Climate Change

Utah Over The Years (Part II)

/ Saikat / 1 Comment

It has been more than a year since I published a collection of images from Utah (here is the link to earlier blogpost if you are interested: Utah Over The Years (Part I) | Musings from North country).

There are too many curations, much dissection about how and when to release portfolios for maximum impact. This is an attempt at neither of the above except that I have some time in my hands to process a few images, and relive the experiences I have had over the years in some special corners of this place. They were made across all seasons, some alone and in contemplation, and others while running around and having a good time with friends (mostly Prajit). The images are again ordered chronologically for the sake of simplicity.


They say we see what we see and not what is out there, and what we write (or photograph) is what we know and not what we saw. On the other hand, I read this morning that ‘eyesight is also insight’ (from Rudolf Arnheim while elaborating on how visual perception works). Consider these images as hobbling towards an insight that I think truly never arrives, until one has spent a significant time of their life with the subject.

the Green River soothes
A soothing moment on the Green River in an otherwise mentally miserable trip in summer of 2020.

first Fall
My first time experiencing Fall in Utah in 2020, where much awe got into the way of seeing things as they are.

between the idea and reality
First sunset of the year 2021, when I was physically miserable in the frigid conditions but mentally satisfied, and beginning to nurture the idea of a new future. 

between the emotion and the response
Spring of 2022, when I saw the fresh lime greens on cottonwoods for the first time. Since other aspects of life were somewhat conducive to well-being, I could be more present rather than being in a state of constant awe, and hence escape.

between the conception and creation

falls the shadow

it is still green

on both sides of the river
A new (to me) location in Utah in 2023 that is quite popular with photographers but afforded solitude because it was summer.

off the highway
Witnessing the summer storm from the safety of the road and rental car; little did I know that the following summer I will be doing a night hike in the middle of one with Prajit.

second Fall
A fortunate turn of events led me to experience Fall in Utah again in 2023, this time with fog, rain, snow, and hail storms.

one of those days
that makes it worth the while (summer of 2024)

when you see it
Thanks to Prajit for drawing my attention to this scene, on our very hot and dry return hike from the overlook. Please check his version on his profile: Prajit Ravindran (@irockutah)  Instagram photos and Reels)

for the love of summer

taking refuge

/ Saikat / Leave a comment

the world is kin, but it is only on some days
when the cloud hangs low and thick, and any light
if at all, is diffused, that i am able to recognize it
where there were seventy three trilliums in June
now lies ninety five tamarack needles

all my life I have been warned of geography, do not step here, or mingle there
if it was indeed so dangerous, how could i live 
with snow, having been brought up with the sun
now history is another matter, yes that
would certainly kill, unless you strike first

if i have to constantly fight
over geography, and history is
bound to be our downfall
let us take respite from raping
each other’s stardust
and take refuge in arithmetic
when seventy three trilliums is being
replaced by ninety five tamarack needles, with more incoming
let us look directly at the stars, being plucked away in patient hurry

The stories we tell

/ Saikat / Leave a comment


The stories we tell are often the stories others want to hear.
It does not matter whether it pertains to photography or politics or chemistry or community.

Oftentimes, these stories we tell and the ones we want to hear are in harmony. In that case, it is important to just tell the story.

Other times, the storytelling makes us think that we have always wanted to hear that story.  We may not delve into the merits of the story because of how well the story was told.

Then there are times when the stories we should tell are not what we want to hear. 
In these times, it is important that we tell the story as it is. 
It is also important that we must hear the story as it is.
Any suggestions for how the story must be told is akin to censorship.
And if you do not tell the story, you will eventually forget that you had stories to tell.
And if you decide to not hear the story, you will eventually forget who you are.

Lower St. Regis

/ Saikat / Leave a comment

Lower St. Regis.

I work by this lake. Not too long ago, I used to live within walking distance of the lake. 

Needless to say that it has been a source of profound joy to walk along the shoreline. By myself, often with my dog, and camera, sometimes with students and colleagues. 

Here are some images made recently, during the Spring thaw. This time, more than any other period of the year, the lake is a dynamic, shape-shifting, animated being.

The end product is after all, just a product. But I hope it conveys the joy I felt in being at the shoreline. And if you are fortunate to have access to a water body, I hope you find the time to witness the periodic eccentricities of the seasons as well.

