Little Bluff Cabin cam January 31 Eden Falls in the moonlight just after midnight this morning; and moon shadows along the Lost Valley Trail at about 3am today - BEAUTIFUL MOONLIT HIKE!!! - HAPPY WEDNESDAY TO YOU!

Journal updated on the 22nd

Our Canvas Gallery will be OPEN for walk-ins this Saturday (Feb. 3rd) 9am-5pm CLICK HERE for info and directions.

Print Of The Week Special (above) - click here

Print Of The Week Special "B" (below) - click here

01/01/24 HAPPY NEW YEAR! I'm going to attempt something that has eluded me for a long time - getting everything on this page CORRECT! All looks good to me right now so I'll end this post before I mess up and will check in later!

01/02/24 It was kinda cool (23) and breezy (wind chill 11) when the pups and I headed out at first light. There was a heavy frost covering the leaves in the yard so it was crunchy walking along. Once we got into the woods - and more leaves piles up on the trail - it was really crunchy, and a little slick here and there. But it felt great being out in such crisp air, at least for a little while.

I was determined to hike at least two laps each morning before work, three would be better. And soon we were already back to the cabin and a 1.1 mile lap completed.

The pups have been eating a lot of dirt lately, and this morning a lot of frozen dirt. In the past they’ve gradually created a hole or two in the from all the snacking at the same spots. One hole is almost a foot deep! We have no idea why. We’ve filled the holes in first with other dirt, then rocks - somehow those holes appeared again.

Last time the pups were at the beauty parlor (once or twice a year to get “summer cuts” going almost down to bare skin) the groomer mentioned that Wilson’s hair was quite different than Mia’s and that he must have some sort of nutritional deficiency in his diet. (or maybe he’s eating TOO much DIRT!). Must be some mineral in the dirt in those specific spots in the yard.

Lately they have started eating at a couple mounds of “fresh” dirt - seemed to be pushed up by a critter below - not the normal mole hills you see, but more of a mound just confined to one spot. As they were taking a few chunks out of the frozen dirt mount this morning I wondered maybe there’s some sort of organic material in the dirt from whatever critter mounded it up. There’s also a mound right on the trail at the historic homesite here - they almost always stop there for a snack.

The second pass through the yard was less crunchy - the sun had not quite appeared yet but it felt warmer and I think the thick layer of frost was right at the point of melting, but still kinda froze.

Crunch, crunch, crunch back into the woods for another lap.

There was a bit of color on the eastern horizon just before sunrise, and then minutes later the brilliant warm light flooded the forest all around. And the almost as if on cue the forest drew quiet - the air must have warmed just a tiny bit - enough to unfreeze the layer of frost so our footsteps were silent.

With the wind chill at 11 degrees each step I took brought frigid air into my hooded down jacket around my face - the faster I walked the more cold air got in - my face was probably beet red and when I tried to speak to the pups my words were slurred. Thank goodness I remembered the black covid mask in my pocket - putting it on made all the difference in the world!

By the time we made it to the cabin for lap #3 all the frost had melted and the sun was up and beaming brightly, which meant I was late for work!

Speaking of work, it turns out I had the gallery open 105 days in 2023 - oh my aching back! (doesn't count the days Pam's dad, Ron, filled in for me) That’s not only a RECORD for a year, but is probably more than ALL days I’ve ever had the gallery open combined before this year! The most we had on any single day was 31 people (there was a Newton County Tour Group - it was great to visit with all of them). Most days there were only a handful of folks - sometimes just one or two or three - maybe as many as a dozen scattered through the day. Peak time was between 10:30 and noon. Several days not a single person showed up - just me and the relaxing music drifting through the gallery.

Back in the good old days at the Cloudland Gallery we would only have the gallery open 3-4 days the entire year - and those were always Holiday Open Houses at Christmas, which included Pam’s mom’s homemade cookies that she’d spend a week baking before hand. After a few years of this we realized our sales were dropping, and most of the folks who attended were the same ones year after year. After an exhausting scientific research project we decided most of the customers were only coming for Judy’s COOKIES! And I didn’t blame them one bit - I probably had a dozen or more myself (OK, maybe 20 but whose counting!).

