Escape to the Ridge

Posted by dkrashb on June 13, 2013

The sun creeps low in the sky, beaming through the trees as we hike

I managed to go to Stringer’s Ridge twice in the same week. Not just in the same week, actually. In 2 days. It started on a whim. I can see the Stringer’s Ridge overlook from my office window. I have been watching (through binoculars) the progress on the overlook. One day, I peered through the binoculars long and hard and thought, “I think they’re done!”

That was the day, being one of the 2 work days in a week that we don’t have a prescribed cuisine, I thought, “we should have a picnic dinner at the overlook.” And so it went. We packed up Tisen’s dinner, threw a couple of beverages in a day pack, and headed to the grocery store to pick up sandwiches and cookies.

A coniferous tree glows yellow in the light from the setting sun amongst greener brethren

We drove up to the overlook as the sun worked its way toward the horizon. We managed to eat with a spectacular view followed by a nice walk through the woods as the sun continued to set. We made it back to the car before dark feeling pretty darn good (less the bug bites).

It was so nice to get out on a Monday evening, I thought we might make a habit of it (yet to be seen).

Tisen is a great trail dog–always checking to make sure Mommy is coming if he gets too far ahead

The next day, the cleaning folks were coming and I needed a place to work where it was quiet. The cleaning crew didn’t arrive until nearly lunch. I managed to get me and Tisen out without interrupting the conference call I was on. This is perhaps one of the most amazing things about technology today. I think back to when I started my first job and felt really special because I had a terminal and a phone on my desk. Flex time meant you could set your start time between 7-9AM and leave 8.5-9 hours later, depending on how long you took for lunch.

I cannot imagine what our department head back then (who thought email could only be used to goof off) would think of a work world where you can be in the middle of a meeting, pack up your office and your dog, head down to your car, start up your own wireless network, get back online and fully participate in the call without anyone knowing you just changed location.

Tisen’s wallow

On another whim, once I got setup in the car, I headed back to Stringer’s Ridge. I drove up and parked in a shady spot, sitting in the car until the meeting ended. Then, instead of spending lunch sitting in front of my laptop working, I took Tisen for a walk through the woods. I found it doubly refreshing to get out in the woods in the middle of the day. Tisen, I think, found it rather stifling. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to bring him water. The first puddle we found on the trail quickly became a mud bath for Tisen who sank into it like a wallowing pig.

He made it back just fine, thankfully, just muddy.

I know I posted similar shots yesterday, but the view from the overlook is pretty cool

To Sunset

Posted by dkrashb on June 11, 2013

The fast-fading glow in the Eastern sky

No energy. That’s me tonight. I’ve barely been able to keep my eyes open since about 8PM. I hope this doesn’t mean I’ve caught something (again). It’s just as likely Tisen is the cause. He is back to scratching all night again. I feel like I did when we last had a puppy–being awakened every hour or so and finally settling down for the best sleep after taking our boy out to go potty in the wee hours of the morning, just before the alarm would go off.

The park fading into shadows

Except there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. We are trying a drug we’ve tried before that helped. We’re trying a new dose because it made him sick the last time we tried it. We’ll see if giving him less helps without the side effects. I feel guilty about this. At some point I wonder how much is about my need to sleep vs ending my dog’s suffering? Should I really be trying to give him a medication that made him sick? And which is worse for him? Scratching and chewing himself until he draws blood or a drug that makes him vomit and have diarrhea? Can’t we have a nice easy route to ending his allergies without side effects?

Only gray is left to the East

In the meantime, I’m nodding off over the keyboard yet again and wanting nothing more than a good night’s sleep tonight. I look at these photos of sunset and think that’s an apt way to describe how I feel at the moment–like the light is fading fast. But, the sun will rise again in the morning and I’ll be blinking, squinting, and, with much resistance, dragging myself back out of bed regardless of how much or how little I sleep.

A bright glow remains in the West

Going to be is far easier. Here’s to sunset!

