Figure 1 – Cypripedium acaule, the moccasin flower a wild lady slipper orchid, Cape Porpoise, ME. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

It was a bit of a gloomy day. Still I thought that it might be rewarding to take a short walk through the woods in Cape Porpoise, ME. This was scrubby dense forest with lots of birches and hemlocks. It drew on by the loud cacophony of birds, perhaps crows, screaming deep among the trees. Well, I was rewarded. My eye was captured by a bit of magenta which turned out to be a wild orchid, Cypripedium acaule – so-called moccasin flower. And then I started looking and realized like magical beings they were hiding all around me.

As it turns out this is precisely the ideal time to observe these beautiful pink lady’s slippers. We must admire these wild beauties with a certain respect and reverence. They are essentially impossible to cultivate and yet seem to have a fairly easy time of finding just the right soil and conditions in these northern forests. Seeing them first hand offers a kind of peaceful serenity that befits the fact that the root of lady’s slippers has historically been valued for its sedative properties and used as a remedy for nervousness, tooth pain, and muscle spasms.

The moccasin flower has a symbiotic relationship with a soil fungus called Rhizoctonia. Unlike most seed these orchid seeds do not have the fuel to grow and require the fungal threads to break them open and share food, I suppose like a mother bird feeding its fledglings. Then when the plant is older the fungus reverses the process extracting nutrients from the roots.

The other fascinating aspect of the lady slipper is that it lures bee’s to its marvelous pouch where alas poor bee finds no nectar. Hairs within the pouch direct the bees to the only exit of escape where they must brush against the stigma to be coated with pollen to carry to another flower. This is Darwinian evolution at its most magnificent.

But I digress. I retreated the forest to locate my tripod and return to these beautiful orchids which I spent some time photographing. Figure 1 is one of the results. The blah-dee-blah may be of some interest, since it was heavily overcast and drizzling at times. I wanted some sharpness of detail on the complex flower and a reasonable amount of depth of field. In this particular image I filled with light from the on camera flash. ISO 400, -1 exposure compensation, f/11.0 at 1/25^th sec, EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 140 mm.

Figure 1 – Gristmill at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 is an image that I took last weekend of the Old Grist Mill at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn this past weekend in Sudbury, MA.  The Wayside Inn Grist Mill was commissioned by Henry Ford and designed by renowned hydraulic engineer J.B. Campbell. The Mill ground its first grain on Thanksgiving Day 1929. In 1952, the Pepperidge Farm began operating the Mill, which it continued to do until 1967.  It’s image remains the logo of the company.  The mill remains in operation today grinding grain for the Wayside Inn.

So much for history.  I am ambivalent about whether my photograph really works.  I wish, first of all, that there was water flowing over the paddle wheel.  I was also initially ambivalent about whether it should be a color or black and white photograph.  But then I realized that what I like best about the picture is that it looks like a black and white image which has been hand-painted adding very vivid red and also some green.

A second element that I am pleased with are the struts that seem to attach the wheel to the wall.  It seems a strange point to notice. But my eyes continue to be drawn to them and I think this is because they seem to ground the waterwheel’s mechanism to reality – that is to the need to obey physical law.  The image is of a real functional machine, not an artifice of the designer’s mind.

Figure 1 – Pansies or Food for Thought, Sudbury, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Sometimes it is the simple things, and the photograph is no further away than your own doorstep.  I love the simple beauty of spring pansies with their little pensive lion faces looking back at you and floating in a gentle breeze.  There is ever the sense of the coolness associated with not quite summer.

The English name pansy comes from the French word pensée “thought.”  It was imported into Late Middle English as a name of for certain violets in the mid-15th century.  Shakespeare has Ophelia remind us that these flowers are to be, along with rosemary, regarded as symbols of remembrance.   I can never look at them without remembering  walking with a friend (and reader) in San Jose some years ago and discussing Ophelia’s words:

“Look at my flowers. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembering. Please remember, love. And there are pansies, they’re for thoughts.”

Figure 1 – English Sparrow, Passer domesticus, Concord, MA 5/25/2014. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

After all this time carrying my big lens around in hopes of getting good bird pictures, I was delighted this past Sunday when a English Sparrow (Passer domesticus) landed on a branch in front of me and in a sweet voice demanded to have his portrait taken.  I only had my EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens*, but was really delighted by the bifurcated lichen covered branch and at 200 mm at the soft bokeh of the background.

Yes, it is a common house or English Sparrow.  Still he has his own high highfaluting Latin name and as Shakespeare eternally reminds us:

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be.”

*EF70-200mm f/4L USM Lens at 200 mm Aperture priority mode AE, ISO 800, 1/800th second at f/5.6.

Figure 1 – The Hermaphroditic Sentinel, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I found myself once more at the Old North Bridge, National Historic Site, in Concord, MA again.  It is one of my favorite places, and I gravitate there spontaneously seeking the photographic opportunity of any given day and time’s uniqueness of light.

It is always rewarding to wander off the main path, to try wherever you can to reach the river, even if you have to slog through a bit of mud to get there.  There is one particular spot where you emerge to find an old cement landing.  It is lost to time, but undoubtedly speaks to a different layout of the site.  You can shut your eyes and imagine the laughter of swimmers fifty, maybe a hundred years ago – men in straw hats and ladies in white. There are two huge trees there, and these have suffered the ravages of termites.  The have tremendous girth – and certainly date back to the nineteenth century.  But they are partially hollowed out and you have to wonder just how long they will last.  Perhaps they will sprout “suckers” and truly live forever.  These are silent witness, sentinels on the river and they have witnessed a lot – but are silent and mum about just what they have seen.

On this particular day, in the crisp light of a bright but cloud-laden afternoon, skies threatening thunder showers, I was struck by how the light illuminated the mysterious cavern within this particular ancient one.  There is a certain, yet profound, hermaphroditic ambivalence.  And if you look closely into the carnivorous darkness there is a strange serpentine presence.  It reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft and beckons you to return to the well trodden road and the present.

Figure 1 – Bend in the Road, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Years ago, when I was a graduate student at Cornell, one of my favorite places on campus was a bench that crowned and overlooked “Libe Slope.”  The bench was placed there in 1892 by Andrew Dickson White and his wife, Helen Magill White.  It bore the profound inscription:

“To those who shall sit here rejoicing,

To those who shall sit here mourning,

Sympathy and greeting;

So have we done in our time.

1892 A.D.W.–H.M.W.”

There you have it once more – the sense that we may speak to our fellow humans across the otherwise impenetrable abyss of time.

I have carried that bench in my mind with me for over forty years now and truly I think of it often.  I thought of it again this past weekend when I took the photograph of Figure 1, which I entitle: “Bend in the Road.”