In Praise of Winter

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I sometimes get rather weary of hearing people - especially on TV and in the other news media - making value judgements about the weather; you know the kind of thing: 'A much better day tomorrow, with cloudless skies and temperatures in the high twenties Celsius...'. I think 'who are these people, to decide that this kind of weather is universally 'good'?' In fact, as a lover of the countryside and a keen photographer, I find much of the summer landscape dull and boring, with its overwhelming greens and heavily-laden trees hiding so many beautiful vistas.

No, for sheer, stark beauty in the landscape, winter takes a lot of beating. If you are the kind of walker or photographer who puts away the boots and camera at the first sniff of cold air, and heads for the best armchair and the TV schedules - let me show you a little of the beauty of my part of North Yorkshire, more specifically that of the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal estate. This isn't the time to recount the long history of this fascinating place - more of that one day; suffice it to say that it is a World Heritage Site, visited by people from many parts of the world, and that we are lucky enough to live a short drive away from it.

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Winter Freize ~ The Deer Park

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Strolling through the deer park at Studley Royal on a bitingly-cold December day, I saw this estate farm-house 'caught' between the branches of a tree. Pulling off warm fleece gloves and standing still long enough to compose and shoot photographs in these conditions takes some dedication, I admit; but if I hadn't put up with the discomfort, I would have missed this image of that beautifull freize of trees set against the winter sky. In high summer this shot wouldn't have been worth taking, but in the depth of winter we can see the full beauty of the bare structure of the trees.

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Fountains Abbey Ruins from the south

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The best days for dramatic photography are not those which start with bright sunlight and clear skies, but those which begin with thick clouds and heavy rainstorms. Quite often I find - in my part of England - that the storm passes by late afternoon, leaving fascinating varied and many-hued cloud masses with blue sky breaking through.

It was on such a day in March that I took this photograph of the abbey ruins. I wanted to combine the image of this magnificent field maple spreading its bare branches against the stormy sky, with that of the ruins sitting calm and steadfast in this valley - as they have continued to do for some 800 years now.

Symet-Tree

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An awfull pun, I admit - but I always think of this as the symet-tree, for obvious reasons. Jill tells me that it's a specimen beech tree; all I know is that it keeps this perfect shape all year round. It is beautiful at any time of year, but reveals a special kind of ethereal loveliness on days like this, when freezing mist cloaks everything in mystery. If you look closely, you can see the ruined wall and window openings of the Abbey guest wing, emerging ghost-like through the skeleton of the tree - an image to be seen only in the depths of winter.

The Yew Hedge ~ Hoar Frost

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On the same day that I photographed the 'symet-tree' - a day of hoar frost, when one tried not to breathe too deeply, as every breath seared the lungs with intense cold - I was walking along, thinking longingly of hot tea and central-heating, when Jill grasped my arm and said 'Take a photograph of this for me, please.' With her artists eye, she had spotted the design possibilities of this yew hedge, which curved away round the nearby ornamental pond and slowly disappeared into the mist. We both found the contrast between the regularity of the hedge and the random nature of the dark branches, all modulated by the freezing mist, quite irresistable. Jill has been largely responsible for educating my eye like this, leading me to study composition as an aid to taking more appealing photographs.

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Snowdrops

As Winter draws to a close, we have the flowers of early spring to look forward to; but before the golden delight of daffodills, there are the snowdrops - often pushing through late snowfall. Throughout the woods lining the valley of the River Skell - with Fountains Abbey at its head - countless thousands of them carpet the floor; so many that they reflect the light up into the bare branches, making the woods shimmer in the late winter sun.

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St Mary's, StudleyRoyal - now deconsecrated - was built as a private estate church in 1871, the architect being William Burgess, who was renowned as the master of the High Victorian Gothic Revival style. The interior is a masterpiece of design and colour, but few of the many thousands who pass it give it more than a glance, little guessing what lies inside. But it was the building itself - sitting boldly at the head of a drive which stretches through the deer park clear to Ripon Cathedral two miles away - which caught my eye, framed as it was by the bare branches of another magnificent tree set against a turbulent winter sky. With this tree in its summer foliage, the church would have been scarcely visible

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Most images are completely satisfying in themselves - that is, if they have been captured with a view to presenting the subject so as to create in the viewer's mind the emotions that the photographer felt at the time he or she 'saw' the photograph. But sometimes an image - often when viewed again years after creation - promotes different feelings in the mind. With my recently-found interest in haiga, I find that words form, suggesting a haiku which will stand alone seperately from the image, but which has a special meaning when combined with it.

