Panoramic Manitoba
What a weird month. Between car troubles, various birthdays, and drunken hitchhikers it was surely eventful, and yet I can’t even explain where it all went. Now here we are at the end of August already, summer begins to fade, and I only managed to get out a handful of times. It’s easy to be lulled by summer…things seem the same day to day, but each year I kick myself having missed some natural phase, like the blooming of the <insert flower here>. Weeks of blue cloudless skies make me complacent.
Still, the occasional impressive weather event rolls through, and turns me into a storm chaser. I ended up taking a lot of panoramic shots, though I’m divided on whether it’s an effective technique.
This first storm dodged north of the city and I ended up chasing it east for a couple hours. This was just outside the city, a marshmallow Everest.
I drove furiously to gain on it, spending precious minutes trying to find a suitable open space to give it its due, only to have it move on. After a while there were no main roads, and I ended up on farm roads until even they ran out as I edged onto forested land.
What I like about this last one is the colour gradient showing the sunset: at the top it is bright white, still in full sun, but moving lower it fades to yellow and darkens to purple:
Of course not all the action was in the east. Normally I avoid direct-on-sunset shots, but this day was a pretty spectacle:
The title shot and this next one perhaps do more justice to the colours:
The next weekend took me far south east, on a bright day with a lot of scattered storms and clouds:
I’ll divert from the landscapes for a bit and just say this day ended up being quite the safari. First I spotted two deer being flushed from the bush, only to see them being chased by a young bear. Before I could grab my camera they all disappeared, but a second bear crossed the road in the distance:
Later as I got closer to Whitemouth Lake, I noticed the farm fields were thick with Sandhill Cranes. It was almost too easy getting these from the car, and it felt like cheating, but I’ll take it:
Back to the landscapes: with the sun playing hide and seek with the scattered rain showers made the light play interesting, more suitable to B&W:
Practically every road travelling east of Winnipeg eventually hits an escarpment, the shores of the ancient Lake Agassiz. It’s only a couple dozen metres high, but you can see it coming for miles. Returning towards the west it provides a fairly expansive view. This is a bit fuzzy from heat haze, but I was using my very long lens which compresses the distance:
The final shot of that day was facing north into a refreshing wind. After weeks of heavy humidity, it was the first hint of cooler times to come…
The day after this was probably the oddest day I’ve had in a while. I was probably a bit rattled, so didn’t manage to take any good shots, but maybe you’ll find the stories engaging.
Sunday evening I went to Bird’s Hill for a short hike. Just inside the park I see a young man waving to hitchhike. “Why not,” I thought, he’s probably just going to the campground. I pull over and I hear him yelling “Oh please oh please oh please, Oh thank you!” Hmmm…
He opens the door and plops inside and a wave of hard alcohol smell invades and engulfs my Corolla. Great!
“Oh thank you!” he exclaims.
“Where are you headed?”
“Winnipeg!”
“I just got here man, I’m not driving back right now.” I’m wondering what the heck I have gotten myself into. However, I’m on a weird spot in the road, and cars are coming, so I start driving again.
“Oh please! Can I call you?” Um, what? “Can I call you so I can call my Mom? I can pay you!” and he throws $45 in my lap.
“No way, I’m not taking your money. I can take you to the campground station, they have a phone there.” At this point I’m pretty sure I’ve got to dump this guy…”pretty sure” like 100% minus a hair.
“Please, I…” and then he puts his face in his hands and just starts sobbing his heart out. Holy crap, what now?
“What’s wrong dude?”
“Muh, muh…my woman! Boooo hooo hooo!” His hands are wet with tears.
It’s funny all the calculations one goes through in these situations. Ok, this guy is plastered, and he doesn’t even know what he’s saying. But he has a Mom, and he assumes she’s got his back. His “woman” meant everything to him, apparently. So that’s something, he’s got social connections. But I wonder how he’ll react to something innocuous.
“Wow, that’s tough man,” I was trying to be consoling.
“…it’s not tough!” he protests, and keeps sobbing. Snap judgement: he’s flipped to semi-hostile over a consoling remark. Not good. Now I feel pinned in the car. Do I take off the seatbelt now? Would that set him off?
“Please take me to Winnipeg!” he says, and throws the $45 in my lap again.
“No can do, but I’ll take you to the campground station,” I repeat. “They’ll have a phone there and you can call whoever you want.”
“Well, just keep it anyway.”
“What? No way. People have helped me, now I’m helping you. Next person you meet, you help them. That’s how it works.”
