Schweitzer Marsh,  April Sunrise

“Schweitzer Marsh, April Sunrise”

Anticipating next month’s exquisite mornings on Schweitzer Marsh, and without rehashing an earlier riff on Eliot’s “Wasteland”, I provide further evidence that April is not the cruelest month. To the contrary, in rare and exquisite beauty an April sunrise over Schweitzer marsh displays pink and lavender light. It builds slowly, lasts about ten minutes and disappears abruptly.

The seasons each produce a distinctive light of their own, a function of the sun’s position but also the air temperature and dew point. For over 50 years, as seasons change, I’ve observed this same scene in the full color spectrum of sunrises and sunsets as well as the cool midday blues of November and December. The hues are almost palpable, the emotions evoked, sublime.

“Eagle, Morning View”

“I am the eagle this August morning. First to feel the horizon pierced, first to see morning’s marsh expand, color chasing night’s shadow before the sun, summer’s songs rising. I breathe the world.”  C.G. Baker

“Weeping Beech, Winter’s Day”

I had the good fortune today to find enough time between doctor’s appointments to detour through Gates Mills.  Many of you will recognize Chagrin Valley Nursery from the beautiful geometry of the plantings. I’m convinced whoever designed this landscape must have done so knowing it would make a remarkable painting or image. Stopping in the middle of River road I took this shot at midday. It was during a particularly heavy squall which made for perfectly diffused light. A weeping birch stands in relief in the foreground (right) providing more perspective to the scene.  I hope you can feel the wind sweeping across the landscape.

“Still Point”  16″x24″   Collector’s Edition of 10     C.G. Baker, 2020     

Is there anyone who hasn’t tired of the myriad reed and grass photos, most composed in early morning mist or afternoon fog? As a child, over 60 years ago, I recall a black and white photo from “Life” magazine featuring reeds reflecting on a smooth lake. With my mother’s hand-me-down camera I wasted lots of film and her patience trying to replicate that image in a neighbor’s pond. Amateurish would be a very generous description of those photos. Ever since, I’ve shied away from the reed pictures that have seduced infinite photographers and generated infinite images. The few I’ve attempted have been unoriginal at best.

“Toward Heaven Still”

In a couple of his poems (“After Apple Picking and “Birches”), Robert Frost summoned both imagery and metaphor through the phrase, “toward heaven” and “toward heaven still.” I’ve often thought this towering pin oak, anchored in less than three feet of water at the north end of Schweitzer marsh, was “pointed toward heaven still”; ascending from its base, reaching into the firmament.

Exploring the marsh, beech groves and hawthorn gauntlets as young boys of ten or eleven, my friends and I could always spot this tree above the others and orient ourselves. The pin oaks pictured here were already dead and ghostly by the mid 50’s, almost seventy years ago, yet the grove “still” stands.  More than I can say for myself at times.

“Like to the blackbird at break of day arising … “

“Like to the blackbird at break of day arising … “The title, inspired and only slightly corrupted, was appropriated from a line in Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet:

 Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is a companion to the marsh image (“Schweitzer Marsh, April Sunrise”) posted three days ago. The sun, still diffused by early mist, was only about twenty minutes above the horizon.

Returning from its winter migration, a redwing blackbird poses atop a pin-oak remnant, his song rising celestially in its distinctive timbre and the bubbling beauty of its chiming chords.

“Untitled”

“Untitled II”

My preoccupation with geese traces to childhood and the scarcity of what now has become abundant. This is the second in a series. Note, the gander trails the female always protecting his territory.

What works (I think) about this image is the context (marsh sedge in the foreground) and the center focused composition.