Breaking Up

Waiting

The Light That Breaks

Siblings For A Day

March of the Ice Stars

The Long Arm of the Sun

If There is Magic on the Planet…

Thoreau’s bookmark

Farewell to Winter

Tessellations in Time

/ Saikat / Leave a comment

“If your Lordship should consider that these observations may disgust or scandalize the learned, I earnestly beg your Lordship to regard them as private and to publish or destroy them as your Lordship sees fit.” – Anton van Leeuwenhoek

van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to study microbial organisms from his local pond in great detail in the 17th century. He developed his own macro camera aka the compound microscope! He was the first person to witness the blood flow in capillaries. All chaste subjects! But his colleagues egged him on to venture beyond the prevailing ethics of the time. He finally came around to the idea and examined his own ejaculation.

Life is rife with speculations, but especially so during his time. Some theories suggested that tiny pre-formed humans were nestled inside the sperm cells. Even Leeuwenhoek himself was skeptical about the ‘blasphemous’ experiments. Hence, the above disclaimer while sending the results to the Royal Society. Remember Galileo. Remember Giordano Bruno. 

But Leeuwenhoek was fortunate to be in good company. The same cannot be said of sperm cells. They have to fulfill their destiny in a foreign environment. While they do not have a pre-formed life, they do possess the precursors that can bring life in conjunction with their counterparts. Millions perish, but they need to be successful only once.

Twelve thousand years ago, I might have hoped to go for a nice swim in Death Valley and make a hearty meal out of some crustaceans, not too unlike the organisms studied by Leeuwenhoek. If I were observant enough now, I could have come across the chemical remnants of the species that once called this place a home. An abundance of moisture, and a low-lying basin with no outlet made for a flourishing environment in a sub-tropical climate. But the tide changes with time. A host of geological factors that led to increasingly arid climate choked the pluvial lakes on their own minerals. Now, on a clear and warm evening,  I walk among the neat, geometrically energy-efficient alkali crust left behind from ages of desiccation. 

And on rare years, as thunderstorms bring rain to the valley, I see the tessellations disappear in a salty slush. I see before me a memory of what once was. 

The next morning, I hike up and away from the tessellated hexagons. With the elevation as my guide, the intricate patterns in the salt flat, the alluvial fans from the dried-up lake bed, the residuum of a plethora of species that was, the dirt and dust and mud in the this Land of Little Rain– all coalesced into a green oval spermatozoon.

A camouflage of biological life, waiting with the elements. For the tide to turn again. For the Tüpippüh to flourish once more.

(adapted from original writing in 2021)

Bartering Hope for Meaning

/ Saikat / 1 Comment

Between the world with all of its offers, and slow mornings on the peat, the choice was always easy. I take Moose, the dog, for a short walk around the nearby wetland before I set up the camera, if at all. Usually, he romps about off leash when I am making images, oftentimes making interesting patterns in water (that I can possibly include in my image), or getting me curious about that flower he is sniffing. Being early in a “non- descript” wetland has its advantages of having no other bipeds to worry about. But no off leash running for him until his leg heals. After his walk, I put the leash around my ankle while I set up my tripod. Bad idea for sure! And yet, in all these weeks, he has not brought the tripod, and me, crashing down. 

On my right, the pink sky is giving way to blood orange. Soon the mist will turn to vapours of gold. The tamaracks will briefly adorn this gold, pretending it is Fall, while the temperatures very well indicate mid summer. The labradorite landscape to the left starts to catch hints of these yellows, here and there, with no apparent rhyme or reason, guided by the whims of the sun playing truant with the fog. Not so long ago, there was just one lilypad, the first of the season, floating under the watchful eyes of bygone pines as water- bugs frolic. And now there is a whole family. 

Edward Abbey said-  “….in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”

Things are a little different here, in boreal country, with a holistic bounty of flora and fauna. With a generous gift of light and water for every lilypad and black spruce, each stem of the bladderworts, the living organism grows out of the sphagnum with dignity and grace. The extreme mist of the wetlands is equaled by the extreme fellowship of boreal life-forms. Love flowers best in love.

