Falls in Spring

I'm documenting the onset of spring at Chapel Brook Falls, a series of cascades along Chapel Brook at a TTOR conservation property in Ashfield, MA. The site is located about 12 minutes up the road from me, and is one of my favorite local places to set out on fun trail runs, chill out atop a ledge with a view, or just sit and listen to the sounds of the waterfall. I've also posted several of the shots on my flickr site. My intention is for this to be a progressive blog post, with updates every few days, or as often as I can get back up there. Newest additions will be here at the top.

April 14

Only a little bit of ice left on the fringes now...

the upper falls

video of the upper falls

the upper upper falls

April 10

A little over a week has passed since my last visit (how did that happen??) and it seems like just the right amount of time to show noticeable change. Most of the snow has melted on the surrounding hillsides, but a decent fringe of ice remains, especially on the north-facing side of the brook.

upper falls (compare to March 29)

upper falls

lower falls

April 1

After a couple of warm days and some steady rain, the flow is high and the ice has been broken.

upper falls, all the way open now

the upper falls flowing free

the lower falls emerge

March 29

Very little in the way of development this past week. It got really cold again a few days after my last update, and I suspect some of it froze back up again. Today, the falls appeared just slightly more open than 8 days ago. 

30 second video of the lower falls (now slightly less frozen over)

upper falls, taken with the 12-24mm Tokina lens (1.3 exposure at f/20, 100 ISO)

March 21

close up of the upper falls, taken with a Nikon f/1.8 50mm lens (1.6" exposure at f/16, 64 ISO)

 30 second video of the upper falls

 30 second video of the lower falls (still mostly frozen over)

March 19

wide angle view of the upper falls, using a 12-24mm Tokina lens that I really need to clean.

Shooin’!

In the past couple of weeks (since my last blog post, anyway), I’ve had the pleasure of shooting at three pretty great showshoe race events. Here's a little background on each, and links to the photos.

The first event was the Woodford Whiteout, a 10K that was part of the Dion Snowshoe Racing Series. It was held at Prospect Mountain Ski Area in Woodford, VT (near Bennington, just up the hill along Rte. 9). The weather was ideal for that race: cold, but not so cold it was brutal, with nice light and enough of a breeze to kick up some snow. I shot down low on the mountain, mostly catching runners as they came down the series of switchbacks near the end of the race. There's some pretty sweet splashes of dramatic snow spray in some of the shots. The full gallery can be viewed here.

The second one was Curly’s Record Run at Pittsfield State Forest in far western MA. That race was also part of the Dion Snowshoe Racing Series. I shot at two locations, first just past the race’s high point near mile 1, and again about a half a mile before the finish near mile 5. The full gallery can be viewed here.

The third event was nothing less than the US Snowshoe Nationals, which included a Women’s 10K, a Men’s 10K, and a “Citizen’s Race” 5K. It was held at Prospect Mountain Ski Area again. For that one, there were several other photographers present, including Scott Mason and Joe Viger, two seasoned pros whom I admire and finally got to meet in person. We spread out on the mountain, but I had told Tim Van Orden, the race director, that I really wanted to shoot at the top of the mountain that time. So I took some shots of the start of the women’s race, which was first, then caught a snowmobile ride to the top, where I remained for the rest of both the women’s and men’s races. Then I came back down for the 5K. I wish I’d had a fast wide angle lens with me to make the summiting shots seem more dramatic, but ya gotta work with what you’ve got. I still think there's some pretty cool stuff in there. The full photo galleries can be viewed here (men's, women's, citizens).

Here are a few of my favorites from all three races.

 

Top Five Books

I recently heard this interview with an author on NPR where the topic of “Top Three Books That Define You” came up. Let me just say up front that I think it’s a pretty silly concept, both in terms of having to choose only a top three and also as yet another aspect of image crafting (it turns out people often choose at least one classic like The Grapes of Wrath to seem cultured). That said, I got to thinking that I might actually enjoy the exercise of trying to come up with a top ten list of books I’ve read that I might choose to define me. So I did.