I’m hopeful to have the gallery open many more weekends this year, but that will probably be driven by how many folks show up. (And of course we are always open by appointment anytime Im home.) Maybe I need to get Judy to bake more cookies - but I’m afraid my waistline would not be able to handle that - I have pretty much ZERO control in that department!

01/03/24 Just came in tonight from a couple hikes up to the gallery and back - and oh my is it crackling cold and beautiful out! It’s so dark without any moon that the stars provide plenty of light to hike by. It’s one of those frigid nights when tiny particles of air freeze-dry and come floating down like miniature snowflakes. I can’t really see them (unless I turned on a light), but when I stop to gaze at the sparkling sky those tiny bits of frozen delight land on my face and I can feel them.

Orion, the mighty hunter constellation is rising early in the eastern sky and towers over everything. I spent some time taking photos of it several months ago in Colorado but haven’t spent any time back home at night with a camera in a while - hoping that will change soon.

Made a quick trip down to Boxley Valley late this afternoon to test a new old-style lens I’m thinking about. It’s a Voigtlander 40mm lens that’s all manual (you have to manually focus and adjust the aperture ring to change f-stops). It very small, but quite solid and made of only glass and metal - feels like a solid tool rather than a computer chip and plastic like most lenses these days.

First stop was at the Beechwood Cemetery just as the setting sun’s last rays where tossed across the ancient headstones. My spine is not fond of taking pictures the way I want to use this lens (without a tripod, bending over, sometimes crawling on my belly), but it’s the best way to bring out the character of this particular lens and I wanted to see how it worked. There are many small cemeteries in the Buffalo River area, indeed in many parts of the Ozarks. I old cemeteries at the edges of day when the light is best.

Well that light didn’t last very long! But before it got too dark I was able to spend a few minutes in another part of the valley shooting a group of distant trees, tangled grapevines, and some ripples in the river.

One funny note from my last stop at the river. I was being careful while taking pics of the ripples not to slip into the water and get my shoes wet, but I really did need to be just a little bit farther out into the river (this old-style lens I was using is a fixed focal length and doesn’t “zoom” - gotta use your feet to zoom this kind of lens (move closer to zoom in, farther away to zoom out). I was sure my rubber boots were sitting in the garage, but just for the fun of it I opened the side door to be sure. This is out of character for me - but there they were, hiding in the shadows behind the driver’s seat - yippie! (I don’t normally pack everything that I need.)

So I waded on in and spent the last part of the light out in the river trying to get this lens to do it’s thing, with me crouching down and bent over to the right angle to somehow record the visual music of the ripples...

MY FAVORITE image of the evening was this double-exposure of the ripples and trees in the elk pasture (done in-camera, the old fashioned way, just like we used to do with FILM oh so many moons ago...). As I begin a process of re-learning how to take pictures (after several years of not taking pictures much) I'm hopeful there will be a few images here and there you will like....

01/05/24 The National Weather service got it right on the button today! A giant blue cloud (on the radar) arrived at first light this morning - SNOW - YIPPIE COYOTE! I was in the woods when it first hit, and within minutes the ground was already covered with a thin white carpet. Larger flakes at first, but soon turned to smaller, finer snow. No wind at all, and now an hour later it’s still coming down pretty steady. This is a silent snowfall, and when I stopped to close my eyes and listen - there was nothing. Supposed to only get an inch today, maybe another inch or two over the weekend - I bet this first round will melt off quickly so I need to make an extra trip or two down to the cabin for java, warm chocolate, or tea. (Update - that inch of snow that's coming down on Mr. Wilson only lasted a few hours and was totally melted away by mid-afternoon - gotta get OUT and enjoy it while it's coming down sometimes!)

Yesterday morning I was up and out the door well before first light, hoping to get some nice magical light somewhere in Boxley. My finger tips were already turing white while I was sitting in the van waiting so I didn’t have to step outside to know how cold it was.

That great light never appeared - at least on my end of the valley. But I did get one colorful snapshot on the way home of the three oak crosses in the cemetery. Then as I headed UP the switchbacks out of the valley I ran into a layer of fog. I LOVE FOG! Though not while driving.