So it was with my final photograph in this 'Winter' collection. One December day we were walking around the large ornamental lake at the edge of the deer park, when a stray shaft of sunlight escaped from dark clouds, illuminating the stark branches set against the dark surface of the lake. In the distance a flock of gulls had settled in a line against the far shore, resting before continuing their journey. Only recently, while searching through my files for winter photographs, did I come across this image, and added the short poem to create this haiga.

~ a brief halt on this long journey - December afternoon ~

I hope that I've been able to convince you that winter can be the most beautiful of seasons ~ enjoy the next one!

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Flooded park-land ~ Beningbrough Hall

We found a flood ~ and made a Haiga

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Beningbrough Hall is an 18th-century country house with beautiful gardens and parkland, now in the care of the National Trust, just a few miles north of York. We set off one day for one of our regular visits - a stroll in the grounds, painting, photography, and lunch in the excellent restaurant. What we didn't realize was that the River Ouse, into which all the rivers draining the Yorkshire Dales run, was in flood. We discovered the extent when we reached the old wooden toll-bridge crossing the usually narrow, sluggish river.

As we reached the centre of the bridge we realized that the river was now about half-a-mile wide; hurriedly parking the car, we went back to the bridge to take photographs. It was late afternoon, and the low sun picked out these lovely willow trees - usually high on the bank - casting interesting shadows on the water.

Crossing the bridge and looking upstream, we could see the flood-waters stretching across the Vale of York as far as the eye could see. True, floods cause so much misery to so many people, but as long as you are safe and not affected by them, they can add beauty to a normally dull landscape.

This part of the Vale consists of agricultural land, mostly grazing, and the farmers are well used to fairly regular flooding here. The plain stretches between the uplands of the Yorkshire Dales in the west and the low, rolling downland of the North York Moors to the east, so all the river waters have to drain through here, until they reach the North Sea via the River Humber.

This was the upstream view from the bridge, with the appropriately-named 'Goldfish' well inland from her usual mooring.

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As we leaned on the bridge, with the low sun fully behind us, I noticed that we were casting a perfect shadow on the water; more interestingly, a piece of the bridge structure cast a pointed shadow between us. I immediately thought 'Meeting Point', and reached for my camera. At the time I just thought that it would make an interesting photograph, and later filed it away for future use.

Much later, through my Internet friends Jerry in Indiana and Pris in Florida, I learnt about the art of Multimedia haiga - a modern development of the ancient Japanese art of combining ukio-e paintings with haiku. This modern variation combines photographs and haiku (usually short, three-line poems, with a history stretching back more than a thousand years). The art is to write a poem which has a meaning - or meanings - independent of the image, but which also connects with and complements it, thus sometimes revealing yet another meaning.

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One day I was looking through my folders and came across the 'Meeting Point' image, and it sparked off one of those happy inspirations that are all too rare. Here's the haiga that resulted.

Jill and I weren't 'perfect strangers' of course - that was just poetic license, in order to give the work universal appeal.

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A Visit to Kamikochi National Park Japan

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One of our sons is married to a Japanese girl, and is permanently resident in Japan, so Jill and I are fortunate to have the opportunity to visit them and to travel to other parts of Honshu. Jeremy and Kazuko live in Tokyo, so we usually spend some time wandering around the city; but the real excitement comes when we travel to the more remote areas in the mountains. Around 90% of the Japanese land-mass is comprised of mountains, and some 90% of the population live on the other 10%. Nagano Prefecture contains some spectacular mountain scenery, and we visited the Kamikochi National Park with our son and his wife and my sister, on our first trip to Japan in May 2001. This area, near Matsumoto, is popularly known as the 'Japanese Alps', the first person to climb in this area being an English clergyman called Weston.

After an overnight stay in Matsumoto City, we drove up into the Kamikochi range as far as private cars were allowed, then had to take to coaches for the rest of the hair-raising drive to our destination - the Asuza River valley high in the mountains. The road climbed ever higher, plunging into tunnels, emerging onto spectacular bridges spanning dizzying gorges - glimpses of water tumbling far below, smoke rising from cracks in sleeping volcanoes - then into the next mountain tunnel. We reached the terminus - a small village where we emerged into steady rain, descended to the track along the Asuza River bank, and we were off on our trek up the valley.

