Store Your Happy Memories Here:

[Croix]

Dear All~

What this place is for:
This thread is a tool, a resource, and also I guess a dash of entertainment.

I’ve found that when life is grim that sometimes thoughts of past happiness can create a chink of light in the grey overwhelming press of down. They can help occupy the mind with lighter reflections.

With that in view I invite people to set down a brief passage describing some happy event they look back to with fondness and peace.

They - and others too - can then return to it when they feel the need to glean a little warmth.

It is not a place for gloomy or dire tales, those can go elsewhere.

What to do:
Just set out, as simply as you like, your recollection of some past experience that means something good to you, something you enjoyed, something from safe times.

It can be, like my story below, anything – from an account of visiting grandparents to simply cooking and eating a melted-cheese sandwich in a favorite kitchen – you get to choose.

How to do it:
Write. Write enough so someone else can feel the mood, know what happened, find the goodness. (stop at 2,500 characters please!)

Grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation are not compulsory, just write as you can – the only important thing is the content - not literary merit. Short or long - it does not matter.


I hope you enjoy, contribute and find a little distraction here when you need it.

Croix

[Croix]

Dear ER and All~

Your ability with photography in nature reminded me of one of my few successes. I was still a policeman on those days but has the chance for a rare 2 days off, so I piled the family, Mrs C, the offspring and a small dog into our 4wd, which was I think the smallest one on the market. It just had room for us and a little camping gear.

We drove up into the highlands, kilometers along a semi-deserted track until we came to a lake, where we camped. The tent was guaranteed waterproof, however that was only after the damp had come in though the canvas.

Nevertheless we slept well, and I could feel the tensions from work receding.

In the morning I poked my head out into a different world. There was mist, so all the trees lacked definition or detail. Strangly the lake water was sharp and clear.  There were wallabies (with extra heads poking out) around it nibbling on this and that and a disturbance near the bank.

I unwrapped the camera with the long lens I'd borrowed and went out into the chilly damp. It was worth it as a platypus was diving, coming up and diving again  I managed to catch him (or her) on film just as it lay on the surface, a pair of nostril, a forehead and a hump of body, before it went down again.

Naturally the dog came out next and all the wallabies hoped it.

Looking at the photo now, many years later, it reminds me, as it did then, that there is an awful lot more hidden in this world than we can see, a wallaby invisible by behind a tuft of grass, a platypus in smooth 'empty' water.

Croix

[Eagle Ray]

Dear Croix and All,

That sounds beautiful. It is amazing how a trip away like that lets the stress of the workaday life recede. Waking up to a world of mist is magical. I absolutely love mist for photography. Numerous times I have braved cold winter mornings to be by a lake, a river or the ocean at dawn. Oddly, and I don't know if this is my imagination, but it actually seems to get even colder as the sun pokes up over the horizon. You would think it might start to warm up at that point but it actually feels like the temperature drops.

I loved the description of the platypus. How magical to capture him or her on film. On my first trip to Tassie with a friend we kept seeing platypus at different locations. I was expecting to be lucky to see just one but it was like we'd just look over a bridge into a river and there would be one briefly appear before diving down again. This kept happening at different rivers at dusk. In fact the whole of Tasmania was a wildlife wonder.

There is certainly a lot more in the world than we see a lot of the time. I also have a macro lens for my camera and I've been able to spend a couple of hours in just a few square metres, finding so many different little creatures. Some of my favourites are the iridescent beetles and little tiny crab spiders you find on native flowers. I have photographed something like a spider orchid and then later realised when looking on my computer that there was a crab spider camouflaged on the orchid that I didn't even see at the time. They even seem to have evolved in specific colourings to match specific flowers.

I take great care with things like orchids as they are very fragile and easily damaged by the tramping feet of humans. I won't go off a track to photograph something if it means stepping on lots of delicate plants to get there. I once saw a movie where a monk carefully lifted a snail off a path to make sure no one stood on it. I felt a great kinship with the monk as I will do the same thing. Snails make great macro photographic subjects. Peacock spiders are another one. They are like the size of a match head but the colourful patterns on them are amazing if you see them up close with the help of a macro lens.

Thank you for helping me to think of lovely things Croix.

[Croix]

Dear ER~

Thinking of the beauty around us is special, it is food for the soul.

Once I was negligent and forgot to turn off a garden hose at the tap, just at the nozzle end. It was an unexpected unseasonably cold and frosty night.