Things started to get interesting as I got closer to home (and onto our gravel road at a much slower pace with no traffic - much better conditions for driving in the fog!). At one point a ghost tree started to appear along the side of the road and I had to stop and take a snapshot or two. Soon there were three of them - and I got out my real camera and a tripod. Some scenes in life are like this - a single item will smile at you, then two, then your entire day is full of SMILES! So I spent a good bit of time with these smiling ghost trees as the fog moved in and out and around. Kind of like the snowfall in the forest this morning - just silence, and beauty. AND THEN the light began to change - hints of sunshine begin to show thru - the last pics of the day will probably be the best, though I've not looked at them yet...

The rest of my day was BACKUP day - we have about a dozen different hard drives in computers and stand-alone drives that are backed up on a regular schedule throughout the year. (Daily, weekly, monthly? Are you kidding - HECK NO!) We dodged another bullet in 2023 without a single hard drive failure. (LOTS of software and other hardware problems as usual, but no lost data.) Wilson and I ended yesterday late in the darkness as we shut off all the hard drives after successful backups - then had a delightful hike back through the woods as stars began to break through heavy cloud cover.

01/07/24 Laid a big goose egg today - not a single person to the gallery all day. But that was actually OK - I was able to get a few things done around the office that have been on my list for a long time - mostly small items that had deadlines (like rebates for stuff I’d bought in November ). Online rebates are so very nice these days - a couple I did actually read the purchase invoice I uploaded to their site and they auto-filled in the needed info from that - I didn’t have to fill out any forms!

01/08/24 I took a short hike just before dark along the Buffalo River Trail near Ponca yesterday. COLD and WET, but sometimes those conditions can make for interesting photos (though I didn't get any good ones on this trip). I was mostly out for a quick stroll to test some aging cold and wet weather clothing, and also to test a new type of camera setup (and trying to revive an acient camera backpack). I only stopped to work on one scene - which was along this same trail. It was raining and I was in tight quarters pushed up against a small tree. First order of business was to set up my tripod and an umbrella to cover the tripod, then get my camera out of the backpack and onto the tripod without it getting wet in the blowing rain (success!). Haven't seen the photos I took yet, but I did discover I needed a new rain jacket - I haven't bought any new outdoor clothing in a decade. It was great to get out and play in the woods!

This morning during my hike to work someone flipped a switch and almost instantly the air was filled with giant snowflakes drifting down. One of them landed on the bridge of my nose and Idecided to stop and stare at it until it melted. It was a really big flake and seemed to take forever to melt. Some of the things we loners do for entertainment! Supposed to be winter weather the rest of today - just dark and cool now with no snow on the ground.

01/10/24 Such A BEAUTIFUL MORNING TODAY - temps will be up into the 50's with clear skies and NO WIND. We've been pounded the past couple of days and nights with HOWLING, twisting, and FRIGID winds! (had to use a chain saw to cut my way out to the county road this morning on my way to deposit our reycle bags out on the highway for pickup) - a couple of dead trees toppled over - though they've been dead for a while as I cut into them there was an explosion of SWEETNESS from the pine tar from within - heavenly! These chilly conditions will be BALMY compared to the winter vortex that will hit over the weekend - actual temps below zero with wind hill expected to be 20 BELOW zero or more!

01/12/24 When I left the house this morning it was super foggy. Started to snow 30 minutes later - HUGE FLAKES - 1/2" on the ground in a hurry. Then the snow stopped and the sun came out. 'Tis a typical winter hour in Arkansas!

01/13/24 Some of the worst winds ever here yesterday and last night - so much so that many of our double-hung premium windows in the cabin were pushed in to an extent that they would not lock closed - I literally went arouund sealing the windows with a big roll of duck tape to keep the sub-zero wind-chill out of the house! THIS MORNING all is calm, collected, and BEAUTIFUL - not a whisper of wind and the 14-degree temp was quite nice to hike in - about 1/2" of fresh snow overnight too but the gravel road in from the highway is clear and dry. Blue skies and warm sunshine all day but a polar plunge arrives tonight.

