Saskatchewan

For quite some time I have known of a place called "The Crooked Trees" in Saskatchewan.  I have been planning a spring trip there for the last few months.  I wanted to photograph these trees when the weather had warmed up, once the snow was gone, and before the leaves were fully out.  Last weekend I set out to find them, and my friends Jon and Rob came along.  This is a grove of aspen poplars that have a genetic defect that causes them to grow all contorted and twisted.  I knew of them from a couple of different Saskatchewan guide books that I had read, and as a result of seeing the paintings of Ken Dalgarno.  He referred to them as "The Twisted Trees of Alitcane".

We left Edmonton on Saturday morning at about 6:30AM.  We were easily out into Saskatchewan before noon.  Of course none of us remembered to bring a map.  It turns out that the trees were not at Alticane.... this may have been the result of artistic license on the part of Mr. Dalgarno.  We stopped in town and asked one of the locals... he cursed at the lack of signage and grumbled that he had lived here all his life and had never seen the F***ing things!!!  The trees were also not "15km NW of Hafford at the Redberry Lake Biosphere" as our guidebook said.  It turns out that they were further west and north than we expected.  After spending three hours driving around we finally stopped for a beer, and some directions, in Hafford.  We were given directions to the site, which should have been easy to find given the signs right along the main highway.  Of course the signs were not on the right side of the highway, and they referred to the site as "Crooked Bush".

I was surprised at the size of the site... or more accurately the lack of size of the site.  Once again, our guide book referred incorrectly to the site as 1.5 hectares.  In actual fact it is about the size of a city lot... much less than an acre.  It was very cool, but difficult to photograph.  The trees are so twisted and contorted that any composition is visually very busy and hard to create any concise order out of.  It was very interesting that only a few yards away, across a very small gravel parking area, similar aspen poplars were growing straight and normal.  Something has genetically influenced these trees.  They seem confused and intent on sprouting up out of the ground and then bending down, and then back up again, and then down....

On Saturday evening we stayed in North Battleford.  When we got up in the morning we debated whether to return to the trees, or explore elsewhere.  We all agreed that we had captured the compositions that we were looking for, and didn't want to return, until perhaps in a different season.  So we set off to the northwest, back into Alberta.  We found a couple of interesting old abandoned farm yards, and a couple of dying townsites. We spent the day driving back in the general direction of home, and photographing as we went along.

These images are all just snap shots taken with my digital point-and-shoot.  Mostly I was shooting my serious work with my 4x5 large format camera.  The camera itself is visible in one of these shots.  I also shot a few panoramic shots with my 624 medium format panoramic camera.  It will probably be a while before I get around to processing all of this film.  I did process a few sheets of Polaroid 55 that I shot with the large format.  These are currently being dried.  Once the negatives are dry I will scan and post them.