March 2026: Sandhill Cranes

 

These are sandhill cranes, notoriously hard to approach as they do not like people, they have excellent vision, and are very rarely alone.  They are quite common around here in the summer months, and their return is an assurance that spring is not far behind. I heard the first ones of the season last week, so decided this would be a good image to post even though I took it in the autumn. 

I anticipate hearing red-winged blackbirds in the next week or so as well...that is always a heart-warming sound to me even though there is usually another snowstorm right behind them. You take the bad with the good though, as one never shows up without the other. 

February 2026: Mid-Month Photography Tip

 

For those of you who do Urbex and abandoned places photography, it is always wise to make sure you don't walk in to a particular building "blind". You never know what is actually holding some structures up. This abandoned house looked very inviting for exploration from the outside at ground level, but a quick peek into the basement through a window revealed this nightmarish accident waiting to happen. Yes, that jinky Jenga is all that was holding up the entire house! 

I say "was" because it is not there anymore, fortunately. And fortunately I had the good sense to look in there before considering going inside. 

Stay safe! Be smart!

February 2026: Names On The Wall

 One of the aspects of taking photos in an abandoned asylum is that you never want to lose sight of the fact that real people lived, struggled desperately, and died there. This wall is located in one of the residential buildings where the patients lived. The nurses who cared diligently for these people also lived on site, on the top floor. Several of them would record the names of their patients on the wall in pencil near their beds, sometimes with the date they arrived or where they were from. Some of these names have been there on these bricks for 100 years. It isn't known why they did this, perhaps to remember to pray for them every night, perhaps because they knew that it was likely that no other record of that person being there would be available in the future, no one knows. But the fact is that in some cases these pencil entries ARE the only record of that person being there, and the only evidence that anyone ever cared enough about them to even record their name. It is a very poignant part of these buildings, and every time I have been there I have taken the time to stop and take note of the names for ten minutes or so.

These buildings are currently slated for renovation where possible, and demolition where not, so I do not know what is to become of these bricks and the names upon them. Perhaps the photos people have taken of them will be all that the future will be able to see. But they were real people with real struggles, some of the struggles very serious, and they were cared for by people who thought them worthy of remembering.