01/14/24 Weekend Recap. Friday began with balmy temps and clear-blue skies with bright sunshine. At noon it began to snow, and we had an inch on the ground within an hour. By dark all the snow had already melted! Mostly clear starry skies as I made a couple of trips up to the gallery and back. Such beautiful dark skies.

I had the gallery open Saturday but only a handful of folks came by to visit - that was OK - lots of great conversation, and I sold enough to pay the heating bill. The temps had started to drop by early afternoon. One couple came by to pickup a custom-order METAL print, four foot wide of the Gaither Mountain Sunrise scene. I’ve always LOVED metal prints, but they do require an especially great image technically to begin with, and they are SO expensive! (about twice the price of a canvas print) There is also not only shipping from the lab (I can’t do metal myself), but also they have to build a thin wooden create to ship in, costing an extra $90 by itself, plus x-large shipping fees. I think the customers were quite happy though, and so was I.

Some serious snow appeared and began to pile up in a hurry - this was the first wave of the really severe Polar Plunge/Arctic Blast or whatever it was called (Actually this storm was named HEATHER, which was ironic because as the storm began my bride was talking with one of her best gal friends and painting buddies - HEATHER FROM CANADA!) Heather didn’t have much of any snow in her town - probably because she sent it all to us, haha!

By late night we’d had several inches of pretty small/fine snow on the ground, and the temp was headed down towards zero.

For some strange reason I decided to have the gallery OPEN on Sunday - seemed like the snow had calmed down and it was looking like a nice sunny day again. But OOPS, another wave of Heather arrived and it had another several inches of snow and very cold weather. Not surprising that for the second Sunday in a row no one came to visit the gallery. No problem - I remained - as always - way behind on chores so I had plenty to do.

01/15/24 It was THREE DEGREES BELOW ZERO when I suited up in my Alaska suit (an old snowmobile suit I got for a trip to Alaska in winter many years ago - it’s my ZERO suit which I only get to wear once or twice a year). I had planned to hike down and visit MiaWilson Falls on our lower trail - no doubt it would be frozen over with lots of colorful ICE.

It was slow-going as I bushwhacked through the thick brush - all downhill but lots of snow-covered limbs hitting me in the face. Looked like we had received about 8-12” of snow total.

When I arrived at the waterfall I found it almost totally iced up all the way across - and no real spot to stand in front of it for photos. So I found a spot on one end where I cold break through enough of the ice for me to slip past the ice wall, kind of tumbling into the cave behind the wall of ice. I MADE IT!

For some reason I had forgot my bike helmet that I would normally wear in a low-ceiling overhang like this, but figured my head was hard enough anyway. Once I duck-walked across to the middle of the ice wall I sat down and had a look around - it was SPLENDID! Ice flows like this will often be multicolored - blue, white, green, yellow - depending on what the water was like and how the light was shining. Actually it was still overcast so no sunshine, but everything had a blue cast along with the other colors.

I took a couple of quick snapshots with my phone, but was anxious to get out my real camera with a special ultra-wide angle lens I brought for it. SURPRISE - I brought the wrong lens! (I have two of these old-school tiny, but all-manual lenses - and both are the same size and unless I’m wearing my glasses I can’t tell them apart).

But no matter, I stood up as best I could and got really close to the ice and started to take pictures with the little lens. Only two shots then BATTERY EXHAUSTED flashed on the camera for a moment, and then it went dark - oh no! I didn’t have a backup battery and the frigid temp sapped all the juice from my main battery.

I sat back (the ceiling was too low to stand, I could only sit, kneel, or stand up and bend over, which was not good for my back). I decided to abort and left the ice cave and headed back to the cabin. Note to self - #1, make SURE you have the correct lens with you, especially when headed out to an ice cave at below zero! #2, bring your HELMET! #3, bring a BACKUP battery!

Maybe tomorrow...

