minnesota photography

Fairy Falls close-up

It’s time for another photographic sermon on the worth and beauty of the small, this time delivered in the steep, lush Silver Creek valley below Fairy Falls. The falls anchor a nice little hiking spot just on this side of the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. The forest there is in full swing, and so are the small-scale inhabitants of the forest floor.

I haven’t been able to identify these little green starfish-looking plants, which unfurl just a few millimeters wide. If anyone can help me out, just let me know. I do know the next photo is a crown-tipped coral fungus — an old acquaintance from down South.

Observe the little nodules that sit in the middle of each segment of these liverworts like a nucleus in a cell. They’re so small that I didn’t notice them when I was taking this photo, only after. Now that’s the good stuff.

Take a hike in all of this good weather.

Thanks for looking!

Pounding miles of pavement

Just as the season is about to end, it finally, finally, finally feels like spring up here — no more last bursts of snow as in April, no more dips near freezing as in May.

I celebrated yesterday at St. Paul’s Grand Old Day and Minneapolis’ Open Streets Lyndale, a pair of festivals that shut down miles of major streets and line them with bands, food tents and other booths, like the fellow above with The Bubble Connection from Wisconsin. I was also trying to push myself a little closer to the street photography style of many old and contemporary masters: wide-angle shots, subtle moments, a little mystery, a little goofiness, less reliance on the big action-reaction-emotion rules of photojournalism. I started in St. Paul.

Cleaners with small brooms and buckets wove through the crowd sweeping up wrappers and other scraps. Most were women, old, about a foot shorter than other attendees, decked in neon safety vests and gregarious sun hats and scarves yet hardly noticed. They periodically scattered and regrouped as they strode down Grand Avenue, pausing to admire a booth’s goods here and there or to watch people throw beanbags into toilets on the street to win free plungers. One told me they were Hmong (with a silent H), immigrants from a southeast Asian ethnic group. Several are old enough for retirement, but he said many just like something to do.

After walking about 5 miles up and down one Twin City, I took two buses and a train to Lyndale Avenue near Uptown in the other. I was about worn out; the street dancers, less so.

I like this place a lot more when it’s warm. Thanks for looking.

Dan

Spring thaw

_MG_2492.JPGThis has been a winter unlike any I’ve experienced — a cold blast in the minus 20s before wind chill, several feet of snow, weeks below freezing. And all of a sudden it’s gone.

I know we could still get a snowstorm in the next month or so, but it’s hard to look around at all of the dripping and gushing and not conclude winter has lost its grip. We’ve had some moderate flooding around the Cities, including near where I work, and catastrophic flooding to the south in Nebraska and elsewhere that’s directly affecting old friends of mine and their families.

We could get some of the same, but for now, things are just soaked. This past weekend I went down to Minnehaha Creek to see the back and forth between freezing and thawing. It was a good bookend to my visit back in December when the freezing was really taking over. Streams of snowmelt have carved channels and miniature canyons in the snow and ice, and the creek is gushing.

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One of my favorite things with the thaw is watching water and bubbles flow under ice and take on a lava-lamp-like mode. I also found a kind of ice that’s new to my repertoire: etched with wiggling lines as if shattered but whole and smooth to the touch.

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_MG_2459.JPGI also went further along the creek than last time, all the way down to where it joins the Mississippi River. An orange bluff there seems to be made of the softest sandstone. People have carved names and designs all over it, of course, but I was more impressed with nature’s own contribution. The rock is covered in tree-like, branching tufts of sandstone powder that crumble to nothing at the slightest contact. Nature always one-ups us.

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_MG_2482.JPGHappy spring, everyone! I’m as glad as anyone to see it.

Dan

Split Rock

_MG_1550.JPGI foolishly thought Lake Superior’s edge would be frozen in some interesting way this past weekend, but the lake was too rambunctious for that.

A piercing wind blew in from the choppy water and pushed up waves a few feet tall that crashed too loudly for conversation. Occasionally a deeper, concussive boom sounded as the water slammed against Split Rock Lighthouse State Park’s dark cliffs. It was another gray, overcast day on the North Shore, yet the waves and churning bubbles somehow glowed a vivid teal. I was entranced.

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_MG_1270.JPGIt seemed ideal for the lake to be in a lively mood for this visit. The Minnesota Historical Society’s visitor center says the park’s namesake lighthouse was built more than a century ago, even before a road reached the spot, shortly after a disastrous storm rolled over the lake in 1905. The storm sunk or damaged a couple dozen ships and killed more people, including some within view of the lighthouse’s future perch.

Lake Superior is the biggest and deepest of the Great Lakes and is full of danger and shipwrecks from edge to edge, including that of the Edmund Fitzgerald from the 1970s over on the eastern end. The area’s weather and wind get much of the blame, but the historical society also pointed out the iron in the very rock, which helped make the region so important for shipping to begin with, could also screw around with ships’ compasses. I never would have guessed that.

The park’s just a few miles from another park we visited back in October, but still far enough to see a new side of Superior. The water was placid then, and the old, igneous rock of the shoreline was wine-red there instead of black. Instead of October’s fall colors, last weekend we hiked through a foot of snow.

I’m still waiting for the Cities to get that kind of decent snowfall this season.

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Thanks for looking!

Dan