I hear the splash of a beaver. Of course, Moose has heard it. I grab the leash and start walking away before he makes a dash towards the beaver. A short distance away, there is a lady slipper, blushing with the mirth of the pre-dawn pinks. What are the odds of seeing a lady slipper in my life? A narrow range of soil and climate nourishes them; even when I made a journey of ten thousand miles to this place, it wasn’t until my ninth year of exploring that I first heard of this orchid. I could never have hoped or planned my life to meet a lady slipper. I had hoped for “bigger and better things” with my life, and for a good part of my life, planned and pursued them. But I am glad the smaller, meaningful things never went away. Sure enough, it did require a nudge every now and then from a book’s wisdom, a poet’s word, a hiker’s fatigue, and whatever the thing that whiskey does. Now that I have met this lady slipper, and that this is an important meeting, mere hope and planning do not suffice anymore.  

Wendell Berry wrote- 

“Let us see that, without hope, we still are well. Let hopelessness

shrink us to our proper size.

Without it we are half as large

as yesterday, and the world

is twice as large. My small

place grows immense as I walk

upon it without hope.”

This wetland too, grows immense as I walk upon it without hope. As night turns to day on this sphagnum, I stand in silence before the venous pitcher plant. I learn about the flowering leatherleaf, I quiver with the budding lady slippers, I rejoice with the geese, I spin with the water-bugs by the daunting lily pads. Between the shallow shoreline and the point where the water suddenly gives away to depth, amidst the swirling galaxy of shy pine cones and the bold pollens, the pickerel weeds quivering in the sunlight- a mass of yellow and green in the blue expanse, a dispatch from Spring, that I am reading on this warm summer morning. I come close to all that is holy, and unholy, as the light, ever so lightly, fills me from horizon to horizon. 

I cannot stay here all day because there are lectures to be prepared, and assignments to be graded. I slowly walk back with Moose: he is dragging his feet while wagging his tail.While I know my day will be long, I know that I have enough sustenance. In the graveyard of my erstwhile hopes and dreams, I have gathered my meaning. 

And this is what I have gathered this spring and summer- three trilliums, a swallowtail on a foam flower, one lady slipper (because you should not have too much of a good thing), a pitcher flower and three grass pink orchestrating a ballad of bladderworts and sundews, a million black flies so that I learn to value them all, three dragonflies to give me a brief respite from the black flies, a clump of rose pogonias around a budding tamarack, thirteen blooming water lilies, and two more at the cusp of a bloom (because you can never have too much of a good thing), seven bog candles, and a path lined with goldenrods.

Epilogue

/ Saikat / Leave a comment

On this Earth Day, unlike many others- individuals to organizations, I have no agenda. Instead I would like to speak about April. 

April is November in reverse. November withdraws, April approaches. While November is frightening, April can but merely be threatening.  It was in April, six years back, when I made my first solo trip to the Adirondack mountains. Coming to this place without any friends, not just for fun, not for group hiking with a checklist, but just being there- helped convince me of the importance of not having any agenda. If love was to be truly loved, it was meant to be in this land in April.  Now it has been two years, two Aprils, that I have been living on this land. And I wish to spend the rest of my Aprils in this land, bereft of agenda. And any good, which I always wish and strive for- for the land or anyone else, is merely a by-product of my actions.

* The following, follows from ‘Seeking November’ https://saikatchakra.wordpress.com/2023/01/15/seeking-november/

I waited for one infinity
-with my black dog4

Aji e probhat e rabir kar
       Kemone poshilo praner por
Kemone poshilo guhar aadhare probhat-pakhir gaan
Na jani keno re eto din pore jagiya uthilo pran6

We are in the month of April. The light is strong, but the season is wrong.

I was waiting for the revolution to come down in sleet, another month for the blood to thicken- in the thin of things. Before I could summon the hatred necessary to inflict the necessary, the ice was out. As if that was not enough, the speckled alder budded. The fever broke. Pus oozed out of the maples.

I was older in November. I am younger in April. 
I found ballads in all the places I came baying for blood.

We cannot know both the position and momentum of a subatomic particle with perfect accuracy.7

As I am being recklessly restored, a student comes and declares the bird they have met.

Wail wail wail tremolo yodel hoot wail wail
Not one she’s seen.
One bird she’s met.
One.