01/16/24 Yesterday was the first day I recall that the temp never got UP to zero - it remained below zero all day. Once I got a text from my lovely bride down at the cabin and both the heat and the fireplace stopped working! Not good, especially on a National Holiday and when so many others in the area were probably having heat-related issues. Fortunately by the time I came to her rescue the heat was back on again. (and we let the gas fireplace rest for a while)

 

THIS MORNING was the coldest at 5.1 BELOW ZERO, so naturally I suited up once again and headed back out and down to the ice cave - clear-blue skies and I wanted to be inside the cave when the first rays of sunshine hit the ice.

CORRECT lens. CHECK.

BACKUP battery. CHECK.

BIKE HELMET. check.

OK I was good to go.

One funny note as I arrived back at the frozen waterfall/ice cave. The hole in the ice curtain I’d knocked out the day before had formed more ice and was once again a solid wall of ice. Oops. No matter - I used the spiked feet of my trusty tripod to knock out a new opening for me to slip through. When doing this sort of thing - with a steady stream of frigid water pouring down - I remove my camera backpack and toss it and the tripod through the hole so those items don’t catch on any ice.

I rolled on through the hole and once again found myself in an ice cathedral, only this time there was sunshine approaching!

 

In all my years I’ve never found a cure for my frozen fingertips. I’ve had Raynaud’s disease all my life, and no heated glove or mittens have helped. My finger tips will turn white then blue (lack of oxygen) and I lose feeling, and/or am in a great deal of pain (more on this at a later date). Anyway I can only setup and operate my camera gear with my bare hands, and at -5.1 degrees it doesn’t take long for the freeze to take a toll on them.

I was able to set up and get a few shots with my new lens, grabbing onto a pair of chemical hand warmers for a few seconds in my pockets between shots to keep warm blood flowing. I ended up mostly shooting with a couple of other lenses that I’d also brought with me, including a special 70-200 macro lens. Besides my frozen fingertips the biggest issue I had was operating while bent over, but I managed to shoot a few nice scenes.

 

At one point I stopped shooting and just crawled around a bit without the camera to give myself a little time to soak in all the beauty. The sun had appeared which immediately started melting the wall of ice - even though it was still below zero!

And then a shaft of sunshine hit me right in the face. I looked up and saw an amazing scene - brilliant beams were coming in through a crack in the ice and shafts of warm sunshine flooded the cave. QUICK - where’s my gosh-darn CAMERA!?

I crawled back and grabbed my camera and tripod and set up as fast as I could, then took a few frantic shots as the sun beams quickly disappeared. It all happened about that fast and the light drew silent again. I spent the next ten minutes checking each opening in the ice wall for sunbeams but never did get any more. No matter, I got ONE good frame of this event and it was worth all the pain and suffering.

Much of my body was numb as I crawled back to the exit hole and rolled out through the shower of freezing water. It was all uphill back to the cabin - which was a GOOD thing since it produced some heat inside my suit to help warm myself up.

Took me a few minutes to remove all of my camera and snowmobile gear back in the mud room, but when my bride took one look at me she broke out laughing, and then a sound of concern. Turns out there was a ten-inch icicle sticking out the top of my bike helmet!!! I frequently bonked into the ceiling while back in the cave but never realized I’d brought some of it back with me, haha... (later on while in the shower I discovered a wound on the top of my head - good thing I have a hard head...)

01/18/24 The following is a snippet from an online blog I follow - THE ONLINE PHOTOGRAPHER by Mike Johnston (https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html). He sums up a lot of what I go through, although the first part is about him driving somewhere without his camera - or the time to stop and take pictures, Finger Lakes Region in upstate New York.

All day long I drove through the most beautiful light. The skies cleared and clouded again over and over, the clouds were ever-changing, the snows came and went, the wet roads reflected the almost heavenly brightness of the skies. I didn't have my camera with me and I had no time to stop to take pictures, but just looking was almost as good. I saw picture after picture. My brain would pick the spots where I imagined compositions would come together—over there—I'd park there and walk up to that spot. I like photographing more, but simply looking at the world with a photographer's eye is something I enjoy almost as much.

