Winter in Burn's Bog

The bog, when frozen, opens up. Its interior becomes visible, its skeletal system, clear. Water that normally runs for one day and disappears the next freezes, yet the movement of the water is traced in its odd shapes and layers of frozen surfaces. Some plants are frozen inside the ice, like bugs in amber. Their colour remains bright and life like. Most of it will thaw and just go on with what it was doing before the sudden freeze. Birds fill the lower branches of the bushes and brambles, searching for seeds. They call back and forth. I don’t know if they are sharing what they found or warning others to stay away. The low winter sun casts shadows which in the spring are never disappear. It reminds you that we are moving, not the sun. We’ve got it all wrong.

Flooding in the Delta

The rain stopped early today and we went down to a woodlands along the Pacific coast. There the high tide and strong winds blowing inland Brough a flood inland. Pathways throughout the woodlands were flooded, some were like little streams. What all the salt water will do to the cottonwoods I’m not sure.

The Lines Over the Cranberries.

This morning, early, I drove up and then down the Fraser River, looking for some magic in the fog. None was found on the river, which cleared sooner than the countryside running along it. Finally, when nearly back in town I saw these wires stretching across the cranberry fields. They were strikingly lonely looking.

A Walk On The Circular Path Around The Bog

For three or four years I have been taking this walk around the bog in Richmond, British Columbia. The hedges grow in around the route and block out the sun here and there, and left it in blazing a few inches away. The contrasts are sharp. The brush grows, often looking like wave formations and explosions. The heavy rains made the season short this year, already there is snow in the mountains.

A House Alone

A house in the local light industrial area of the city. A few such structures remain, somewhat out of place.

Chicken Coop Number 4

On what appears to be some form of government land there are a series of old chicken coops, over the past three years they have become more and more overgrown. A nearby house, also abandoned, was perhaps a caretakers house not too long ago. Now there is some farming, but the roads are all gated now. Three hundred feet or so away is the Pacific Ocean, this is right where the Fraser River flows into the Pacific. According to maps this land was under water 100 years ago, then a dike was built and a landing for boats.

The Summer's Growth Reaches Into the Pathway.

Near the Beaver Lodge.

A Towel by a Tree in the Bog

Construction Site, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Construction Site, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Winter in the Garden

I arrived this morning at the gardens just as sunrise was taking place. Even two days after the heavy snowfall there was only a single set of human footprints and a few tracks of animals. No one seems to want to be out. Two large pheasants flew out of the garden. Hearing my footsteps on the crusted snow large black crows, a stark contrast to the white/grey snow and sky, flew away, took a look, found me harmless and returned in a flutter. The garden’s buildings, a set of semi-temporary structures which are my main interest are now seen in outline form. Colours muted, stature diminished. In my mind are images from the New Topographics movement, thinking how few were of winter…if any, and images from the Dusseldorf School which had photographers much more focused on landscapes, and you are more likely to see a winter image. I stayed as long as I could feel my toes. ©jim roche, all rights reserved.

Still Creek, British Columbia

Still Creel move through the city of Vancouver, from a hillside residential area through parks, industrial areas, along side a shopping centre to eventually a small lake within the Burnaby city limits.

Trees in the Local Woodlands (Red/Blue).

Along the Creek in the Industrial Park.

A Walk Through the Cranberry Farms and Marshland.

These images are from a short project I have been working on during a break in the rain. These paths seem endless, with walkways across the cranberry fields, through the marshlands and then by the river. Some are wide open walkways, some roads and then, suddenly you can be bending over to make your way through an archway of winter-bent tree branches. Eagles, floatplanes and clouds pass by endlessly. There is a rumble of explosions from quarries in the mountains echoing back and forth across the valley. Remnants of last season’s berry crop, bright red, break through where there was snow and ice a few days before.