April is for greeting each one anew.

The first trillium
before the meadow takes over.
The first loon that serenades you
The last shard of ice that this lake offers to you.

And what must we do with this bounty?

This, you must learn, that April too has no value
For it was given to you,
And you must give it away.
The brown, passing through, makes space for the green.

References

  1. Bloom by Emily Dickinson
  2. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
  3. O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
  4. adapted from Mahabharata
  5. adapted from The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling
  6. Nirjhorer Swapnobhongo by Rabindranath Thakur
  7. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle

Seeking November

/ Saikat / 1 Comment

To be a Flower, is profound Responsibility1 – if that is true, then November is a land without law. I do not know if I am seeking November, or if I would like it. But since it is here, all I can do is place myself in its path. Maybe seeking is, after all, about something not sought after.

They say that the winter snow is like a blanket of kindness that drapes the barren landscape. November, with odd snow days, does not try to even out its edges. Like a holly leaf near the bottom of the plants developing spikes, November dissuades grazers. The tourists dissipate; the locals hibernate until the snow is good enough for skiing. At this time, when nothing happens, where the land neither cares, nor cures, maybe it is easier to insert myself. 

I remember the time my father lost a tire in a marsh, and went back the next morning to find it: an ordinary day in an ordinary country- of little liberty and ample beauty. Here I am now, in another ordinary country, on another ordinary November day, losing myself in a marsh- and finding it, next morning. I see the last dodo that refused to see fear in a handful of dust2. I see Thomas Roe lowering his anchor in Surat. I see the dwindling lights of Samarkand, the burning ghats of Banaras. I see the retreat of the tundra, and the victory of the algae. 

As a light snow falls on this November night- I think of the little rights remaining, and the ample beauty still left: where continuity stands in the way of liberation, it is inevitable that a pine sapling takes foothold in the murky memory of spruce and leatherleaf and tamaracks and rose pogonias.

If all is stardust, why should one be better than another?

It is in this great leveller of seasons – with no flowers to sanctify, no black flies to vilify; in the browning heath, and a slightly frosted sedge, the indecisive hardening of sphagnum, anxious footprints of a coyote in the sudden thaw-lines in a slowly freezing lake, the tanning of the grass by the water’s edge, the bare aspens, the barely clinging beech leaves, the grey November light, unimpeded by greenery, walking deeper into the blood- clotted landscape- that rights and kinship, sans ownership, sans privilege, is facilitated.

In this light, at this time of the year, I can read the landscape better. And contribute a verse3. 

 I wait for one infinity
in the cold and bleak.
-with my black dog4

It is amazing how easy that is to do.
The leaves go first.
and then the shade
and then the loons
and then the sunshine
finally, it is November.

Telling it like it is- without the rage of monsoon, or the softness
of autumn.
without the-
summer fruit, or the spring flowers; 
when the snow is not yet deep, and there are no promises to keep.
November slips in
as if nothing ever happened.

I have been to the brothel of Autumn
and bartered beauty in maples
I saw your world, 
and held your light-
until I plucked warm stars 
out of the moonless November sky
and pinned them
to the tamaracks
I see you now. I see you now.
I walk in your shadow.

Here is the secret of the seasons-
where the river has died
and the black dog and I need to hide
there is not enough light.
there is not enough night.
-for all that is brown and living,
November offers nothing.

The first lover, and the last empire
had their share-
now it is time, for the brown lilypad
to summon you.
into this unholy peatland.
all night long, this November light
carries the Brown’s burden
The peaceful poems of the savage5

there is beauty in the aftermath of the war, 
where the worst is over, 
and the best is best–
kept at bay. 
there, you can hold-
the empty purpose, just you
and the world- 
ending the world. 

and then I wait
for one more infinity
-with my black dog4

References

  1. Bloom by Emily Dickinson
  2. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
  3. O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman
  4. Mahabharata
  5. The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling

The Way I See

/ Saikat / Leave a comment

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” – Rumi

Oftentimes the aesthetics of a foggy morning, or a tree draped in colourful foliage, or the both together, is so blinding that I have no choice but to accept defeat and take an image. I would never give up on those mornings. But I am learning to not have an instrument on me at all those times.