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We discovered that the Japanese carry umbrellas everywhere they go - with good reason, as we had non-stop rain for the whole four days of our visit to Nagano. Trekking through forests of silver birch and bamboo-grass, we came across this colourful scene of a coachload of umbrella-wielding tourists; I couldn't resist the image of these people, dressed as if in town, wandering along this valley some 4,000 feet above sea level in a remote mountain range.

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After a couple of hours walking we crossed the river, another short walk, then the welcome sight of a hotel nestling in the trees; a chance to get dry, powder our noses, and take lunch. The Shimizuya Hotel stood at the very foot of a mountain, just above the river. Jill and I decided that it would make an ideal base for a weeks' holiday, providing the opportunity to wander further in the side valleys and as far up the mountain tracks as our aged legs would carry us; a dream - but perhaps one day? Jill settled down by a large window overlooking the river, intrigued by the view of mountains opposite - the snow still clinging to the steep ravines dividing them, though this was a warm day in May.

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I left her happily sketching the scene, and wandered around the hotel looking for someone interesting to talk to. Jeremy and Kazu were with us, so there was no language problem, but I like to chat to anyone who will listen. I was lucky to find a girl on the staff who spoke quite good English; as I explained to Jill afterwards, it wasn't my fault that she just happened to be very pretty, too!

Through the window next to Jill you will see a chain-like structure with water dripping down it; these were the local version of rain-water pipes - little hooked buckets dangling from the eaves, the rain tinkling and bouncing down from one to the other, making delightful music and shimmering lights as it fell.

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This is a closer view of the rain-drip, and of the mountain range across the river that Jill was busy sketching.

Jeremy told us that this part of the valley was called Kasumizawa - in English, 'Misty Swamp'; we had to agree that its name was certainly well-chosen.

After a couple of hours, we were dry, fed, watered and rested, and ready to face the rain for a walk further up the valley, to cross the river again on the Kappa Bridge. This proved to be a wood and wire cable suspension bridge, with curious cable stays under the decking. When we asked what they were for, we were told that these were to dampen the movement during earthquakes! Not fancying a dizzying crossing swaying above the icy glacial melt-water, we said that we were quite happy to dispense with the earthquake on this trip.

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Here's Jill, on the right of the picture, safely across the river and gazing up past the bridge at the impressive sight of the Hotaka mountain ranges at the head of the valley.

We would dearly have loved to explore further up the valley and into that snow-basin; we always did have ambitions beyond our capabilities. However, the coaches were waiting at this point to take us back down the mountain to our car, then 'home' to Matsumoto for that night.

Having stayed in a modern hotel - though equipped with the usual onsen (volcanic hot-water plunge baths) - in the city the night before, this evening we were to stay in a traditional Japanese Ryokan, or Guest House.

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This was a lovely wooden building set into a ledge on the hillside outside the city, surrounded by beautiful rock-gardens sloping down the hillside.

In the corridor outside our room was an intriguing window shaped like an Oriental eye. On peering through it, I saw that the garden designer had lead a stream tumbling down the hillside in a series of cataracts so that it finally fell over a rock and apparently 'into' the bottom of the eye.

The Japanese are masters of this kind of artefact - something to delight the eye, but viewable only through this one window.

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Another kind of masterpiece awaited us the next morning - the exquisitely beautiful traditional breakfast table, a photo of which I used as the header for this entry. Japanese chefs lavish as much care on the colourful containers and presentation of the food as on the cooking itself. Jill and my sister Valerie and I bravely tackled as many of these unknown dishes as we could manage - though we did baulk at an apparently raw egg floating in a kind of soup. We smiled, and tried to look as if we were enjoying it, but were secretly longing for a pot of tea and a bowl of cereal!

This whole building was a work of art, with wood and rock fashioned into delightful corridors, dining-rooms and bedrooms - these last with tatami-mat floors. We had to remove our shoes at the guest house entrance, and wear hotel slippers on the waxed wood floors. There were two onsen here - one rather spectacular affair in the basement, and an outdoor one set up in the rock gardens. Jeremy and I chose the outdoor one, climbing gingerly up rock steps, dressed in our hotel jin-bei (a light cotton two-piece garment) and holding umbrellas against the incessant rain. Before entering the onsen, one must wash all over several times to ensure scrupulous cleanliness, as everyone shares the hot-spring bath. That was a memorable experience, sitting under a bamboo screen up to our necks in almost scalding water smelling like cabbage soup (the result of the sulphurous volcanic content); we gazed across the rice-paddy-filled plain at the lights of Matsumoto, whilst cold air tumbled down the mountain and cooled us with showers of rain.