He sniffs, wipes his nose, then grabs my hands to shake it. “Thanks,” he sniffs, “thanks so much…boooo hooo hooo” Oh lordy…this happens in the Time of Covid…
It wasn’t much further to the station, and after alternately weeping and thanking me and shaking my hand, he finally got out. I have to admit I felt bad dumping him on the park staff…but at the same time they were probably better equipped to handle him.
I pulled out of the campground area, and now I’m on the opposite side of the park from where I want to be. Not a problem, I head around the park loop and pull into the parking lot just as a big SUV pulls in quickly beside me. A guy gets out and starts walking around real fast…one of these high-energy types who can’t sit still. He didn’t actually go anywhere, just rounding his car back and forth while his family (wife and daughters apparently) got out…snails by comparison to his squirrel. I had the distinct impression that they were humouring him.
Meanwhile I’m gathering my stuff and as it happens we arrive at the trail head at the same moment…we’re surrounded by all this space, and there’s a traffic jam at the entrance. So I joke “are we all going to same place?” The wife chuckles, and the guy perks up…someone to talk to!
“We’re going to the sundance circle!” I have never heard of this, and I’ve been to this park innumerable times. He sees my doubt. “Yep, this is sacred ground!” That’s the first I’ve heard of it.
“Yes, all of North and South America is sacred ground!” Oh boy, now what? “And you guys stole it! Colonizers ruined it. But there are still places you can find.” He went on for a while, and his mouth matched his feet…running furiously in every direction. I couldn’t possibility do it justice. But after a while I had to say something.
“My ancestors weren’t even here for that, they came a lot later, from Russia.”
“Oh really? Where are you from?”
“The US, born in California.”
“America! That’s even worse, you should have stuck with Canadian!” (I never said I was Canadian.) “I’m from Chile, we hate Americans!”
“Of course, Allende, right?” I think that put him off guard, that I even knew about it. Not a shining moment in American history.
“Yeah! We really suffered under Pinochet…” and on he went, bouncing from outrage to outrage and occasionally peppering me with questions.
“Are you military?”
“Nope.”
“Well that’s a military haircut and a military stride!” (That is just silly. I have never been told anything like this, and I only have short hair because I can step out of the shower and swipe and be done with it.)
At one point he exclaimed: “I will never understand why the American Indians fought for America. They should have fought for the Germans!” (This makes no sense at all if you knew what the Nazis were about.)
Meanwhile his family is shuffling along behind, probably wondering if they should switch his coffee out for decaf…or valium. Thankfully it didn’t go on much longer. I think the Allende thing switched him from hostile to simply intense…like he had to pour out his soul to everyone he meets. We got to a fork in the trail and he says “We’re going this way” and reaches out to shake my hand.
Well, why not…so I do. (Typing this out now, if the first guy had given me Covid, I would have given it to motor-mouth and his family…yikes!)
“Auf wiedersehen!” he says.
“‘Auf wiedersehen’?”
“Yeah! Isn’t that what all you Germans say?” (I never said I was German.)
“Vaya bien,” I say in Spanish, kind of curious what he’ll make of that. His eyes goggle.
“Gracias!” he exclaims, then turns to his family and starts on some lecture, while the girls all dutifully nod. His voice fades into the wind. Finally I’m alone in the park, pondering how freaking weird the last hour has been.
And all my shots that evening sucked 😆
Another day of storm chasing took me a couple hours north to Hecla Island. I went for a hike, but the mosquitoes were horrendous, so eventually I found refuge in windswept observation hut at the edge of a marsh. With the wind keeping the mosquitoes at bay I had fun watching the storms come and go:
I was even more thankful for the hut when this came through, and thankful for the thinning of the clouds behind me which lit up the reeds for a nice contrast:
Then it got truly dark:
Meanwhile, plenty of ducklings were feeding in the rain, oblivious to the drops all around them, especially when the sun would peek through from another angle:
But probably the most fascinating were the swallows. About every 20 minutes they would descend on my area, dodging rain drops and each other, snapping up bugs, while I snapped the shutter frantically trying to keep up. They are incredibly quick and hard to track. Out of three “waves”, I managed only one clear shot:
The swallows weren’t just out in the rain, there was a couple nesting in the hut. I didn’t notice at first, and was wondering why they kept flying in and out of the hut, until eventually they decided to risk it and settled in, keeping a wary eye on me. Compared to the birds in the rain, this wasn’t exactly a challenge:
I ended that day at Shoal Lakes. I kind of like this transition:
The end-of-day light played nicely on the sandpipers:
And the sunset was pretty spectacular:
And I will leave it at that. I have a canoe trip coming up, though I don’t expect I’ll take my whole camera kit…there are 4 kids and 4 adults in 3 canoes, so space will be at a premium. But hopefully there will be some sights.
Thanks for reading, and take care!
