The Rockwood Conservation Area is near Guelph, Ontario, and near enough to civilisation you can hear trains in the night, which I enjoy -it's a bit eerie and a bit romantic. This was our first camping trip with our baby, now 7 months old, and Michelle and I were joined by our intrepid ready-for-anything nephew. It rained a lot, but I managed to make espresso over the fire, we found caves, enjoyed the Cambrian coral limestone formations, found the ruins of a mill from the 1800's and discovered glacial potholes being broken with generational slowness by the cedar forest.
I always feel like I'm committing an artistic sin when I go on a trip like this, sketchbook in hand, and don't take the time to do any sketching. What can I say: we were gone two nights and spending time with the family hiking and puttering around the campsite took priority. So I took lots of reference photos. And I will say ten Hail Artemsia Gentileschis and draw something difficult like a foot in foreshortening to atone.
Enough talk. Pictures.
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| Thistle in the rain. |
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| Cedars along the rocky shore. |
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| Entrance to the Harris Mill, established in 1885 . |
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| Sitting with the sleepy monkey after a long hike which he snoozed his way through. |
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| Our nephew exploring the ruins, looking for good spots to jump off of. |
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| The Mill in the distance. A lot of goldfinches had baths in the stream. |
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| Entrance to some caves. These went in really deep, and we could see chambers beyond. |
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| Mist roiled out of the caves into the humid Ontario air. |
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| Me and my boy sitting under the blue tarp in the rain. |
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| Espresso brewing over the fire. |
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9 comments:
Cool, place.
Can't wait for that espresso.
Absolutely gorgeous photos. Thank you. And your son is just darling!
Thank you smartz! He's a really good-natured baby. We're lucky/in trouble when he's a teen.
May I use a tiny thumbnail of your Precambrian rabbit image as an avatar over at the brand-new home of Pharyngula? I'd really love to, but of course if you would prefer that I didn't I will take it down there right away.
It's a fantastic piece of work, anyway - my hat off to you!
opposablethumbs
Hi Opposablethumbs,
Thanks so much for asking, I really appreciate it - not everyone does. I'm glad you like the image.
I've thought about this today for a while, and it's a tough one. Generally all my images are under a Creative Commons Attribute-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Licence and the problem here is that when the image is displayed on your Gravatar page, there's no attribution other than the tiny "Mellow" on the painting.
Maybe I could email you a copy of the image to use that has my url and name more visible (but unintrusive) to use?
Beautiful country with a lot of history (both human and Natural)! Glad you had a blast! It's certainly a place to add to one's bucket list. ;)
Hi Glendon,
thank you very much indeed - I'd be really happy to do that! My email is entrenous (at) aporias (dot) net . I'm a complete and utter klutz when it comes to anything remotely technical (I can just about turn my computer on ...) - I would just log in to gravatar and paste in a different url for the image, yes? I wouldn't need to re-size or adjust anything, or anything like that?
I would try that right away. If for any reason I mess that up (I'm really not kidding about being computer-stupid), I was thinking that I could see if I can add a sig line in a small font automatically at the bottom of any posts I make, saying something like "Precambrian rabbit image used by kind permission of the artist, Glendon Mellow of The Flying Trilobite (glendonmellow.com)" - just to have a Plan B?
I should say straight off that I'm only a very occasional poster, though! I'm pretty unnoticeable over there, mostly I just go to Pharyngyula to read and I just make the odd comment once in a long while.
Anyway I would love to try and use the image in a way that is OK for you and properly credits and attributes it. Many thanks for your generosity!
all the best,
opposablethumbs
If you can add a small font sig line, that would be great: but I don't know if Gravatar has that capability.
I'll email you a revised image directly, and then you can upload it from your computer instead of hotlinking to the url.
Sound good?
Sounds perfect, thank you!
Sorry, didn't mean to badger you over on the other thread - wasn't sure if things tend to vanish off the bottom of the screen :-)
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Posts over 14 days old have their comments held in moderation - I've been getting an unusual amount of spam for a guy who paints trilobites. I'll release it lickety-split though.