Some shots from my photography session down at the Buffalo Outer Harbor this past Sunday:
I like how this one captures land and sea (lake, I should say) disappearing at the same vanishing point. The bird in flight was a happy unplanned element.Here we see the jetskiers three! I like how their knees and the green trim of their Jetski form arrows pointing in the direction they’re going. I also wanted the lighthouse and the towers for the wind turbines in here as well. Again, the bird–flying low, the opposite direction–is a happy unplanned element.Grain elevators. The dinosaurs, as it were, of the Great Lakes’ industrial past. I love these hulking old buildings.
More photos from that day, with full-size versions, in this Flickr album.
By the way, I think I am now going to start using HUE as an acronym: Happy Unplanned Element. I think Bob Ross (“There are no mistakes, just happy accidents”) would approve. “Accident” still sounds overly negative in my ears, though. So, a HUE is an element in my photo that I didn’t plan on capturing, either because I didn’t know it was there or because I couldn’t avoid capturing it.
This newfound habit of mine, in which I post here on Monday through Thursday and then don’t post at all Friday through Sunday, is not an intentional habit at all; it’s just one of those seeming habits that gets dictated from without by external realities. In this case, it’s that we left town Saturday and did not return until Sunday. The reason for our trip was our annual visit to the Sterling Renaissance Festival. I took a lot of photos on this trip, and you can see them all at the Flickr album here (I’ll have more to say on the general topic of photography later this week, I hope), but here’s a small selection:
God save the Queen!
The Falconer’s owl
Melee!
I think this photo captures best the feeling I love so much about the Renaissance Festival.
The jousting field
End of Day Revelry: the pub sing!
I got NO sauce from my turkey leg on my white shirt. Victory! (And no, I didn’t get any on the overalls, either.)
The Sterling Renaissance Festival remains one of our favorite getaways of the year, and this year’s was especially delightful because we all hadn’t been able to attend since 2019, before COVID. The Festival was canceled in 2020 and I’m not sure if it happened in 2021 or not, but that year we couldn’t go anyway, because of Reasons. In 2022 we were able to go and we pre-ordered three tickets, for The Wife, The Daughter, and myself–but then The Wife had ankle surgery in early summer, and that ruled out her attendance. The Festival is a ton of walking, and it’s rustic walking, with the Festival grounds occupying the side of a forested hill. Getting around the Festival for an entire day is tiring for a fully healthy adult, believe me!
We did notice that the Festival is showing some signs of wear around the edges, if that makes sense: buildings in slightly greater disrepair than usual, some decorations in desperate need of re-painting, and some vendor booths and buildings actually empty (though some of those boasted signage that their particular vendors would be joining the Festival later in the year). And the crowds were definitely smaller…but that did make for a bit more enjoyable time. I do hope that none of the above was indicative of a Festival in decline, and that they’ll be back up to full strength moving forward. It’s a quirky and fun way to spend a day, even if it costs quite a bit of money. Most things do, nowadays.
Instead of driving all the way home, we stayed overnight in Palmyra, NY, after having dinner at our favorite fried chicken joint in Webster, NY. One note about staying overnight in Palmyra: that town is literally holy ground for the LDS Church, so you will almost certainly be surrounded by Mormons. This doesn’t bother me particularly, but it might bother some…and who’s to say if I bothered the Mormons! I’m not usually attuned to people staring at me, but it was hard not to notice some of them being somewhat flummoxed by a long-haired bearded guy in overalls and a poofy-sleeved shirt walking through the lobby of the Best Western by the Hill Cumorah site.
Anyway, getting out of town and doing something fun was a delight–and as it happens, this year it felt like a necessary delight. (More on that…someday, perhaps.)
(NOTE: I am aware of the controversy that has erupted in recent weeks surrounding the Sterling Renaissance Festival, the people who own it, and one employee there. My comments section is not the place to litigate that situation, and I will approve no comments referencing it.)
Highmark Stadium and the city of Buffalo, looking north from Chestnut Ridge Park
For the first time since Cane died last September, I went hiking at Chestnut Ridge Park yesterday.