Other times, nostalgia takes over. Of a land where I was born but never knew too well to another land that I am learning, and learning it well enough to be buried in it. The home of now calls out to the past, and dwelling in what could have been takes ever so much away from present work.

Then there is anthropomorphization, especially when it has no business of being there. The mountain and the lake were here before any humans, and certainly before I stood here. And yet I cannot help but see through the spectacles of my own species. And so much gets lost in translation.

Sometimes, I like to highlight issues such as climate change, or advocate a new parcel of public land as wilderness through my work. And every time I wonder about the passionate conviction, and academic ego masquerading as wisdom.

All this, I presume I do, in the hopes of finding some meaning in my creations. And by extension making my life meaningful.

But far too often- creating, or the illusion of it, gets in the way of living. And I have barely started to live.

One day I shall not carry the mountain on my shoulders. It will be in my heart.

One day I shall not cross the bridge when it comes to it. I will be standing in the water.

On that day, I shall make the right image. That day I shall find the right words. 

And they will mean nothing.

A Day’s Risings

/ Saikat / 2 Comments

My morning started in a tangled web of light and lilypads, grass and pines, one that is weaved in a deceitful way, but also without any intent to deceive. It is easy to skip them and ride on to the “‘better views” or the “High Peaks”. Aldo Leopold noted in A Sand County Almanac- “Like ions shot from the sun, the week-enders radiate from every town, generating heat and friction as they go.”. Though not a peak bagger, I used to be one of those weekenders. But now I have time on my side. And I hope the tide is too.

It is pre-dawn in the bog, as if someone has scattered labradorite dust in the air, a spectacle that would rapidly disappear with the rising sun, a blue abscondee that vows to blanket the marsh again in another turn of the celestial rock. There is hardly a chance of anyone showing up here anytime soon, and so I let Moose, the dog, run off leash. It was a mistake! Moose sensed the presence of the geese before I heard their honk, and disappeared in the swamp. After a few minutes of frantic calling, he returned with a dejected look, covered in mud and sticks, while the geese soared in the first light of the day.

I decide to walk around the bog with Moose, now on a leash, and watch the early profusion of lilypads. Spring was on steroids, catalyzed by the intense heat over the past few days. It is supposed to rain later in the day. I have plans to hike a nearby mountain but I need to decide on bringing Moose. He is anxious about thunderstorms and I am anxious about losing him if he breaks the leash and runs away.

It is later in the day. We are hiking the mountain. We both decided to face our respective anxieties today. I can neither confirm nor deny whether the puppy eyes of abandonment while I was leaving for the hike was a factor in the decision. Fortunately, there are no signs of thunderstorms yet. Moose is happily running along the trail and playing with sticks. Soon, we reached the summit just as the clouds burst in the horizon.

Mountains and ravines stretching as far as the eyes can gleam, a downpour here, a piercing shaft of light there; how does a thunderstorm decide which range gets the growl, and who deserves the lightning, and who can bask in the fresh rain: what is the right word for a mix of petrichor and petrifying, and if there is one, I would wish upon each drop of the rain that it is not a noun, nor an adjective, but a verb, for I would want to actively partake in it.

This is a place to breathe, in the storm, and the calm, in the rain, and the sun; I have been to many breathtaking places but here, on this Adirondack mountain, I have come not to have my breath taken away, but to be able to breathe- slowly and freely.

And Moose thinks the same too- he did not run away. After he finished cooling off on a small puddle at the summit, he has been very busy with a stick of maple that he carried from the forest below. He did look up and around every time there was thunder. But there were more pressing matters- the maple stick will not chew itself.

These mountains, this dog, that distant rain, those lilies in the valley- they are my story. I photograph them, I write them for myself. I do not create in the hopes of a legacy or a revenue stream, though I would welcome both if they come my way. Too many years have passed in finding it. Mary Oliver wrote- “I ask you again: if you have not been enchanted by this adventure – your life- what would do for you?”. I am prepared to be enchanted by this place for a lifetime. And I only hope that I am allowed to be so.

The storm has now reached this mountain. Our mountain. We decide to head down, through the forest lush in all shades of green- “…even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these.” (Matthew 6:25-34), while the rain keeps company.