Here’s the list of my top five:

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Once a Runner by John L. Parker, Jr.
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

And here’s the why for each:

The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I’m letting the first book stand for: the original trilogy of three novels; the radio show screenplays, which I read in a collected volume published in the mid-80s; the LP versions, which were later put out on cassette tapes in the late-80s by Simon and Schuster, both of which I bought and wore out; and the 1980 BBC television production. While some of the stuff is dated now, much of it was spot on (the guide book of the title is essentially a galactic Wikipedia on a small iPad). The wit is still as sharp as ever, and the observations on culture, religion, and absurdity remain topical and astute. Among the most delightful concepts Douglas Adams came up with are the babel fish, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, flying as the art of hurtling yourself at the ground and missing, and the entire over-the-top sequence where a giant battle-fleet of war-hungry spaceships gets swallowed by a small dog due to a miscalculation of scale. With a glorious explanation for the origin of the Earth, there’s also a pervading sense that in a very real way, things really aren’t what they seem. Some of my favorite lines, and there are many, include “they hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don’t” and “He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy fooling around with some leaves a little way off.” But rather than re-create the wheel there, here’s a link to 42 of Douglas Adams’ best lines.

Once a Runner by John L. Parker, Jr.

When I was an invincible new marathoner living in northern Virginia in my mid-twenties, a runner friend maybe a decade or so older gave me a copy of this book as a gift. Initially, the title made me think it had something to do with being washed up or something, but I was wrong, and I loved it. Written by a runner in a style that clearly betrays a life-long love of the sport, the novel is alive with energy and humor and tears and joy. Perhaps it’s too dated now, being set in the eighties and all (I think, or maybe it was the seventies), but I hope the inspiring lunacy and infectious enthusiasm I found in it is timeless.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

I love science fiction. GOOD science fiction, that is. I'll be the first to admit that 95% of what is out there is utter garbage, and I don’t blame anyone who hates the genre based on their exposure to it, since it’s statistically likely that they’ve probably only seen the crap. I don’t know why the disparity between good and bad is so huge, but the fact remains: when science fiction is good, it can be REALLY good. Such is the case with this book from 1974, which is the best of the best. Yes, it’s about a future war, in space, and it has plenty of colorful elements of space opera to it, but it’s also very much about Vietnam and the disconnect from society that soldiers often feel upon returning home from “over there.” It’s got laser weapons and tech-heavy space suits, but while there are exciting battles, there’s also the physical, psychological, and surgical horrors of warfare. It’s also a romance that takes place as two lovers skip ahead of each other through time due to relativity issues associated with interstellar travel. It’s amazingly progressive with respect to gender and sexuality for it’s time period and genre. It’s damn near perfect.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Here is where I probably alienate many of my religious friends (who, let me be clear, I like very much and would very much like to keep). Actually, I say that jokingly. I trust them to let me speak my mind just as much as they trust me to speak their faith; we're still friends. Anyway, the thing is, I'm an unashamed atheist; I feel I should need no defense for saying that, but I find it’s still often necessary. I live in New England, and I certainly don’t feel persecuted or anything, and we’ve come a long way since the 1950s when atheist was synonymous with communist, which was synonymous with traitorous enemy. But I’m always cognizant of the implications of things. For example, it's never lost on me when religion intrudes into politics, where it so very much should NEVER be in a society of free, intelligent people. Anyway, in the last decade or so, I’ve become increasingly of the opinion that I do not want to or have to pretend that I don’t find the fundamental foundations of religion ridiculous. Specifically, believing in things based on faith. Not the good kind of faith that you would place in a friend, but the kind of faith where you cast aside reason and really believe in universal “truths” and the supernatural despite any actual evidence whatsoever simply because another human said so at some point, and maybe even wrote it down. I don't think mystery needs to be explained with myth. Yes, I acknowledge that some good things have come out of religion, but none of it ever needed faith; people can still do good stuff without believing in fairies. Except for an elegant essay by Douglas Adams (link to essay removed, sadly), I’d never come across much writing that I liked about the subject. I was disappointed to discover what a dick Richard Dawkins is when I read his book, The God Delusion, and I didn’t think Sam Harris’s book The End of Faith was very well written (despite containing some excellent ideas and arguments; he needed a better editor for that one), so I was pleasantly surprised to find this short book / long letter to be a mini-masterpiece; a perfect distillation of the absurdity of religion (my words). I also really enjoyed God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens, which is a wonderfully articulate and heartening rebuke of religion.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Speaking of ridiculous, this intensely cynical satire remains my touchstone of all that is laughably ludicrous and preposterous in the world. Set in the U.S. air force during World War II, it feels a bit like the movie and TV show M.A.S.H. I first read it in 1989 during my senior year in high school, at which time I felt like I’d discovered a secret treasure (“why the hell has no one recommended this to me??” I wondered), and it instantly became my new favorite book. When I re-read it in 1996, I found it to be a bit tedious at times because I saw much more clearly through the style and realized that it repeated the same joke pattern over and over and over again, but I still really appreciated it. Like Kafka and Camus, except much funnier, it mocks red-tape bureaucratic bullshit and considers the absurdity of life in general. It savagely heaps satirical scorn on simple-minded people in positions of power. And near the end it contains a shocking scene of nauseating visceral horror that I just didn’t see coming, and that haunted me for many years after, much as I suspect it was intended to do.  