One final shot of the glowing trail the sun has left behind

Second Look

Posted by dkrashb on June 8, 2013

Tisen demonstrating he really does know how to pose

Getting from the first overlook at Cloudland Canyon to the second overlook is an easy walk. The path is mostly asphalt and smooth and easy. Since we’ve had a very late spring here, we even got to enjoy some late-blooming Hawthorn trees along the way.

I tried to get Tisen to pose for me as we made our way down the trail. I need to do some more intentional dog training with him. He’s really quite easy to train, but I have found I am very happy with our relatively casual relationship vs needing him to walk exactly where I want or constantly work to figure out my next command. However, whenever Pat is walking him and I want to take his picture, I wish I had taught him a “pose” command.

For a second I thought I shot this at 70mm or so, but it was shot at 24mm–the other side of the gorge is close!

I would like to be able to say, “Tisen, Pose!” and have him turn towards me, doing something cute like stick out his tongue and tilt his head or pick up his favorite toy, and then freeze. As it is, Tisen walks down the path ahead of me with daddy. I call to them to stop. Pat, my accommodating husband, stops, turns, smiles and waits. Tisen, however, continues to face the opposite direction.

Looking out of the canyon and into lookout valley

I, of course, call Tisen to try to get him to turn around. He invariably turns around, looks excited that I want to see him with his tail wagging like mad, and then tries to walk over to me. Pat then tries to get him to come back to him to keep him in position. This, predictably, causes Tisen to turn back around so his back is facing me once more. And so it goes in this constant tug-of-war trying to get Tisen to both face me and stop moving.

Another view of the canyon

Every once in a while, Tisen will pause just long enough for me to get a rapid-fire series of shots off. Usually, in a series of 8 shots, I’m lucky if he’s holding still in one of them. The rest will have various parts of his head blurred. On this particular walk, he managed to pause for me in near perfect position in a puddle of Hawthorn blossoms. He looks so happy; it makes me smile.

Vertical version

On the way to the second overlook, I was teased by a Pine Warbler who, I believe, was following just behind me, singing enough bars to get me to get my long lens in place and then fly just out of sight when I turned around to photograph him. This happens a lot when I happen to have a camera with a long lens on it handy. It’s one of the reasons I often leave the long lens at home.

The second Overlook is my favorite. You can see down both sides of the gorge and off into the distance between the peaks that surround the canyon. The sky usually does interesting things as a bonus–even in mid-afternoon.

Tisen almost walking out of the frame

Final Point

Posted by dkrashb on June 1, 2013

Moccasin Bend one last time

I have a few photos from Point Park to wrap up on. I shot one last look from the overlook with my DSLR vs a panoramic on the iPhone (which I have rapidly become addicted to). With my 24-70mm lens on the camera, this was as wide as I could go. If I would have stepped back a few feet, I might have been able to get all of the Tennessee River into the frame as it winds its way around Moccasin Bend. But then I would have had more crap in the foreground. Perhaps I will through my 17-35mm lens on the next time we go up to Point Park.

After enjoying the view from Ochs Museum overlook, we headed back up the slightly more rugged trail than the asphalt trail that circles the main portion of the park. Tisen didn’t seem to want to leave the cool shade next to Ochs museum as we made our way back. It wasn’t that hot out, but perhaps it feels warmer to someone wearing fur?

Tisen trying to go the wrong way

The trail heads uphill on the way back. When you walk down it, you don’t realize you’re going downhill. Yet, when you walk back up it, you definitely do notice the uphill. Fortunately, the entire path is well-shaded so even our hot dog didn’t overcook.

As we got closer to the asphalt paved and landscaped part of the park, I noticed a crooked tree highlighted in a beam of bright sunlight. It was perched on the sharp edge of a fallen rock and growing with a 90 degree bend in the middle of its trunk. I had a sudden vision of the rock having once been part of the mountain and this tree deciding it would conquer this rock some day as it spread its roots into every crack and crevice. I imagined this bent and tiny tree feeling victorious for having brought down the rock after so many years of patient growing. I wonder if a tree or water dripping is faster when it comes to carving off chunks of stone cliffs?