Good pictures for me don't come steadily. I'm not able to force the world to yield a treasure on demand just because I've got my gear with me and I'm out looking. But when the pictures are there, sometimes they seem to be all over the place. They fall out of the world and come tumbling at you. Based on long experience, I would guess that, had I been photographing yesterday, I would have gotten maybe five really good shots and another three or four pretty good ones, from twenty or thirty attempts. Of course you have to see them as pictures before you actually know. But yesterday was a jackpot day. Or would have been, if I'd had my camera along and time to stop and use it. A few of the pictures are still in my head.

01/22/24 My Christmas present arrived yesterday from my lovely bride - when she asked a month ago what I wanted for Christmas I said “Shane for a day!” Shane is a long-time professional electrician and literally can do just about anything. First time I met him years ago he came to Cloudland and spent almost eight hours AT NIGHT and on into the early morning hours fixing a problem we’d had there for a long time. I tried many different fixes over the years but with zero success. I explained to Shane what might work but it seemed impossible, he said WHY NOT! I won’t go into the details, but 12 hours later the problem was FIXED! (It was a very cold night and we spent much of those hours down in a ditch in the darkness - I helped, a little.)

Anyway, so yesterday Shane left his house at 4:30 am and arrived at our gallery about 6am. I had a long list of mostly minor but nagging things at the gallery and at the cabin that needed tweaking, fixing, installed, or replaced. Only time I saw him idle was for a quick 15-minute lunch break. He’s a BEAST! So THANKS Shane for doing what you do, and thanks to Cindy for turning him loose for the day!

Several days ago I attempted to get a photo that I’ve wanted to get for a couple of years - a particular scene covered with snow and ice. Conditions were ripe late last week with nearly a foot of snow on the ground and more than a week below freezing. Things kept getting in the way, but finally I was able to suit up and head out. Not a long drive, nor even a long hike, but it would be rather difficult, and even worse considering all the ice and snow.

I’ve always loved hiking in Arkansas in the winter - mostly it’s just the naked forest without bugs or snakes or other people, and so many more open views. Not much color though, so I’ve not spent much time taking pictures here in the winter - although sunrises and sunsets can be EPIC! I’d not been on a serious photo hike in the dead of winter in a long while, and while I had pared my camera equipment down to on light camera and a tiny lens (and no tripod), my camera backpack seemed heavy. That was because I seemed to pack so many emergency items for any issue I could think up that might go wrong.

I started out through the woods in the snow, which by this time had a crusty top layer. Past a tall and spectacular waterfall I went - we’ve all seen a gazillion frozen waterfall photos this past week so I didn’t bother to detour over to it. I kept inching my way along the top edge of this canyon, being very careful not to slip or slide. The older I get the wiser I have become in such situations. In my youth I probably would have just strapped on a pair of x-country skis and plowed right on through, but these days I prefer to maintain control of my body as much as possible.

Next I headed down a VERY STEEP SLOPE, almost as steep as it’s possible to have without it being a bluff. The old horse trail I was following switchbacked left and right and down, down, down. Kind of reminded me of the top of the ice-covered trail in the Grand Canyon I hiked down last March. Although for some reason this current one felt a lot worse, steeper, more icy perhaps? Or maybe it was just ME that was not quite as sure of myself?

At some point I slipped and fell into the hillside (a move I practice all the time - fall TOWARDS the hillside not AWAY from it - and over a cliff). As I gathered myself I was sliding down the slope a little - and I realized the one of the ice grippers I was wearing on my boots had come OFF - oh that’s NOT GOOD! I flopped around like a beached whale for a couple of minutes to reattach it and then set up on the ground to reevaluate my situation. It’s then that I realized those ice grippers I was wearing were not my GOOD ones, and I probably should not be on that steep icy hillside with them! I did have another set of grippers - SPIKES actually - that could handle most anything, but those were reserved for the really BAD part of the trip that I knew was ahead - I was only about half way to my destination.

I realized I was just going to make a call that I’d gotten cold feet (which they were), abort the mission, turn around and go back home. Like I said - older and a little wiser. I think I made the right choice. No photo that I’ve wanted for so long still, but perhaps there will be another frozen winter day I can try again - wearing the proper ice grippers!

Morel of the story - sometiimes getting cold feet and turning back might just save your life...

Below is our driveway this morning - talk about SLICK ICE!