, they gave him a mug of hot liquid and a warm blanket.  This act motivated me to get off the couch and go make myself a cup of hot chocolate.


My wife had gotten me a Swiss Miss Milk Chocolate tin canister with individual packets inside for Valentine's Day, so I put water in the coffee single cup maker and poured the powder in the cup.  The water hissed as it boiled and soon I was sipping my warm reward.


Funny things you remember and as I sipped my cup of hot chocolate, a vivid memory came to mind from a time long ago back in Illinois when I was in grade school.  We had a playhouse within 10 feet or so of our kitchen in the backyard back then.  It had a shingled roof and a raised floor, but no windows.  Some friends from the neighborhood were over and we were playing in the playhouse in the middle of the winter.


Under gray skies and cold temperatures, we did whatever kids did back then to amuse ourselves in the dead of winter.  Then, we heard a call from my mom out the kitchen window.  She asked us if we wanted some hot chocolate.  We all said sure.  Then, the cool part happened.


Instead of going inside the house to warm up or my mom handing us the hot chocolate thermos, she rigged a clothes line from inside the house down into the playhouse.  She then ran the line thru the top of the thermos and slid it from her house into ours.


As we imagined surviving the harsh Illinois winter in our open air structure, our hot chocolate steam was all about us.  We sipped the magic and then went on with our lives.


One taste of the hot chocolate tonight, and this story poured out and came to life once more.  Funny the things you remember.  That thermos full of love was one I never forgot. 

Thinking

In the late 90's, Anthony Hopkins starred in a movie called "The Edge" with Alec Baldwin.  A scene from the movie that comes to mind this morning follows:

"Bob?  Do you know what most men stranded in the wilderness die of?

Shame.

They die of shame.

They just sit there and try and think of the one thing that will save their lives; when the one thing they need they have had all along,

thinking."

Anthony Hopkins' character Charles is referring to man's inherent ability to improvise, adapt, and overcome situations in order to survive by using their head.  And what I think his character is really saying is that attitude is everything.  If you think you can, you will.

When both men are faced with the life and death struggle to survive a savage bear who is stalking them and trying to eat them, Charles says to a distraught Bob:

"You want to die out here, then die.  Not me, I'm not going to die, cause today, I'm going to kill the bear."

Charles had decided that he was going to live through the challenging experience no matter what.  His attitude propelled him to eventually kill the bear and survive the ordeal.

Our everyday life may not be this dramatic, but attitude can and does make a big difference in how we view the world and how we choose to live our lives.

In closing, a former boss of mine once said, there are three types of people:  those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that don't know what happened.

Today, make it your day.

Like a Painting

Yesterday, I watched a show celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who.  The time travel story included the idea of freezing a moment in time, like a painting.  I, of course, related this to taking a photograph with a camera.

A friend of mine recently commented, jokingly I'm sure, that I had gotten lucky taking a particular shot.  At first, I was a little aggravated by this statement, but after thinking about it, he was right.

Unless we have a time machine and know what the future will look like, we all get lucky when we capture the moment in a photo.  The best photographers in the world get lucky by being in the right place at precisely the right time, but make no mistake, they get lucky.

Photography can be a very technical profession and one can get into f stops and focal length and so forth, but no one can control the future and what is going to happen next.  And maybe that is what makes photography such an adventure, the unknown, becoming frozen in time, like a painting.

Or,we may all just be a bunch of control freaks...

Lone Pine Dawn

The original idea was to get up early in the morning and drive the 40 or so miles up to Rocky Mountain National Park to take pictures of sunrise reflecting off of Longs Peak.  The drive usually takes around an hour to navigate the winding road up the Big Thompson Canyon in the daytime, so I expected it to take a little longer in the blackness before dawn and planned accordingly.

I was on the road around 4:30 am on this mild September day.  As I was nearing the canyon, I pulled up behind a semi truck and was prematurely annoyed.  This would surely impede my progress, but then I noticed how the bright lights of the truck illuminated the canyon road and that the truck was making good time.  The semi was actually helping me get to the park faster.

When I entered the park, I headed to Moraine Park to set up for the sunrise.  As I scouted for good places among the empty campsites, I noticed the lightening sky on the eastern horizon.  I walked toward it and noticed a lone pine tree silhouetted in the darkness.  I quickly set up my tripod and this moment between darkness and the break of dawn was captured.

Not thinking too much of it at the time, I hurried back to see how the sunrise was reflecting off the top portion of Longs Peak.  I took a few shots of the pinkish hue on the mountain and then it turned to a rusty color as the morning light washed over the valley.  The show was over and I headed home.  Later that day, I discovered the above shot on my camera and felt rewarded for my effort.

Sometimes we set out to see something, and something else appears that is every bit as unique as what we had in mind in the first place.  I did get that Longs Peak sunrise photograph I was seeking, but I like this photograph of a lone pine at sunrise better.

Outside the Box
by Andrew Charles

What you see depends on what you are looking at.  We tend to like photographs that remind us of experiences we enjoyed.  If we don't have a reference point, sometimes we can benefit from an explanation of what the photographer was trying to convey.

So, in the spirit of Mark Twain, the stories behind the photographs of Tim Nielsen will be penned by Andrew Charles, the author behind the photographer so to speak.  I hope the stories entertain and add a little bit of color to your everyday life.

As always, enjoy the day.

Andrew Charles