The victorious tree

We made it safely back to the asphalt path that circles the landscaped part of the park. We walked slowly around the park, allowing Tisen to sniff and explore as far as his leash would reach. He paused to heed the call of nature more times than seemed physically possible, but you know how male dogs are about marking new territory.

As we waited, a female dog came over with her humans to say hello. After a little doggy socialization, we headed back toward the park entrance. Along the way, I spotted Sunset Rock off in the distance through the trees, looking much further away than I remembered. I smiled sheepishly since I had wanted to walk all the way to Sunset Rock, believing it to be less than a mile from Point Park. Pat gave me a side-ways glance that said, “Less than a mile, huh?”

Random Musings

Posted by dkrashb on May 30, 2013

Pat and Tisen take a turn posing for me amongst a crowd on the way to the point

I don’t have much more to say about Point Park, but I don’t have any other photos, so this is a disconnected blog post–the text has nothing to do with the photos.

A colleague of mine lost his father on Tuesday. His father was relatively young and presumably healthy–he died quite unexpectedly of an aneurism. It’s funny how such a tragedy in someone else’s family can feel like my own tragedy. I guess I can make anything about me.

Up close, I managed to get Tisen looking my way

But this is how my mind works: person dies. Did person who died have a fulfilling life? Were they ready to die? Did they feel like they had done the things they wanted to do in their lifetime? My gosh. I’m going to die. I am not immortal. I have so many things I want to do before my life ends. This person died without warning or symptoms of anything. What if I just dropped dead tomorrow? My bucket list would be left behind, ridiculous in its length.

These moments always serve as a reminder that I’m rapidly approaching the age at which my mother was diagnosed with cancer. On one hand, I am confident I do not have cancer and that I will not have cancer. On the other hand, I find myself puzzled by the notion of finding a balance point between experiencing everything life has to offer and having things like health insurance. In the event I am wrong that I will not have cancer, it would be really helpful to have insurance. And income. Two very helpful things if faced with a potentially life-threatening disease.

I couldn’t choose between the previous shot and this one–Tisen is looking so cute

But if you spend all your time and energy worrying about having things like health insurance and income to cover you and your family in the event you have a life-threatening illness, isn’t it just possible that you create that illness? I mean, the stress and worry and long work hours. Do they not increase the probability of what you most want to avoid coming to fruition?

The back wall of the Ochs Museum at the point looks a little prison-like

On the other hand, if you throw caution to the wind, pursue your dreams and live hand to mouth with no health insurance, what happens then? And it’s not just me I worry about. What if my husband gets sick or my dog? There would be nothing worse than having to watch my dog suffer without being able to do anything for him. Or having to put him down solely because I couldn’t afford to treat what ailed him.

These are the kinds of choices I dread. So, instead, I go to work each morning and I enjoy the other freedoms that comes from having an income and health insurance. But, some days I wonder if a) I am kidding myself about the level of security I really have–it could all go away in an instant, and b) if I were on my death bed, would I regret not having health insurance or not having traveled the continent more?

I was a little too busy framing the foreground rocks to get Moccasin Bend framed properly

Train Tracks

Posted by dkrashb on May 25, 2013

My boys and Twiggy hanging out on the tracks Hipstomatic style

Chattanooga became a household name in 1941 when the Chattanooga Choo Choo song topped the record charts. The first train to be called the Chattanooga Choo Choo went from Cincinnati to Chattanooga in 1880. It strikes me as vaguely appropriate that both the Choo Choo and I came from Ohio, although I started my journey 2 hours further North.

