An early wildflower, upcoming events, and a few favorite winter photos

March 15, 2023

A first buttercup

By the calendar, spring is still a week away. Less formally, it splashed in Monday night with a pounding, steady rain that devoured much of the snow cover in eastern Washington.

I walked out on a rocky shelf in the rimrock yesterday and—where the snow was ankle-deep just 48 hours earlier—witnessed a slightly sunlit buttercup (above) glistening with captured raindrops. Maybe it goes without saying that it was the first wildflower I’ve seen outdoors this year. In the coming weeks there’ll be a gathering riot of larger and more garish wildflowers but after this especially long winter, it just seemed all the more important to give the first buttercup its due.

A couple announcements:

For my friends on the west side of the Cascades I can share the welcome news that Patagonia has scheduled me to be their guest speaker at an event in Seattle on Wednesday evening April 19. I’ll be at their downtown store, near the Pike Place Market, 2100 First Avenue, starting at 6 o’clock with preliminary libations and such. I’ll share the formal promo from Patagonia when I get it but the event is a variant of my Beautiful Wounds book presentation which is mostly projected photography and video. Audrey will be there too if you get tired of listening to me.

Closer to home, I’ll be doing a First Friday appearance, with photos and books, at the New Moon Gallery, 1326 E. Sprague on the evening of April 7th. I have some time to figure out what to wear but, as you might imagine, the harder question is what photos print up, at what size, etc., to offer for sale. You may be thinking—there are bigger problems we’re all facing, so buck up. So, yes, I will try and I’ve decided to start with a trio of frozen images. Ice, in short.

Rather than try to explain it, I’ll just give you a visual preview of the 16x20s, all of which will be on aluminum.

Ice Fan

The Ice Maze

About last night

While I’m here, I do have a favorite photo from last year. It’s entitled High Tide at Beach 4 and I bottled it last November while I was visiting my sister and her husband on the coast after the displacing fire at my Browne’s Addition apartment earlier in the month. Audrey had come up from Portland to join us and the two of us drove up past Lake Quinault to the Olympic Beaches west of Forks. It had been bitterly cold, with rain, the days before, but—lucky us—the sun was breaking through when we did our outing.

High Tide at Beach 4

At high tide, there really isn’t much room at Beach 4, where the trail in ends at an elevated platform above the beach and surf. So, it was a little dicey climbing down to the beach and protecting myself and the camera from the incoming waves. But the result speaks for itself and the best part was that I was there with Audrey and we were both shaking our heads with wonder, not just happy for ourselves, but genuinely happy for each other, knowing how much each of us was marveling at the experience.

A good photo, an even better memory…

—tjc