John Burridge

A couple of weeks ago we went to the coast.  There were what I thought were ravens there, but looking more closely at the photos later, I think they are actually crows.

Crows and raptors don't get along.  Crows will mob raptors in an attempt to drive them away.  It's possible raptors raid crows' nests or something that makes the crows mad.  Actually, even raptors don't always get along with each other.   I suppose this is similar to being friends with goths and with jocks--you'd like to invite them all to a big, fun party, but it's going to be like King Arthur trying to hold the alliance of the Round Table together between the bickering Lord of the North and the Lords of the South.  And then just when you think everyone's going to get along,  a peacock appears.



A trinity of crows bathed in a stream.  I've seen other juncos, owls, ducks, eagles, geese, jays and sparrows bathing, but never crows.    Thinking about it more, what was surprising about the situation was that a medium sized bird, that wasn't a duck, stood in a substantial stream of flowing water, which produced a wake as if it were swimming.  I'd expect it to sharpen its beak on a branch or hunt for bread crumbs or shiny earrings.



Mark will probably twit me for trying to read a meaning into it--"what do we know; we're just birds taking a bath"-- but their appearance seemed like a a mummer's pageant.   Okay, also, at the time, while I appreciated the crows, I was focused on getting good photographs of them to share.

Maybe the sense of portents in these photos comes from the fact that there were three crows;  stories start with threes:  three daughters, three billy goats, three crows.  Some of my more magical dreams start with crossing a stream--and watching from across a stream as three crows bathe sounds like the liminal beginning of a fairy tale.



Maybe it was the conjunction of shadow, air, and water; signifying the secret place where intellect and intuition inform each other.








Maybe it was the reflection of winged darkness in the middle of the day.








Maybe it was the milky, cataract dot of the crow's eye--the nictitating membrane, perhaps--giving the black bird the impression of blindness as it peered into the flowing water.







Perhaps it was the blind black crow's baptism before flight.











The other crows flew away, too, leaving me standing on the other shore with my camera.

It's a poem.  It's a mystery.

Writing this, I feel like I need to make a tarot deck with crows in it.

Sunday we escaped the pollen in the Willamette Valley and headed to the coast.  Mark decided that since we usually head north when we get to Highway 101, we would head south instead.

We walked along a very windy jetty and watched osprey at Honeyman State Park and wound up in Florence.   As we drove over the Siuslaw River Bridge, the finials and art deco-ish bits caught my eye and I said I wanted to photograph the architectural details of the bridge.





We walked through Florence and up the stairs to the bridge's deck.  I've taken photos of the bridge before, but usually from a distance.  I am a little confused about how the bridge's structure works as a bridge, because I'm not used to seeing concrete used in a suspension arch -- maybe it's concrete-clad iron girders?







In any case, the bridge has aesthetic lines in the arches.  The 1930's decorations remind me of the Empire State Building.










We walked along the eastern side of the bridge, which was a little alarming because the sidewalk didn't seem to be far enough away from the traffic.  I took a few detail shots and realized that I wasn't going to get good detail on the various designs embossed into the concrete unless I crossed 101.  So I did and was rewarded with much better lighting (the hight contrast on the concrete caused by direct sunlight confused the light-meter on the camera).




I think scaled down columns like this would be fun in our back yard... it might be too imperial, though.  And I can hear Mark saying how they might tip over onto someone or a cat.
The arches had decorative wings on them.  The details came out much more clearly on the west side of the bridge.
One of the things I like about 1930's American architecture is that they took the time to put little decorative details on otherwise utilitarian objects; it gives a animistic or spiritual aspect to structures.
The timing was perfect for this photo, and I didn't realize until I got home that the shadows of the feathers were lining up with the feathers beneath.
I really do think the columns were inspired by the Empire State Building.  Or maybe the Chrysler Buildind.
Or Orthanc. 












I'll have to keep how they sculpted this column in mind the next time I'm making sand castles.  I think a simple triangle-cut plank could make a good tool to get this effect.




Mark gave me a hard time for crossing Highway 101, and I replied it wasn't like I clambered under a moving, two-ton, ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) robot at JLP (yes, I saw a photographer do this--the engineers all collectively gasped).

I took a final, obligatory photograph of sunlight slanting underneath the bridges gothic arches.

 The feature that I like the most about my camera is the macro lens.  It can take a small ladybug and make it the size of Mothra.  Or, as in this case, bring out fine details in a driftwood tree stump.

The stump was part of an assemblage of driftwood.  Some other photos I took came out looking like someone's failed barn-raising.

I like these photos because they look like an arena, and the cracks look like a snowflake or star.   I managed, by luck more than anything, to make the long crack in the second photo down be positioned just behind the focal point, which makes the crack  a boundery between the focused and the unfocused.

These pictures came out nicely, mostly because the sun was about an hour away from setting, which gave an exciting light angle.

The camera feature I like second most is the really long shutter speed setting, which works well for writing with LEDs at night.

Here.  It's an obligatory photo of an Oregon coast tree that's been slowly blown inland while all the soil and sedimentary rock underneath it is eroded by waves.