What surprises me, however, is that the train that made Chattanooga so famous is no longer in operation. I guess it’s not too much of a surprise–after all, most passenger trains have gone by the wayside in the US. In fact, I looked into what were the options for taking a train to Portland, Oregon from Chattanooga. The closest train starts in Atlanta, goes up the East coast, across the Northern US through Chicago, up to Glacier National Park in Montana, and over to the West coast, going through Spokane, Washington and heading down to Portland via Seattle.

Looking down the tracks using HDR Pro, the brilliance of the azaleas just barely show up in the distance

Pat and I took the train from Portland to Glacier a couple years ago. It took about 14 hours. To get all the way from Atlanta to Portland takes about 8 days. As fun as traveling across the country by train sounds, 8 days of travel pretty much eats up an entire vacation.

It’s a bummer that we don’t have better public transportation here–the trains are one of the things that makes traveling around Europe so easy. But, our penchant for driving seems to have made a passenger railway unsustainable.

The azaleas up close are so bright I had to pull down the saturation to keep it from hurting my eyes (HDR Pro app)

As for the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the last train left the terminal in 1970. The Chattanooga Choo Choo ran for 90 years from 1880 to 1970. 61 years after its first run, it was made famous by a WWII era song that was so famous, even I know the song in spite of the fact that I was born 26 years after the song hit the charts. Even today, 72 years after the song made the train famous, I meet people from halfway around the world who are 20 years younger than me who have also heard the song. The song was apparently easier to sustain than the train.

In spite of the demise of the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the former train station remains an attraction for visitors to the area. I’ve stopped in there once, but some day I’ll get over there with my DSLR and do a blog post on the resort and museum that’s been erected there.

Twiggy and Tisen just spotted a cat up on the walkway by the building

In the meantime, the best I have to offer are some iPhone shots of some of the vestigial tracks in the neighborhood. There are still many active tracks in the area–the trains still serve industry–but in the downtown area, the tracks are left only as reminders of the past.

Tisen and Twiggy enjoyed their walk around the tracks–especially when they discovered a cat hiding out under the shrubs. The building is an office building now–I don’t know the history of it, but I appreciated the azaleas.

One last look down the tracks in Hipstomatic’s tintype effect

Beer Over Dirt

Posted by dkrashb on May 22, 2013

My how the scene has changed

Beer Over Dirt is a funny name for a festival. If you happened to know that every spring the Wine Over Water event is held on the Walnut Street Bridge and if you happened to know that Beer Over Dirt is held in Renaissance Park on the ground, you might find it ha-ha-funny instead of strange-funny.

After all, we usually think of beer as being the humbler drink of the two. Plus, some people seem to think drinking beer is a more manly activity than drinking wine. So, if you’re going to start an annual beer tasting festival, it’s probably a good idea to give it a name that is both humorous and manly sounding so as not to alienate any possible participants.

Smells that make the dogs want to stay for the beer tasting

I was busy getting ready to leave for a conference the next day, so we didn’t get to go to the event. But, we did walk through the park while the organizers were getting set up.

It’s interesting to watch the transformation of the park as they set up for an event. Encountering the sudden invasion of the sidewalk under the ramp over the wetland by a row of plastic port-a-potties was our first tip-off that something was going down that night.

Booths begin to dot the landscape in Renaissance Park

Next, the grass circle had orange plastic fencing all the way around it. We later learned it was roped off because they set up an agility course for dogs. Had we known that sooner, I might have made time to go down to the event–I would have loved to see what Twiggy and Tisen would do in an agility course! Twiggy probably would have pounced on the tunnel and tried to eat it while Tisen tried to play tug-o-war with it. In any case, it could have been fun.

A drive-in stage appears on the sidewalk

The next clue was the appearance of canopies for vendors’ booths along the sidewalk and in the picnic area of the park. One vendor walked back and forth with a dog following faithfully at her heels with no leash. The law says dogs have to be leashed in the park, but I’ve seen dogs on leashes who were far more out of control than this dog. That dog clearly thought following his owner back and forth was the most interesting and important thing in the world–he didn’t even look at Tisen or Twiggy.

