The beauty of winter is upon us.
Colorado’s Front Range does not often see a white Christmas. In fact, we have only seen one inch of snow on the ground in 37 percent of our Christmases over the past 111 years. This year we have A LOT of snow on the ground…over a foot at our house.
This Christmas morning was covered in snow with a dusting of frost. Catching frost in the sunlight at just the right angle can be magical.
Title quote by R.H. Heinlein
Today we visited the Butterfly Pavilion for the first time. It’s pretty cool. Bugs, spiders and other creepy crawlies thrive in (safe and secure) glass boxes under warm lights. Colorful fish, crustaceans and other wiggly, swimming, little sea creatures pass the time in what appear to be giant fishbowls. Brave little kids let a scary, hairy tarantula named Rosie, crawl on their hands. (I get the shivers just thinking about it.) I put on my big-girl pants and touched a big horseshoe crab (only for a second and with permission).
My favorite part of our visit was the Wings of the Tropics exhibit: a lush, humid, tropical garden filled with exotic plants and flowers with graceful curves and seductive swoops that have names I can’t pronounce without great effort. The tropical colors are incredible…bright reds, pinks and fuschias, deep velvety greens, electric blues, brilliant yellows and warm golds. A gentle mist filters into the garden keeping both sturdy plant leaves and fragile flower petals blanketed in sparkling diamonds of water drops.
Most incredible though are the beautiful, fluttering butterflies that fill the air. Their colorful wings propel them silently about like hosts of swirling angels. Sometimes you can’t even see them; nevertheless, you know they’re there. If you’re lucky, one will alight on your sleeve. Like being kissed by an angel.
I love driving around in Colorado! This weekend was no exception. After lunch on Saturday in Castle Rock, it was on to Garden of the Gods, an amazing geological park just outside Colorado Springs. I would love to explain to you all the different rock formations and how they came to be, but I’m no geologist. In fact, some who know me might even say I don’t know schists from Shinola! But what I do know is how to point a camera at pretty rocks!
Garden of the Gods
Cathedral Spires
Garden of the Gods in black and white
Sunset buck
Today I happened upon an abandoned mine above Central City…the Coeur d’Alene mine. When I left Denver, the weather was sunny and mild. As I drove higher up into the mountains, the clouds started to flex their muscles and show off by spitting snowballs…little tiny ones. It got cold and windy, the sky turned a grayish white – not optimal photography conditions. But the mine was striking in its imposing, rusty splendor. I was drawn to quiet deserted corners. I apprehensively peered into doorways and tried to jump up to see in windows. I imagined the power of the now forgotten machinery as it may have once been: roaring and belching the smoke of productivity. I watched, waited, listened…for the stories. I heard them.
Tractor and shed
Wheat and bolts
Danger window
Rusty shingles
Rusty National
Rusty buckets
Rusty bolts
Nails in the wall
Big Bolt
Coeur d'Alene Mine
The weather in Denver last weekend was perfect for taking a lazy walk, dawdling lakeside, meandering around an old cemetery or enjoying a sightseeing, people-watching drive around the city. Sloan Lake Park was sprinkled with folks leisurely strolling, energetically walking, healthfully jogging, racing around on bicycles or dutifully pushing strollers. Kids were playing with bright colored balls and floating balloons on strings. Games were being played on asphalt courts. Bits and pieces of conversations, carried along on gentle autumn breezes, could briefly be overheard . Geese obliviously plucked at the still-green grass or enjoyed a dip in the azure blue water. Two fluffy squirrels perched high atop a building’s rooftop ledge kept a nervous eye on all below. The sun’s warm rays cast a burnished red on drying plants and tall cattails at the water’s edge.
The sloping hillsides of the historic Golden Hill Cemetery are scattered with aged headstones: some still standing tall, some leaning over with age, and still others toppled over. The landscape seems long ago consumed by nature’s overgrown grasses, weeds and leafless trees. The stillness of the afternoon air provoked a certain melancholy. Yet the quiet beauty of the late fall day was apparent – and appreciated.
Setting out on a drive yesterday with no particular destination in mind, I found myself at the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado Springs. I have lived in Colorado for 30 years, and yesterday – a very gray day – was the day I chose to get off the interstate and pay a visit. I can’t believe I waited this long.
