Muskeg Flowers – Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta 1
Muskeg Flowers – Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta 2
I hadn’t been down the back road from Fort Vermilion to Slave Lake for perhaps ten or more years. While I had intended to cut hours from my drive time, my curiosity was there to see what had become of Slave Lake after the town had been overcome by forest fire in May, 2011, losing a third to two thirds of its homes and businesses to forest fire. I remember being five hours north and listening to radio reports of the fire moving rapidly, of the fire jumping highways, of the immediacy of the need for evacuation of residents from Slave Lake to Athabasca and of those residents being given emergency shelter in school gymnasiums. Adele’s ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ was played by local radio stations to highlight the firefighters and water bomber pilots battling the fire and the evacuation of residents – some of the song’s lyrics seem to associate well to the experience endured; perhaps the paradox of setting fire to rain was the attracting element.
For me, three years on, travelling to Edmonton, along highway 88 toward Slave Lake, I found other areas of forest that had been touched in the same forest fire. I stopped the car, again, where the silhouette of remaining blackened, yet dead trees continue to stand vertical, up-and-down, against a northern Alberta sunset – these caught my eye. While this silhouette of trees drew me to stop, get out of the car and look, it was the first growth of flowers, cotton-like, that intrigued me. I walked in on muskeg – watery, peaty, muddy, gelatinous earth that overlays and sits on top of earth that remains frozen. These flower images were gathered.
Listening to – Supertramp’s ‘Live in Paris ’79’ Concert; I’d first seen the ‘Crisis, What Crisis?’ concert in 1978; currently captivating songs include ‘Bloody Well Right,’ ‘Another Man’s Woman,’ ‘Crime of the Century,’ ‘Dreamer’ and ‘Crime of the Century.’
Quote to Inspire – “Photographs cannot create a moral position, but they can reinforce one – and can help build a nascent one.”