Twiggy looking her cool and regal self

Finally, the giant semi with a stage and sound system pulled up on the sidewalk removed any doubt we might have had at that point that there was going to be some kind of party along the river. For $25 you could taste beer for 4 hours, enjoy a live band, and take your dog through an agility course. It was all to raise money for a conservancy project for a local creek that feeds into the Tennessee River, but I wasn’t willing to spend $50 for us to run down for ½ an hour with the dogs.

Back home, Tisen prioritizes a scratch from Daddy over posing for Mommy

The Etiquette of Dog Days

Posted by dkrashb on May 21, 2013

Twiggy keeping cool but not still

When I was a child, I preferred to wear dresses. My mother was constantly trying to get me to wear pants, but I was insistent on my own sense of fashion. I have no recollection as to why I would have wanted to wear dresses or even that I did, but I know that all the photos of me up until I was in about the first grade prove my mother’s story.

In most of these photos, I have skinned knees or knees marked with the white residue of a white-painted fence we used to climb. I my memory, I spent most of my time outdoors running around, frequently falling or managing to bang myself up in other ways.

Tisen enjoying a rub

This was not, however, the concern my mother had with me wearing dresses. Rather, it was the constant battle she had going on in her head between wanting to preserve my childhood innocence and wanting to help me learn to conform to some social norms. While I’m sure someone somewhere has written a book that tells parents when girls should stop being allowed to run around climbing on things when they’re wearing a dress, my mother hadn’t read it. Even if she had, she might not have agreed on the cutoff point.

In any case, eventually my mother did convert me to wearing pants. Had I been born a generation or so earlier, she might have made me stop climbing trees and fences and kept me in dresses. I feel pretty fortunate that pants afforded me freedoms that might otherwise have been denied to me.

Twiggy does not wear dresses or pants. She goes out in fur every day of the year, although her parents were kind enough to have her coat trimmed for her as the temperature rose, she otherwise dresses the same every day. As a dog, we humans don’t expect her to have adopted our own hang ups about sitting primly with ankles crossed. Yet, Twiggy frequently does sit that way. She assumes a sphinx pose, crosses her front pays, and holds her head in a pose that makes you think she might be Cleopatra reincarnated. She truly is regal.

Tisen takes Duck to the other side of the room

But the other day, when our inside temperature was pushing 80 (yes, I am trying to make it to June with no A/C), she had no qualms or self-consciousness about flopping down on the floor in as unladylike a pose as imaginable. And I found it so amusing that I had no qualms about taking a few photos (using the Camera! app on the iPhone) to share with you.

Tisen, who was happy to opt for a belly rub when Daddy was available, didn’t seem quite as comfortable with the whole belly-twist pose Twiggy assumed. Although, I don’t know how much of his shyness came from my with the camera vs Twiggy sprawling across the floor. All I know is Tisen took Duck and moved to the other side of the room.

Tisen decides to hang out with Duck. Photography note: backlight seems to create a very hazy effect with the iPhone

Backup Plan

Posted by dkrashb on May 19, 2013

Book ends

Tisen is a one-human kind of guy. Or, at least, he has trouble showing affection for more than one person at a time.

Twiggy, on the other hand, seems to treat everyone as her new best friend. Her dad commented that she didn’t even seem to care when they went out of town,–she didn’t miss them. I laughed and said, “It’s not that she doesn’t miss you, it’s just that she always has a backup plan.”

As I watched Tisen stress over whether he was losing out on any portion of affection that he felt was his while Twiggy lied contentedly on the floor, I suddenly wondered if Tisen was living whole-heartedly while Twiggy lived with one foot out.