In the morning I fond a pinhole had developed in the hose and sprayed all night on a wire fence.

The effect was remarkable. The spray had been fan-shaped and landed on the wire fence in that  manner. It froze and left a tracery of ice. This was the most beautiful construct you could imagine, paper thin in places, more robust in others but all the way though a pattern that can only be described as the finest Belgium hand-lace.

It went from ground level to the height of the fence and at its widest point as as fare-reaching as my two arms stretched out.

It was so delicate and as the day wore on started to melt, but even then  was beautiful, changing shape, becoming thicker in places and tissue thin in others. Like a snowflake every cm was different.

Maybe part of its beauty was that it was transitory, and was melting away to simple water. I'll never forget it (or forget to  turn the tap off eihter:)

Croix

[Eagle Ray]

Wow, Croix, that is amazing. Those patterns that nature naturally forms are incredible. Ice and snow flakes are so intricate. That would have been a wonderful surprise to walk outside and see that. I often feel like patterns repeat in nature. For example, the way the tributaries of a river from the air look like a tree with branches coming off it. It's like everything is connected with everything.

You have reminded me of many years ago when I visited Canada in the winter. The people I was staying with had left their dog's bowl outside by accident. A maple leaf fell into the water then it froze. The next day there was this piece of circular ice with a maple leaf perfectly encased within it. They took it out of the dog bowl as an ice circle with a maple leaf inside which had managed to fall so it was equidistant from the edges, perfectly central within the frame of ice. They decided to put it in their freezer like that and keep it.

When I was out doing sunrise photography a few months ago there was a mist and beautiful dew everywhere. There were dozens and dozens of spider webs which I would have been much less likely to notice, except for the fact they were covered in dew drops glistening in the early morning sun. So everywhere I looked there were these intricate patterns of spider webs, the patterns highlighted by the dew drops all along them. Some of the dew drops also had the colours of the spectrum in them. Walking in the same area the following morning there was no dew and you could hardly see the webs even though they were still there. So it was that transitory thing where the ephemeral nature of it makes it particularly magical.

I hope you experience some wonders on your annual leave.

Thanks again,

ER

[sbella02]

ER, amazing descriptions, I don't wake up early enough to even see the sunrise but your imagery makes me want to. Also, the maple leaf frozen in the dog bowl sounds so beautiful!! That would be a great concept for a fruit bowl or plate or something. 

[Eagle Ray]

Hello sbella,

Sorry, only just seeing this message from you now. I don’t get up at sunrise as much as I’d like to, especially as I’m struggling with my health at times and not quite up to it, but every time I do, I never regret it. Of course this time of year it’s harder too with the sun coming up so much earlier. I’ve done a lot of my sunrise photography in the winter as I don’t have to set the alarm so early.

On the morning above where I saw the dew covered spider webs I found my car windscreen covered in frost. I used water just slightly warmed from the kettle to melt it as it was really caked on. I think you have to avoid using boiling water which can crack the windscreen. I then drove with the window down to avoid my breath fogging up the windscreen. The cold air really wakes you up. I drove out from the caravan park I was at down a country road and it was so picturesque with the fog. The trees were silhouetted in morning light with the road disappearing into mist. That in itself would have made a great photo but I thought I better get to my planned destination which was a large granite outcrop. I turned down the gravel road to get there and was barked at by a Meremma sheep dog dutifully protecting sheep. When I got there it was on a walk at the base of the rock I found all the glistening spider webs. I then encountered a farmer in his ute going down a dirt track who was very friendly and shared info with me about the area. I then climbed the rock from which I had a great view of mist-covered farmland. I stayed up there watching it lift with various birds hopping about around me. You sometimes feel like you are the only person in the world in such a place. I love the feeling of expansion and space.

Every early morning outing is special in some way. I look forward to autumn here in my town as it is often very still then and the river is like glass. So I will embark on some more sunrise adventures then. Sometimes I’ll see a pelican gliding over the river’s surface so gracefully before doing a very ungraceful crash landing 😂

When I was living in the city I used to go down to a favourite river location at sunrise. I got to know another photographer who was often down there. He had Parkinson’s disease and it was hard for him to hand-hold his camera, but he could take dawn and sunrise image’s with a tripod. He showed me some of them and they were outstanding. I think when you have health challenges you profoundly appreciate everything you can do and make the most of it. I definitely want to enjoy some more early mornings soon 🌅

X Eagle Ray

[Croix]

Dear All~

I was reminded in a recent post of a lovely experience Mrs C and I had a few years ago. We went to a shoreline reserve just on dusk.

