Burning Branch

A branch at the Clark solstice party, 2008.
Each year, my parents have a little party on the night of the winter solstice: they clear a spot in the driveway, set up a grate and barrel, and have a lovely bonfire to scare away the winter. This is a close-up from this year's bonfire, which I was (luckily) able to attend!

And the bonfire burned burned burned,
and we're the ones that set it!
It burned burned burned,
and the cold wind ran and cried.
Yes it burned burned burned,
but things were very chilly --
And the pine branches burned like a whole bunch of very flammable things,
in the winter solstice fire!

Bonus points for those who can name the song I just slaughtered.

Snowy Wreath

A Christmas Wreath
This is one of my favorite Christmas photos from this year -- the wreath on my parents' garage, after our spectacular pre-Christmas snowfall downstate.

Note! I don't think I've mentioned this before, but you can click on the photo to see a larger version at my gallery. Clicking the "download" link there will give you a reasonably high-resolution version, if you want one. And of course, if you want a nice high-quality professional print, I can do that for you too! :)

Blue

Sunset at the Sturgeon River SloughsLike my photos? Prints of this photo are available!
I took this while on a brief snowshoe outing at the Sturgeon River Sloughs, down south of Chassell. It's a very pretty place, and I hear that the wildlife viewers really love the viewing platform during the summer.

Ice Bucket!

Yay, an ice bucket for Christmas!
My dad, after years of being ice-bucket-less, has now been en-bucketed. It was a glorious day in the Clark household.

Statue

Scary sculpture, somewhere strange.
I'll give away the truth first: this sculpture was made by my father, and he recently mounted it on a post in their side yard. That said, I have huge desire to place this sculpture in the middle of some deep woods somewhere -- maybe set back a little way into the cliffs or on a rugged shoreline. It would be thoroughly hidden, yet at some point someone would come across it, and possibly be scared out of their wits. I like the idea of it.

Bright red berries

Bright red berries near Cliff Drive.
Cliff Drive is really one of my favorite places to hang around in the winter: so beautiful, so remote, so quiet... until those blasted snowmobiles come by dang noisy smelly... ok, I'm done now. I'll be back soon!

Edit: For those wondering -- nope, I didn't Photoshop the berries at all. Other than the border and text, the only editing I did was to slightly desaturate the background -- because that's closer to how it appeared to me.

These are Mountain (or Northern) ash berries, which -- believe it or not -- are edible, although very bitter. I'm planning to make some jelly next weekend!

Second edit: The jelly turned out great, although it definitely has a unique flavor. I think it would work well on meat, but it's definitely not a "bread and butter" type jelly! I used this recipe which worked pretty well, but did require extra pectin.

Four graves in one

A headstone at the Cliff Catholic cemetery
The Cliff cemeteries are beautiful any time of year -- they've been overgrown with beautiful trees which keep them shady and cool. But they're even more beautiful in the winter, when everything is covered with a layer of snow. Here is one of the headstones, under a spreading pine tree. It's actually four headstones all at once: three young children and a wife. As much as I would have loved to have seen the Keweenaw back when the mines were still going strong, I'm also very glad not to live in times when life was this hard.