Book ends looking the other way

Let’s face it–Tisen is all-in. He’s put everything he’s got into me. I am the the center of his universe and if I’m gone, or even if I’m there but paying attention to something else, he feels anxious. While this seems extreme and dysfunctional, at the same time, when I leave and come home again, Tisen goes nuts. He experiences a euphoria of joy that his wagging tail cannot keep up with. He throws his body against the couch and runs along it, thumping his tail down the length of it. He grabs a toy and is so joyous, he cannot stand still. Eventually, having burnt off the burst of energy that comes with me returning home, he climbs into my lap and has trouble deciding if giving me kisses or flopping over for a belly rub is his first priority.

Twiggy’s demonstration of how interesting she finds me

Twiggy, on the other hand, looks up when I come home and wags her tail a few times. When I sit on the sofa, she stands, stretches, and then climbs next to me and demands to be petted. She occasionally looks curiously at Tisen, as if she’s trying to make sense of his antics. I am just a friend that passes in and out of her life periodically. But, her reaction is not far from her reaction to her parents coming home from a trip.

This seems to be the core difference between having a backup plan vs being all-in. If you have a back-up plan, you don’t have to worry about what happens if the current situation changes. If you don’t, when you’re all-in, when things go your way, it’s a huge celebration. But when things don’t, it’s conversely depressing.

I remember playing Canasta with my family once when I had an incredible hand. I was ready to lay down my entire hand and win the game except for one card. I just needed a good draw on my next hand to be able to go out and win. I started sweating waiting for me next turn–if someone else went out first I was done. I had no backup plan.

And boy, when I won, I felt like I’d just won the lottery!

Bridges and Blades

Posted by dkrashb on May 14, 2013

Market St Bridge with grass foreground in Renaissance Park

The weather seems to be as confused as ever, but at least we had fabulous weather today–the kind of weather that reminded me of a late September day in Columbus. The kind of day where, after months of heat and humidity, you take a deep breath and think, “Ahh.” Interestingly, it just isn’t quite as refreshing when everyone is waiting for spring and it’s acting more like fall.

A pair of budding something shooting above the juvenile grasses

At least the flowers had finally reached the same point they were at by the end of March last year. I figured it was a good time to get out with the camera. Since I was walking Tisen, I opted to just take my favorite walking-around-lens, the 24-70mm. It’s a nice range for shooting both landscape and getting pretty tight when close to the subject. It does not, however, do well at macro. That I will have to save for another day.

Closer to out-of-the-camera than the earlier image. I really like the tree on the right

It gets a little old shooting landscape in the same 100 yards or so along the riverfront. While I’m sure there are an infinite number of angles to take, at some point, I just get bored.

Glowing blades of gras

I decided to try for some new angle on the Market St bridge. It was about then that I discovered a bunch of grass that had been allowed to grow to it’s maximum height and was in the middle of going to seed. I thought maybe it would make an interesting foreground for the bridge. It wasn’t quite as interesting as I hoped, but making some extreme adjustments in Aperture helped at a little pop, at least.

I had a hard time choosing between the grass images–I might like this one best

Tisen had other subjects in mind. He quickly pulled me across the walkway towards some fresh green grasses that, for a long time, I thought was bamboo. I’ve been told by someone who is much better with plants than I am that they aren’t bamboo at all but are a native grass in Tennessee. I will take their word for it.

More of the Market St Bridge

On this particular day, the sun was hitting them at a really interesting angle that made them turn into glowing blades of green. They were being backlit by an early evening sun. I couldn’t help but take about 100 images of these glowing blades. While I did crank up the volume slightly in Aperture on the contrast between the background and the blades of grass, they really looked pretty much like this in person.

One last look at the grass

Tisen was not, it turned out, impressed by the blades of grass for their aesthetic appeal. He sees them as a superior communication medium. He can mark along the clumps of grass and get both height an breadth that cannot be achieved with tree trunks or other grasses. A little secret–I couldn’t get Tisen to hold still so I could get a shot of him carrying Jack. So, I snuck a shot when he stopped to mark and just cut the back end out of the frame. I guess it’s still pretty obvious what he’s doing.

Can you tell why Tisen is holding still in the this photo?

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