Chestnut Ridge is an old park whose development by Erie County began back in the late 1920s, and a lot of the park’s original infrastructure, quite a bit of which still stands, was built by work crews of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Chestnut Ridge is a very large park–at more than 1100 acres, it is 300 acres larger than New York City’s Central Park–and it covers a lot of rugged terrain, ranging from forested hills to steep gorges through which streams run. The most famous feature in Chestnut Ridge Park is the Eternal Flame waterfall, which is just that: a waterfall behind which there is a small grotto into which natural gas seeps from underground. This gas is almost always aflame, and if it happens to be out, you can literally reach in behind the water and relight it, if you’ve brought a lighter with you.
Chestnut Ridge was a common destination for Cane and I in our weekly nature walks and hikes, and we covered a great deal of the park’s terrain and trail system over our years of trekking there. My last visit to the Ridge with Cane was last July, I think…which was therefore the last time I was there at all. Shortly after that visit he started limping slightly, and that was the beginning of his end.
Yesterday was my first trip there alone in many years.
Being up there yesterday was many things. It was beautiful, obviously, and being in nature was honestly what the doctor ordered after what’s been a trying few months recently. I kept thinking, though, of the presence I was missing; I’d walk a hundred feet and suddenly realized that I hadn’t had to stop three times for a greyhound to smell this tree, that bush, this patch of dirt, that rock. When you’re used to walking those trails with one hand always holding a leash, it’s a bit strange when that hand is unoccupied. And when I made my way down to the side of the stream at the bottom of one of those gorges, there was no watching as Cane found a deep spot to lay in–you know, to cool off–and to drink.
I won’t be staying away from Chestnut Ridge this long again…but it’s not going to feel the same there again, is it?
Photos:
Stream in Chestnut Ridge, from a bridge. It’s been very dry the last six weeks; usually there’s much more water than this, this time of year.
The trees that I call “the Fallen Sisters”. Again, note how dry the stream is. This time of year that whole streambed is flowing.
Inside an old pump house. The pump is long gone.
It was a good day, a good walk in the woods. There was even time for a touch of whimsy, like plucking a few wildflowers and wearing them in the bib of my overalls. One should always strive for a touch of whimsy. At least, that’s how I see it.
The warm months of the year, for us, tend to be bookended by two specific festivals: the Rochester Lilac Festival in May, and the Ithaca Applefest in October. Lots of stuff happens in between, but those are the markers of “outdoor stuff” season. So, yesterday we were off for the Lilac Festival!
Which was, this year, well…we’ve been enjoying gorgeous weather recently. Today is sunny and wonderful. The days leading up to yesterday were also mostly pleasant and nice. But yesterday itself was…a soggy rainfest that started before we even left for the day. Here I am, staring existentially out the back window at the gray rains. (More specifically, I’m waiting for my water to boil for coffee.)
We got to the Festival and tracked down our favorite food truck for poutine, which we were lucky enough to eat out of the rain in a big food tent. So that was nice. Poutine is always lovely.
Pulled-pork Poutine
But then we were out into the rain to try to see some of the lilacs and the various trees in Rochester’s Highland Park.
Reservoir at the crest of Highland Park. City drinking water is sourced here.
We didn’t walk around nearly as much as we usually do, because it was raining. I had an umbrella, but it’s on the small side, and The Wife wore a coat that she believed to be waterproof. (This turned out to be incorrect, so we stopped into a tie-dye clothing vendor at the Festival’s art sale and bought her a shirt just so she’d have something dry to change into. Some years, the anniversary gifts aren’t as romantic as others, I must admit.) I stayed mostly dry, thanks to my umbrella, but I have determined that I need a larger umbrella, probably one of those gigantic ones that some folks carry around. I concluded this because it turns out that the sleeves of a poofy shirt can actually exceed the coverage provided by your small umbrella, with dampening results:
Not one but two wet sleeves. Oh well, live and learn. Onto the shopping list a bigger umbrella goes.
Later on we went to The Chicken Coop in Webster, NY for fried chicken. We love this place and it’s a favorite destination of ours now when we’re passing through that particular part of town.
So, the day was something of a mixed bag, alas.