Here are a few facts for those of you who may not be familiar with this incredible building:
The building was designed by Walter A. Netsch, Jr. of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (think John Hancock Center, the Sears Tower and Republic Plaza for those of you in Denver). The contractor, Robert E. McKee, Inc. of Santa Fe, New Mexico, began construction in 1959 and finished in the summer of 1963. The 17-spire building is made of aluminum, glass and steel. Tetrahedrons form the geometry of the ceiling of the 99-feet high Protestant Chapel (the Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist chapels are one story below).
The main Protestant Chapel seats 1,200. The altar is made of sleek marble with travertine marble legs. The most striking element of the chancel is the aluminum cross – 46 feet high, 12 feet wide and weighing 1,200 pounds.
The organ in the chapel, pictured taking up most of the window below, is one of the most magnificent pieces in the country. The pipes range in size from 32 feet high to the size of a pencil.
The focal point of the Catholic Chapel is the beautiful mosaic on the wall behind the altar. Superimposed on the mural are the Blessed Virgin Mary (pictured below) and Archangel Gabriel. The side walls of the chapel are amber glass with multi-colored cast glass strip windows. The 14 Stations of the Cross are made of 4-inch thick marble slabs.
If you haven’t already visited the Cadet Chapel, you should. Bring your camera.
I don’t know much about horses (Equus ferus caballus).
I do know that they’re large, and they’ve been on the planet for a long time…domesticated since 4,000 BC (who doesn’t love wikipedia?)
Some are brown. Some are black. Some are white. An Appaloosa has spots.
They go “neigh, neigh,” and in the winter they can pull a sleigh (usually with bells on)…I’ve even seen great big horses pulling carts of beer through the snow (on television often during Budweiser commercials).
I have ridden a horse a couple times in my life. Usually under duress and at a management team-building retreat. It’s always scary (because I’m a city girl…and where are the brakes on those things anyway?)
That doesn’t mean that I don’t find horses and all the accoutrements beautiful. I do.
I didn’t have to look far to find these two photogenic horses…they were prancing around the training ring at our neighborhood park. One of them was adjusting to a new bridle something or other. And they posed for me.
For those of you who thought you were going to read about Bar Dice and shots…yer buyin’, eh!
It snowed in Denver today. The first white snow of the season is always bittersweet…beautiful to look at, but it’s messy driving. The still leafed-out trees weighed down with nature’s white burden caused power-related problems, broken trees and insurance claims.
It was still pretty – the white, that is.
According to empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com, the color WHITE is significant because it symbolizes “innocence and purity. White is the beginning of everything, before anything is muddied or thinking is ‘colored’. White represents the clean slate, helping us through times of stress, and allowing us to put the past behind us and preparing us to move on. White represents the positive as well as the negative aspects of all colors. It contains an equal balance of all the colors of the spectrum.”
Rest easy, snow-bound compatriots; after all, white is just another color. White means so much more than snow.
In fact, I am posting photographs of things that are white, but not snow – just to prove my point!
Glamorous moments are found in the most unexpected places: wandering past an often ignored bush along a sidewalk, peering into a dried up field of weeds, or catching the long, low rays of sunlight at day’s end.
Enhance your view of the world by looking at it from a fresh perspective. Underneath, sideways, crooked or askew. Above, below, or cross-eyed. Darkened, lightened, softened, or hardened.
The allure is often left in the dark and unexplained.
Images of a walk in the park and a stroll under a bridge (Red Cliff, Colorado).
The Denver Botanic Gardens is a local destination. It’s almost in my front yard. I’ve visited before. But not like today.
Today I tried to focus on something different. Focus itself.
Focused attention? No. I was totally paying attention. I was in the moment, to be sure.
I was trying to focus my camera on nature…all at once: photographic composition, proper exposure and technical execution, exquisite light quality, artistic expression, contrast of color, texture, and emotion, etc.
Well, that’s nuts.
Nature doesn’t work that way. Nature happens in moments. Sometimes the moments happen in color, or not. Sometimes nature’s moments are a contrast in light or texture. Sometimes nature is not at all artstic. At other times, nature’s moments are elusive or ambiguous. And sometimes, the best of nature’s moments are unfocused.
Stop squinting.
“Anyone who sits in a pumpkin patch for five days waiting for the Great Pumpkin is crazy!”
– Lucy Van Pelt
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