The year the storms went silent

Climate change, the cost of color, the worst july in memory, smoke and living seasonally.

july 2024 to me will be remembered for the dearth of storms.

Also, the ridiculous and smothering heat encouraging a claustrophobic madness, interspersed with deep bands of smoke laying heavy on us; weighing only in coughs and red eyes. the girls might have worn lovely summer dresses to combat the heat but no one saw them. We all hid away behind our fans and denial portable A/C units. This is alberta someone would say, A/C is only for the rich.

The lack of storms—I was on two very mediocre storms all season—left me to find other subjects. The birds. the plants. the cows. the roads and rolling prairie. All fine subjects but I spent most of the month feeling a massive let down, photographically. A crow is marvellous but not in the way a drill bit tornado is.

My experiment in june to get me making pictures again worked at least partially. The thing is i spent most the month thinking most of it was garbage. 700 or so shots and I had to dip into june to find you a full post.

While struggling to make good photos out of a grab bag of average photos I had my happens-once-a-decade realization that color ruins photographers, or leastwise ruins me. I can hone my skills for years concentrating on form, texture, pattern and a few months of shooting exclusively color and it all comes out winnogrand. directionless. weak. like a drunk with an endless roll of film.

To undo it I switch back to black and white previews in camera. I focus on form, tone, shadow and shape and in time the utterly lazy color eye so pleased with the mess starts seeing photos again. I’m not there yet, but I can at least see the heap for what it is right now.

You can expect more black and whites. A more focused attention seeking texture, and pattern and shape. I will not be seduced by the deep greens.

Otherwise my life has never been so seasonal or deeply rooted in time. The plants and garden all anchor me to the earth in equal parts comfort and discomfort. The garden flourishes like I’ve never seen. All that spring work. The aching muscles and being cooked by strong may sun are rounding into a harvest beyond what I’d hoped. There is no substitute feeling for having grown something you just put in your mouth from a logic defying seed to a plump nourishing source of food. I surmise we’d have more poetry about it but the poets only want dirty souls with clean hands.

july is all but spent now. Soon the nights will become cooler and the fields will change colors. The harvest will begin, mine and the farmers. The world will ready itself for the brutality of canadian winter, again. How does summer go from this beautiful idea expanding so far into the future to mere weeks so easily. Every year it slips by no matter how much time I spend trying to be out in in rather than at a computer screen.

Without the 100s of plants depending on my care, and father who slowly needs more and more help with things, and work, life would feel somehow empty. It still feels some dimension is being ignored but you can’t feel at all shorted when you have tomatoes hanging all about you. When those rich yellow zucchini flowers open wide and promise. You’d have to be an asshole to not feel deep gratitude for the overwhelming complexity that keeps life living.

The birds, the soil and the magic of plants, fungi and nematodes. the bacterias and every kind of little critter and insect that all interplay to keep the cycle moving forward.

it should be enough for near anyone. leastwise, for now, it is for me.