Here are my many runner-ups:

·      Lost Horizon by James Hilton (the original Shangri-la utopian adventure story)

·      The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert (warts and all non-fiction examination of the author’s friend, Eustace Conway; she makes you shake your head at him and admire him)

·      Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (flawed but thought-provoking didactic novel; his non-fiction book Beyond Civilization picks up chewing on big ideas where it left off, and offers a vision of our culture that I can now never un-see: us as a rider on a bike that’s just gone off a cliff and is falling but we don’t know it yet because we’re still in free-fall, but the ground isn’t all that far away…)

·      Neuromancer by William Gibson (the original cyberpunk sci-fi novel, written over a decade before the internet was invented; interesting and insightful)

·      The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac (an all-time favorite; majestic and alive)

·      Contact by Carl Sagan (Lots of thought-provoking ideas)

·      Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins (pure sex-intellectual enjoyment; his novel Jitterbug Perfume, while far from perfect, also often feels harmonically attuned & full of sensually shrouded aliveness)

·      Impossible Vacation by Spalding Gray (a funny, strange, and honest modern-day soul quest)

·      Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (this woman slings words like Pollack slapped paint; very clever)

·      The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham (a good friend once said of Maugham: “this guy’s tuned IN!”; this book is his memoir; The Moon and Sixpence, his novel based on Paul Gauguin, is awesome too, with invigorating insights into art and passion)

·      The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen (inspiring ideas; genuinely moving)

·      Team Rodent by Carl Hiassen (acerbic, funny little diatribe against Disney)

·      A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (very funny AT hiking descriptions)

·      Augusta, Gone by Martha Tod-Dudman (written by a family friend; as real as they get, and set in Northeast Harbor, with 3 references to my mother)

·      Straight Man by Richard Russo (hilarious, heartbreaking, and perceptive)    
·      Kiwi Tracks by Andrew Stevenson (non-fiction account of tramping in New Zealand; full of hiking, heartache, and humor)

·      There’s This River: Grand Canyon Boatman Stories ed. by Christa Sadler (vividly paints people and geography; really felt alive)

·      A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby (1950’s British travel adventure; smartly self-effacing and funny)

·      The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz (non-fiction: Men escape a Soviet prison in Siberia in 1941 and trek south all the way to India!)

·      Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams (a masterpiece of interwoven grief and healing, using nature writing about the shores of Salt Lake for analogy)

·      North Country by Howard Frank Mosher (my kinda road trip; traveling east to west along and near the US/Canada border)

·      Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino (excellent, subtle short stories set in Italy; really, really good writing)

·      In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (a very good read; full of intersting thoughts and tidbits about eating and health)

·      Rising from the Plains by John McPhee (has a strange structure, and no real ending, but a fascinating read about geology and life in Wyoming)

·      The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

·      Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

and several key lines from The Great Gatsby, including the extraordinarily rich and layered last two pages, and this passage:

“Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.” 

While I believe there are still so many things to truly wonder at in the cosmos (most of which Fitzgerald couldn’t have even guessed at the possibility of at the time), I still think that line is one of most amazing bits of writing in the history of ever.

And my least favorite book of all time? That’s easy: Ulysses by James Joyce. Don’t even get me started.