...no wait. "Pirate Creating..." Is that a compass or just a stick?  OK, "John With His Geometry Fetish."  (Or, "Help, I've Fallen And I Can't Take a Photo.")

I wanted to take a self portrait with me and the sand drawings I'd done.  Secretly, I wanted something like Blake's "God Creating the Universe."  Only with more clothing, because, man, that coastal wind was cold.

I had problems getting the camera to take a picture.   It was so apparently obvious that I was lying on the sand, struggling with a camera, that a woman (bundled up and with a very large mixed drink) offered to take my picture for me.  By then, the cold had sapped the energy in the batteries and the camera died.

But just before she walked over to where I was, I managed to take this.

When I started taking these pictures, I was mostly playing around with circles in the sand.  I'd wanted to draw some straight lines, but I didn't have a good straight edge with me.

Over the weekend, we visited Cook's Harbor, a natural rocky bay along the Oregon Coast.  It's one of Oregon's few natural basalt harbors to survive recent storm surge poundings in the last fifty years.

Captain Cook discovered the harbor during his Oregon stop-over before visiting the Hawaiian Islands, unfortunately, the harbor was too shallow to provide a safe anchoring point for his ship.

Locals tell stories about smugglers' caves at Cook's Harbor, but I wasn't able to see any obvious signs of a cache.  Maybe if the tide had been different, I would have been able to see features normally under water.

In the fifties, there used to be mermaid sightings, and the local historical museum had some brochures from back then which featured "Triton, The King of the Merfolk."  The illustration was sort of Greek statue meets Buster Crabbe.   Inside was a black-and-white photo of a 1950's woman named Helen Elden, holding a clear-ish triangular object with rounded edges which was supposedly a scale from her aquatic boyfriend.  The museum write-up pointed out how most of the sitings of Triton were by women, and eventually they were written off as "Fisherwife Fever" or an advertisement stunt by a local motel (now destroyed after the Columbus Day storm).

On a warm night after a very sunny day, I could easily imagine merguys lounging around in the warm waters.

Back from a weekend at Yachats.  We had a fun time, but this time around whenever I'd go down to the shore the soundtrack playing in my head kept getting stuck on the opening track from Sting's "The Soul Cages."  The only way to banish it was to recite an even old tune by We Three called "The Drum" (Bring from the center of the sun...).

I took some photos, and stumbled onto a kind of self-portrait.  Or self-collage?  In any case, the elements came together in a way that surprised me.  I'm not sure which one of these is the best, but I'll start with this one.

Mark said we should go camping.








We went to Cape Perpetua.






Cook's Chasm is near Cape Perpetua.






Captain Cook sailed here in 1776.






The tide was high when I took these pictures.








There was a lot of foam on the waves. It was windy, too - so the foam would blow off the top of the waves. Which was a little gross.




The previous day, we'd stopped by about two hours after high tide. The waves were off, or so the Park Ranger said, and so the spout didn't spout.




You still had to watch out for sneaker waves, though.

Somewhere between the Sea Lion caves and Yachats there's a beach. We went at low tide a few weeks ago, so we could actually see and walk on the sand. Part of the beach includes some basalt cliffs, where I found this hole. The tide was coming in, and I didn't particularly want to crawl on squishy anemones or scrape myself on sharp barnacles -- so I didn't squirm through it.

 But I wonder what kind of wish I might have had granted if I did.

This is a snail from the Oregon coast. I'm not kidding: this guy was slithering around about two blocks away from the parking lot for the Sea Lion Caves. You would think that all the salt air would inhibit snails; but no, this snail was about the size of my index finger curled against my thumb. On the other side of its shell, you could see where I'm guessing a crow had dropped it or tried to break open its shell with a rock.

Saturday we went to the coast. We saw:

• giant coastal snails
• waterfalls
• mating bald eagles
• agates, jasper, and a tide line of tiny plastic bits
• a raft of sea-lions in the coastal surf
• real fishermen feeding real sea-lions ten feet away from us while we stood on a dock (no, lunging sea-lions never crossed my mind....)
• a harbor seal
• herons
• large crows
• seagulls of assorted sizes and shapes
• historical, two-masted sailboats (by accident)

Because it's the first Spring Visit to the Coast, I got a sunburn on my face and the top of my head. I thought I had packed my hat, and Mark was the only one smart enough to put on sun-screen.

Lately, the leitmotif for Mime has been on my mind. As I was walking around the beach looking for agates, I tried to "recuperate" (as Chris Siosal says) the theme. The ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three-FOUR rhythm of Wagner's pensive tune turned itself to a disco tune; and I wondered if the Muse of the Opera Babes was near-by. Or else Mime's leitmotif wanted to become "Over the River and Through the Woods." I kept picking at the theme and imagining it as a strophe and antistrophe.... and out popped the theme to Doctor Who.

I am not making this up; Mime's theme is quite easy to make into the ground underneath the electronic whistling melody. (Pause to imagine how the opera might have ended if Tom Baker had been the Nibelung blacksmith.)