THE WHITE CAT...

 I met her, 19 years ago, after we moved in. She liked to swirl her feather duster tail around my feet. So pretty. I took her picture. Often. It was how I started to seriously get into photography. Because of her. 

White Cat came every day. She was my model. 

Her housemate, I had named “the Lion”, liked to follow her. Sometimes curious. From afar. From the fence. He just stared.

When I met their family, I discovered White Cat’s name was “Cordelia”. The Lion was “Patience”. It was a great way to meet friends...

I discovered White Cat liked to sleep in the grape vines. It was closer to the birds. She liked the birds. A lot. I used to find bird heads in the garden.

She brought me the head of a bird ( such a lovely gift). I took the hint, and started photographing birds. Live ones. 

And the occasional, slithering garter snake. I praised her. Patience still never left the fence. He just stared. I praised him for being so attentive.

Seasons changed. Years toddled by. Cordelia came over to visit in snow, rain, the heat of summer. Other cats followed her here. Patience still stared from his fence.

She no longer hung out in the grape vines, but opted to sit on the steps.

Cordelia got cuddles.

Hawks hunting in the yard, swooped low to catch prey. The hawk hooked her yellow talons over bare tree branches, to sit and watch Patience. 

Cordelia concerned herself with washing her pretty paws.

Cordelia always brought her friends. Now there are different cats who come by every day. Golden Mr. Spencer still shows up . To whisper greetings. 

In latter years, Cordelia and Patience could no longer get over the fence. I’d go to them, up on the hill. Through the slats, I’d see them nuzzling together, under the trees, in the long grass.

After all those years, Patience let me reach through to stroke his golden lion’s mane. Cordelia always by his side. We had many sweet words together, those gentle souls, and I.

But at the end of the day, they always looked to home.

Then it was only Cordelia who came to share a quiet moment in the day. She was a little slower, but still so sweet and lovely.  At last, she formally retired inside, to a warm home and the family who loved her.

But for 19 years, she was my muse, an inspiration.

I can still see her, when the light is low in the winter sun, and hear myself whispering: 

 “Hello, White Cat…what beautiful adventure shall we have today?”

 Photographs 2026  In memory of Cordelia ( Jan 2026 age of 19) 

                           and Patience ( March 2024 age of 18)

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