It was light enough for us to follow the sandy trail through the low bushes to a set of seats where we settled down and waited. The wind blew on-shore and it was somewhat chilly (an excuse to cuddle up:)

We had an excellent view of the shore and sea, and were positioned so our seats were right on top of the closest sandy mound ground and scrub.

A ranger waited until darkness then lit up a red torch wiht a long beam. As we watched lumps appears in the ripples of the waves then the first fairy penguin heaved upright and started to waddle towards us with flippers held out from its body like a miniature wild west gunfighter. It was followed by many more, They split into two groupls, one continuing towards us and one going the other way.

As they approached they scrambled into burrows we had not seen, some waddling so close we could have touched them before they went underground.

It was explained they had returned to feed their chicks and could not see the red light - white light would have been harmful.

We too used the red light to follow the path out.

-C

[Eagle Ray]

That is a lovely description Croix. They are truly delightful little beings aren’t they. I saw the fairy penguins coming in at Bicheno, Tasmania some years ago with a similar organised penguin viewing session. Earlier that day I had been walking over rocks with my friend when we realised we could hear them calling from bushes close by, so we must have been right near their burrows. I was hoping we weren’t disturbing them.

I also got to see them at Stewart Island in NZ, including from the ferry that runs between Ulva Island and Stewart Island. There were also albatross swooping all around us on the ferry. I had never seen albatross before so it was very exciting. They really are majestic birds. The lovely man driving the ferry stopped the ferry part way across so we could just watch them swooping over the water. I remember the silvery light. Just typing this makes me want to go back there again. Such a wild place. Ulva Island is an example of Gondwanaland forest. It hasn’t ever been cleared and is basically an example of what ancient forests were like. I loved it there and went across on the ferry four times. I met a fascinating lady there who was an ethnomusicologist who had full on recording equipment she was recording the sounds of rare birds with. I was of course photographing them. She was so interesting to talk to. It was also at Ulva Island that I saw a kiwi in the wild which I wrote about earlier in this thread. It was absolutely wonderful to just sit with this kiwi who just fossicked about me on the forest floor as if I wasn’t even there.

Thank you for your post which reminded me of these things. There are a few penguin species that can be seen from Stewart Island, but I only saw the fairy penguins which I think from memory are called blue penguins in NZ.  It is very far south down there. NZ is an awesome place!

[Croix]

Dear All~

Reading about Fiatlux's hankering for 🥐 reminded me when I first arrived in Paris in the  50's.

Actually even before I arrived I was introduced ot a most unfortunate item of French culture. They had bottles of fizzy cordial (a bit like F***a). Some French marketing genius had thought the name ought to reflect the sound made when the bottle was opened, irrespective of other languages, so it was called "Pshitt!".  I was embarrassed to ask for a bottle.

Coming over from war starved Britain was a real education. Not only did my schoolboy French turn out to be useless (La plume de ma tante... brought stares of incomprehension) but also their mode of dining had to be eaten to be believed

For breakfast, sitting watching the tiny black and white screen of télévision nationale (in incomprehensible French I'm afraid) one started with a soup sized bowl of café au lait, followed by the famous croissants (white bread) split in half with butter and jam. An unbelievable luxury seen as normal fare. Followed by eggs!

All other meals had the same bounty, the only minor downside being one could not drink the water from the tap, it came in large green bottles.

It was here I was introduced to chocolate sandwiches 🥪🍫

As you can see as a schoolboy my lasting impressions were not the Louvre or Versailles, but closer to what really matters:)

Croix

[Croix]

Dear All~

It's funny how just the movement of air can make so much difference ot a mood. It is blustery outside and the wind whistles down the chimney, with hte wood fire glowing brighter with each gust. It happens so much I have to keep an eye on the amout of wood I'm using.

Slitting in my chair listening and feeling the warmth makes my mood a happy one, because I'm snug, and snug is a cherished  memory from childhood in Wales where storms were commonplace and houses secure..

Mind you I'm not the only one, Sumo Cat has left his favorite plush blanket beside me and is stretched out right in fount of hte fire, a sort of furry rug, wiht a tail at one end, a head with eyes blissfully closed at the other and a toasting tummy in the middle.

Squalls of rain have just arrived and Mrs C is patting herself on the back for having brought in more wood before it got wet, she's just about to sit down and view a show about rebuilding a house on an island, a place she grew up.

All is warmth and contentment

Croix