Trail Runner article

Psyched to note that I just had an article about the Grand Tree Trail Race Series published at Trail Runner Magazine's online site (link to the article here).

I used the Savoy Mountain Trail Race as a framing device, as that was a big favorite from last summer. For information about this year's series, check out the Western Massachusetts Athletic Club (WMAC)'s website here.

Snow and Nights

Now that winter has finally arrived PROPERLY (let's not have any more of those month-long spells of single digit temps with no snow to speak of, please), I've finally been able to get out and photograph some snowy winter races.

Yesterday, I hiked out onto the course of a small but well-organized snowshoe race put on by the North Medford Running Club in Baldwinville, MA (north of the Quabbin). Temps hovered around thirty and the sun was even out for a while. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits and enjoying the mid-day romp out in the woods and fields. Photo gallery here.

Then I zipped on down to the first race of the durtyfeets trail series at Douglas State Forest (southeast of Worcester). I got a nice jog in on the course before it started; the conditions were challenging but perfectly fair, considering. About a foot of fresh snow covered the trails, but snowmobiles had partially packed it down. Sometimes it felt like running in sand, but it wasn't too bad and I actually really enjoyed my run. The race began just after sunset, so I went back out to take shots of all the runners in what remained of the daylight about a quarter of a mile in. Then I set up my tripod and took long-exposure shots of the runners returning by headlamp light. Experimenting with having a flash go off at the end of the exposure, I came away with a couple of cool ghostly shots of runners trailed by the streaks of their own lights. Afterwards they put on an excellent festive barbeque down at the picnic area by the lake. Photo gallery here. A very fun day and night!

night run!

another one of those awesome father/daughter moments (just about the coolest thing ever)

road crossing at the snowshoe race

NMC Baldwinville Snowshoe Race photo gallery

Durtyfeets Trail Series #1 Wallum Lake 7K photo gallery

Midwinter Ridge Run

This afternoon, I stuffed a backpack full of camera gear (DSLR, tripod, and a couple of lens choices), clothing (extra layers, hats, etc.), and some water, and set off for the summit of Mt. Tom. I started running at the Mountain Park gate on the Holyoke side and ran up the access road to the start of the B-17. The B-17 is a steep, straight, narrow paved utility road that angles right up to the towers at the summit of the mountain. It was mostly covered with about an inch of packed snow and ice, so I wore Yaktrax the whole way. I ran most of it, but walked one steep pitch just before the top (I blame it on the heavy backpack!).

Once at the top, I headed north along the ridge for some scenic winter ridge running, and stopped occasionally to set up the tripod for some self-portrait action shots. This was my first time using the ML-L3 remote shutter release, which I found a bit frustrating; it worked about half the time, but the shutter didn't fire all the other times, and that's not a very good success rate for photos. Here's a few shots I came away with:

My Least Favorite Word

Paparazzi.

Tom and Ron Boone 10K photos

Today I took photos at the Tom and Ron Boone Memorial 10K Road Race in Gardner, MA. Put on by the North Medford Running Club as part of their winter race series, it attracted a little over 40 determined runners and featured a staggeringly awesome table of prizes for such a small race. Not much more to say, except for that it started raining just before the start and kept on raining all the way through the race. Tough shooting conditions and a bit of a challenge for any runner not prepared for it, but I managed to come away with some pictures I'm proud of and most everyone seemed completely undaunted by the weather. Here's a preview gallery of photos (the full album should be up in a few days).

start of the 2014 Tom and Ron Boone Memorial 10K Road Race in Gardner, MA

Greenfield Winter Carnival 4-Miler photos

This morning, I took photos at mile 1 and mile 3 of the annual Greenfield Winter Carnival 4-Mile Run in Greenfield, MA. The weather was extremely nice for a race, especially after the round of wicked cold spells we've had around these parts recently. Here's a preview album of the race photos; I should have the full gallery up in a couple of days.

Afterwards, I headed out for a very satisfying 10-mile long run of my own down along the flats in Hatfield. On top of a hilly 5-mile tempo run yesterday, and capping off a 32-mile week, I feel pleasantly spent and appropriately back in the training groove!

2014 Greenfield Winter Carnival 4-Mile Run photo album