Up in the title to this post, I mention Rachmaninoff. There is a tie-in here: specifically the lilac flower. In 1902 Rachmaninoff wrote a song cycle, 12 Romances, one of which is a setting of a poem about lilacs. From this sprang an odd gesture of appreciation from one of the composer’s fans, as described here by Bertensson and Leyda in Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music:
It was about the time of his return from America that the mysterious activities of the “white lilacs lady” began. Rachmaninoff could give no concert or recital without a bouquet of white lilacs among the floral tributes. Bouquets of white lilacs were also delivered on every birthday, every saint’s day; and if he happened to be abroad on those dates, the white lilacs would just as surely arrive at his hotel or the compartment of his train. The notes accompanying this tribute were always brief and tender, congratulating him on his birthday or wishing him success in the concert, and the only signature was the Russian initials of “White Lilacs”; the song “Lilacs” in Op. 21 appears to have inspired this extraordinary labor of love. Rachmaninoff appreciated the lady’s incognito as deeply as the simple, warm words of her notes, though sometimes the gift was a little flamboyant–especially when the everlasting white lilacs arrived on schedule in the depth of winter. Not only did bouquets, wreathes, and other ornamental florist’s designs arrive with these flowers but the gift took other forms, such as an ebony conductor’s baton engraved with a design of white lilacs and Rachmaninoff’s initials. The giver’s identity remained hidden from the composer and all members of his family.
Fortunately, the mystery did not remain so. From the footnote in Bertensson and Leyda:
It was not until 1918, after the Rachmaninoffs had gone abroad, that “White Lilacs” was identified. Sophia Satina [the composer’s niece] tells of this: “As I walked to my laboratory one day I heard a horse galloping behind me: I turned and saw a cabman whipping the horse frantically, with an elderly woman standing in the lurching cab, clinging to him with one hand and waving to me with the other. When they came up to me, this woman, breathless and agitated, said, ‘Thank God! How happy I am to find you! I am White Lilacs–my name is Rousseau.–Where is Rachmaninoff? Is he alive?’ She was overjoyed to hear that he was well and working abroad. When Sergei Vasilyevich heard about Mme. Rousseau, he offered to help her to leave Russia, but she preferred to stay in Moscow with her daughter.”
Apparently when it became clear to Mme. Rousseau that Rachmaninoff would not be returning to Russia at all, in the wake of the Revolution, she ceased the gifts of lilacs. I do not know what became of her after this, but I do wonder if Rachmaninoff missed the constant presence of white lilacs in his later life…perhaps not as a reminder of a specific admirer, but as one more way his beloved Russia of old was gone forever.
The Wife and I were married twenty-six years ago today.
The years keep presenting new challenges, on and on and on…but they also keep producing memories, more than a few of which are happy ones.
I used to note that I could imagine a life without her, but it was worse in every way. Now, in what I’m taking as a blessing, that part of my strong imagination is losing its power…or it’s simply saying, “I don’t want to imagine this.” Either way…I’m fine with only imagining this life, with her.
This spring has been odd, even by Buffalo-Niagara standards. We’ve had our usual cruddy spring, but judging by how advanced the trees are right now, it must have been a better than usual spring. We’re usually not this green until around the 15th of May, so we’re a good week-and-a-half ahead of the game. There was an entire week of warmer-than-usual (including our first readings above 80 degrees) a while back…but then that disappeared and we had the more familiar weeks of dank, rainy, and muddy. However, it didn’t get that cold again, and we haven’t seen snow in quite a while. (Not true for people in the hillier country south of Buffalo, but that’s their problem, innit!)
Anyway, we’ve finally reached another extended warm period, with little rain in the forecast. So last night The Wife and I went to dinner at a restaurant that’s right on Lake Erie. We’d been there before, in the dead of winter when it was frightfully cold and windy, but last night was warm and beautiful. As we left the sunset was unfolding.
People around here like to cite Buffalo’s sunsets over water as a particular selling point for our region, and while that’s not going to top the usual concerns people have like good paying jobs and cheap housing and the like, I wouldn’t sell the sunset thing short. We have terrific sunsets here, and yes, if your vantage point is the right one, they’re over water. And while no sunset here is going to make me forget the ones in Oahu anytime soon…these will suffice until I can get back to Waikiki.
