Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Flin Flon: Day 3

...Being a compendium of images and ideas that didn't make it into the other two days.

As I mentioned in my Day 2 post, we went for a short walk on the trail blazed between cabins at Neso Lake just before the afternoon Night on an Old Trade Route concert.

Given that this was a family trail on private property, I wasn't expecting much, but the hike surprised me.



It had several up and downs, was quite long, and included some of the best mushrooming I'd seen in months, especially given how cool and dry Winnipeg was this spring.

And B and H were ideal mushrooming companions, in that they completely understood my need to crouch in underbrush.

In fact, they were even more accommodating than M, who I sometimes have to browbeat to stop (or to wait, mid-walk...).



B and H even started pointing out specimens for me to shoot, which was very kind but...I had to explain that I prefer to find the mushrooms myself.

I'm not sure why/how I evolved that preference, but there it is.

When I made my confession to that regard, H nodded and grinned and B heckled, which is a pretty typical response from both of them...heh.



Which made my discovery on the return trip to the cabin even sweeter: immense mushrooms on the birches near the path.

There was one fairly low that was nearly the size of my head and had a swath eaten out of it like a watermelon!

(This was the prop for the unadvised photo B took that I'll have to pay her not to reveal in annual installments...)

Unfortunately, with mushrooms you have to somehow give a sense of scale or it looks like your typical mushroom. Which is difficult when you shoot macro pics...



I think the pic I've included here does okay in terms of scale and I like the flare in the corner but as an image, it's not one of my favourites. Oh well...

The third day was cool and windy, and B and H and I were more than a little tired, after the doings, the to-and-fro-ings of the previous two days, so we stayed close to home.

Which meant that instead of venturing out to a previously-unbeknownst-to-me-bog or distant landmark, we scuttled around Flin Flon and environs.

The highlight of the day was rock-picking in a landscape that included enormous veins of quartz. We filled our pockets, debating over good-better-best examples, and both H and I got our billygoat out.



And B did well, not even bleating at us to GET DOWN or WHAT ARE YOU THINKING, until the very end, when she fell down.

She promptly blamed me, saying that I used my mind power to shove her off the (small) cliff.

I think it was all the rocks in her pocket/head that did her in, personally.

And then there was only the steak dinner (!) H cooked for us before I got to take my place on the bus again.

I know I rely on this far too much, but: Fun!

All photos Flin Flon, MB. May 24 & 25, 2008.

2 comments:

Brenda Schmidt said...

Ha! Only a giant would call that a small cliff! Good thing I'm tough. My hand is still the size of a catcher's mitt, but I can use it.

Ariel Gordon said...

I'd say wizened instead of tough, myself...