Morning Pic

in #morningpic5 years ago

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HOQUIAM, Wash. (Steemit) – Every year, Immanuel Baptist Church in Hoquiam serves a Thanksgiving dinner to the community, and I finally got around to attending this past year, my fourth in town.

Aside from enjoying the free smorgasbord – at least a half-dozen tables of desserts, along with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, coffee, and circulating trays of crinkle-cut french fries – I had my first glimpse of the nearly 15 acres where the church sits (Kirkpatrick 2017), on the northeast side of Hoquiam between the last city block and the Hoquiam River.

The hill where the mist gathered for the Sept. 19 Morning Pic rises across the river from the ball fields behind the church. I can see the low end of that hill from my apartment window – it’s a part of my view when I check the weather in the mornings – and it inspired a poem when I first moved to Hoquiam. I was keen to see it from a new vantage point, and I wondered if a member of the general public would be allowed to explore back there. Heidi Hague, church member and volunteer at the dinner, seemed a little hesitant to grant permission – maybe she didn’t feel it was hers to give – but she told me that’s what it was there for, and I decided to take her word as a pass.

I made it back there at first light on the last Sunday of 2018. It seemed too dark to take any photos of the river or the hill, but I could see a path in the tree line along the river. Near the property line, a tree that fell across the path has been sawed in half to make a gateway, and it served as a perfect prop for my tripod.

I photographed the moon and clouds in today’s headline pic, and while doing so discovered that the setting on my camera for night shots allows me to choose a longer exposure. It’s interesting how much light you can let in with a 15-second exposure, even when it’s almost pitch-dark. These two photos were taken seconds apart.

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It was raining intermittently, and since it was still dark, I decided to explore and wait for the sun to come up. The clearing above is behind a warehouse for the food charity Coastal Harvest. Around the bend to the left, a path no wider than a deer trail runs through a woods right along the river. It looks like it is rarely used: there’s very little trash and blackberry bushes have grown across it here and there.

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The path runs for a couple city blocks, then bends with the river back toward Riverside Bridge and downtown Hoquiam. At times I felt like I was exploring the Mayan ruins of Hoquiam: there are several concrete foundations hidden in the woods, being slowly taken over by the forest. One of them is likely the former site of a large factory or warehouse. The path leads into the warehouse site, where a large paved area meets Tyler Avenue.

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As I wandered through the warehouse site, dawn was coloring in the sky behind the hill.

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It was getting light enough to take photos of the river, so I broke through the narrow tree line and made my way down to the bank, just past the bend in the river. I usually shoot the other way, from behind the Timberland Bank offices (the brown and white building on the right) toward the bend.

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A loon of some sort swam by as I was rambling up and down the bank looking for the best place to shoot from, but it declined to have a closeup. Every time I got the camera focused on it, it would dive just before I snapped the photo, and then not come up for a long time, and in a totally unexpected place. Here’s the one shot I have, with the loon a white speck on the left.

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Eventually my fingers got cold, and my shoes were soaked through from the muck and damp grass, so I decided to head back to the church. I spent not quite two hours rambling in the shadow of the hill, feeling pretty frustrated at times about how weird the light was and the fact that I couldn’t seem to get a good photo. As I walked back through the woods, I was pretty sure the whole trip was a wash.

I made it back to the church grounds just as the sun was breaking over the hill.

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Then, as I was composing a shot with the crows, a rainbow appeared, falling on Grand Avenue, which leads up to Elton Bennett Park.

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It seemed an auspicious end to my morning adventure, it being Sunday morning with a rainbow falling over a house of God. The clouds closed in with another rain shower as I walked home, but I suppose I had assurance that a flood would not destroy the earth.

Genesis 9:8, 13-15, KJV

And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, ...
I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a convenant between me and the earth.
And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

The Hill

Standing that close to the hill doesn’t really offer the best angle for a photo of it. I only took one shot after the sun came up, from the riverbank directly behind the church.

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References

Coastal Harvest Moyer Multi Media LLC. 2015-16. “Coastal Harvest.” Coastal Harvest Moyer Multi Media LLC. http://coastalharvest.us/.

Kirkpatrick, Bob. 2017. Church pays off $1.2 million mortgage. Aberdeen (Wash.) Daily World, 9 February. https://www.thedailyworld.com/news/church-pays-off-1-2-million-mortgage/.

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