The Weekend in Nordegg

My most recent visit to Nordegg was a rather short one.  Mostly I needed to get the pile of new mattresses out of our living room at home and into the guest cottage.  I hauled them out on Friday April 26th and on Saturday got them all set up.

On Sunday, I had the day to myself.  I made a trip to the dump and got rid of all the packaging materials from the mattresses.  I had hoped to get out for a little while with my camera, and do a little photography.  The weather was mild, and the sun was struggling to bust out through the clouds.  Sadly it was pretty windy, and shooting with a large format camera was really limited.  I took a drive west on the David Thompson Highway and explored for a bit.  Although it is a drought year, and there is not a lot of run off, there were a few spots where water had accumulated.  One near the dump was visually interesting in the way that some grass had become flooded.  The ice on the lakes and ponds was mostly gone, but in one spot I noticed some cool patterns in the old melted ice.  I did make a stop along the highway and set up my big 8" x 10" view camera for shot of Mount Abraham.  It was quite windy and challenging to capture the shot.  To make matters worse, the clouds rolled in and the light went totally flat, just as I got set up.

Later in the afternoon I went back to the cottage.  I set up the wood splitter and continued with the ongoing task of splitting firewood.  I now have almost all of the old stuff, from the original clearing of the first lot, completed.  Soon I will be moving on to the stuff from the second lot, and cleaning up deadfall.

We use quite a bit of wood for winter heating, so I cut and split as much as I can.  At the moment I have six wood piles of various sizes around the property, and will be adding more over the summer months.

Later in the evening I hung up my most recently printed photograph.  This is the panoramic shot of the forest along Blackstone River that I just finished framing.  It hangs above the stairway on a narrow little strip of wall, adjacent to two old historical images of Nordegg back in the coal mining days.