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While Kazu rested, Jill and Valerie decided to brave the onsen on their own, but got lost and rambled around until a member of staff pointed the way over a wooden bridge. This crossed a 'ravine', with a small river tumbling down rocks into a pool - where large koi carp swam around (all this inside the hotel). Apparently, my sister looked at Jill and said "Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not taking my clothes off and going in there with those fish!" But they discovered that this was merely a spectacular introduction to the onsen proper just around the corner, fully equipped with dressing rooms and showers, with the men's indoor onsen next door.

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On our final day, when we visited the Hokusai Museum in Obuse - a house where the famous artist spent the last ten years of his life - we spent one night in a ski-lodge lent to us by a friend, then headed back to Tokyo. We arrived back at Jeremy and Kazu's flat weary and somewhat damp after our four rainy days, but with some memorable experiences of our adventures in the mountains of Nagano.

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Many months after we were back home in England, Jill used her sketches and my reference photographs to complete a finished painting of the river and mountains of Kasumizawa. It hangs in the stairwell of our cottage, a fitting reminder of a wonderful holiday in that wild country so far away.

'Kasumizawa, Kamikochi National Park, Japan.'

Jill Sanderson.

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The Colour of Silence

I took the title of my blog from that of one of my poems. One day I overheard that haunting old Simon & Garfunkel number 'The Sound of Silence', and it set me thinking; if silence could have a 'sound', then perhaps it could have a 'colour'? The idea rumbled on in that strange back-room of the brain where we would-be poets are apt to store all kinds of lumber - fragments of lines, good rhymes and phrases, half-formed plans for future work. I gradually came to 'see' the poem as a conversation between two people, one of whom was rather feverishly re-telling a strange story to the other. I can often work out some of the origins of my poems, where the influences came from, but I've no idea about this one - apart from my deliberate punning quotation from W Shakespeare and TS Eliot in a couple of lines. Enough rambling on - here's the poem:

Have I told you about the day I met her?

Not for a long time,
but I’m sure you’re going to tell me again.
You must be feeling better!

It was a day in late October
when the skies were full of rain,
and I hurried over the moor
looking for shelter.

Late October? Are you sure?
The last time you told it,
it was mid-September.

You never pay attention - and don’t interrupt.
That girl, and those eyes! Do you think
I wouldn’t remember?

I remember ‘Those are pearls that were his thighs
And nothing doth remain ...’

... I sometimes think you’ll drive me insane.
... I heard a sweet sound
drifting, drifting on the breeze ...

... and then you saw, below you
in a belt of trees ...

... a small hut, with such a curious door.
As I drew near, I could see that it was
woven like a wattle fence.

Here, let me prop you up a little -
I don’t like that rattle in your throat.

They had left the door ajar
and inside, someone was lazily playing
a twelve-string guitar, slowly fingering,
lingering over each note.

You shouldn’t keep tormenting yourself.
Stop this, it doesn’t make any sense!

I pushed open the door,
and saw her sitting there,
with the dead child on the floor;

That girl with the pale, pale face
that girl with the blueberry hair,
and eyes the colour of silence.

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(header image: Lake Shallows ~ Chuzenji-ko ~ Japan)

We recently spent a few days away in the Lake District, in North West England, around 100 miles away from our home. This is a land of lakes, mountains and rivers - very beautiful, but also very wet for a good deal of the time; they need the rain to keep those lakes full.
We spent one memorable day at this Neolithic monument, Castlerigg Stone Circle, near Keswick. There are 40 stones arranged in a rough circle, with ten more in a small rectangle within. The image above is composed of two photographs linked to form a panorama, and the large rock faces due south.
We had almost continuous rain that day, and I had to work hard to get my photographs. I had the camera set up on my tripod, and I squatted on a low stool, holding an umbrella over the camera, struggling to set the controls and take the photos - while the rain dribbled down my neck. We have to suffer for our art sometimes.

In the haiku, I wanted to link the idea of the constant presence of these rocks - at least, for around 3500 years anyway - with the certainty of rain in summer in this hill country.