THIS January in CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C.

"It is deep January. The sky is hard. The sky is hard. Intones its single emptiness. the savagest hollow of winter-sound."   

 -Wallace Stevens

Bridge over the Campbell River

Campbell river is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island. We're near Quadra Island in Discovery Passage, at the 50th parallel, the Inside Passage!

Discovery Marina

It's the stopping off place for the Discovery islands, Oyster and Gold River, Tahsis, and Zeballos. We're all connected by the Island Hwy, and airport and the Passage. About four hours (toodling along the hwy) north of Victoria...

Some winters, we have been deep in snow. This year, it has been a green winter ( so far), winter's not done with us yet.

Pileated Woodpecker

"The season was waning fast, 

                                   our nights were growing cold at last..." -R Payne

"At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing, than cold..." -E.B.White

Purple Finch (Haemohous purpureus)

And the birds....oh the birds....coastal and marine birds such as loons, grebes, ducks, buffleheads, Surf Scooters,Canada geese, hawks, eagles, woodpeckers, flickers, jays, ravens, gulls, doves, juncos, other passerines ( isn't that a neat word?) like chicadees, and song sparrows, pine siskins, varied thrush. The list goes on.

"Winter changes into stone the water of heaven and the heart of man..." 

                                                                                       -Victor Hugo

Dogwood Street

Discovery Pier, looking towards Quadra Island and Discovery Passage

"The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps..." -C. Paolini

"I took a walk in the woods, and came out taller than the trees..."

                                                                         -Henry David Thoreau

"Going to the mountains is like going home..." -John Muir

"His old life lay behind in the mists, dark adventure lay in front..."

                                                    - J.R.R. Tolkien

"We need the tonic of wildness..........to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable."..

- H. D. Thoreau's (Walden: or, Life in the Woods)

"Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part..." -Hermann Broch

Photographs 2026 Campbell River, B.C. Canada  

 

FROST...

AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT (Robert Frost 1874-1963) excerpts

All out of doors looked darkly in at him through the thin frost, 

 almost in separate stars, that gathers on the pane in empty rooms.

What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze 

was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.

And scared the outer night, which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar of trees and crack of branches...

common things.........

Where now he sat, concerned with what he knew what,

A quiet light, and then not even that.

He consigned to the moon, such as she was,

So late-arising, to the broken moon

As better than the sun in any case

For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,

His icicles along the wall to keep;

And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt

Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, and eased his heavy breathing,

but still slept.

One aged man--one man---can't keep a house, a farm, a countryside,

it's thus he does it of a winter night.

Photographs 2026 "An Old Man's Winter Night" first published in 1916 

(Mountain Interval collection) by Robert Frost is in the public domain
 

WINTER with the BIRDS...

Hawk

"I am the Hawk. Share in the freedom I feel when I fly..."-John Denver

Finches

"Birds witness the most beautiful mornings in this world..." 

                        -Mehmet Murat Idan

Flicker suet duel

"No bird soars too high if he soars with its own wings..." -William Blake

winter Viburnum

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.” -Edith Sitwell

Finch

"Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark..."

 -Rabindranath Tagore
                                                    

"Frost grows on the window glass, forming patterns of lovely translucent geometry...

"Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition...

"Now it can build castles, and cities, and whole ice continents with your breath's vapour...

"In a few blinks you can see the winter fairies moving in...

Hunting mode

But first, you hear the crackle of their wings..." -Vera Nazarian

Grackle

"I pray this winter be gentle and kind..." -John Geddes

“At this season of the year, darkness is a more insistent thing than cold. The days are short as any dream.”- E.B.White

"Now is the time of fresh starts. This is the season that makes everything new..." -Vivian Swift

Towhee

"In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted..." 

-Mark Doty

Stellar Jays

"Flight – that’s the word. They beat in the air like wings, as if reluctant ever to touch the ground. I have observed them coming down, on a very cold day, near its end when the sky above me was still blue, in flakes great and wide as the palm of my hand. They were like immense moths winging down in the twilight, making the silence about me visible.”

                                                                           -Howard O'Hagan

Photographs 2026