A British Summer, Part Two. Words & pictures by Nick Small.

That was it then. Gone. Flounced out in a veil of drizzle. Well, so long then, British Summer, I can’t in all honesty add “and thanks for all the fish” because, aside from a few small brook trout from Hebden Water, there weren’t any.
I’m left with lingering frustration as I had some real plans this year, a summer at home and the opportunity to fish a particular stretch of water: the River Skirfare at Arncliffe in the Yorkshire Dales.

The Skirfare is a small river which carves its way from the slopes of Pen-y-Ghent, insinuating itself into and under a limestone river bed, often disappearing completely, whilst negotiating the short, but stunning Littondale to meet up with the River Wharfe.

Catch the water levels right and there is one spot, just outside the village of Litton, where you can swim in a pool which is filled by a cascade on the upstream side with only a dry river bed downstream, the water stealthily exiting via a scree-filled pot hole in the bottom of the pool.

Most of the holidays of my youth were spent messing about in the Skirfare. It’s where I collected the cadis grubs that snagged me my first good dace back up on the River Teesside. It’s where I learned that the yellow coloured wagtail was grey, where I first heard the mocking laugh of a willow warbler and where I tickled my first trout. The steep hill that rises up behind the village of Hawkswick was where I first discovered my love of fell running and nearby Dowky Bottom was the first pot hole that I tentatively (and furtively) explored.

It is this little stretch of nascent river though which so tantalised me this summer. I used to watch the wild brownies here, peering over the wall to see them dart from the shade for a passing fly, then dart back under the bank.

I could never afford a day ticket back then and in any case, had only a short spinning rod to my name. This is a fly only stretch. I resolved to come back as an adult and have some long delayed gratification.

I had phoned ahead to the Falcon Inn which is where day tickets are bought. The Falcon is a pub from another era. Your ale is still poured from a jug on the bar, a bar which once had a lengthy acting career, propping up Amos Brearley and Mr Wilkes in Emmerdale (for which Arncliffe was the village setting). Sadly, the ever helpful landlady Elspeth advised that water levels were low and the fishing best waited for….until the rains arrived.

I turned up anyway, armed with a camera but not a fly rod. Not to worry, I thought, I’ll pop back in September and make use of the waning season. It was a fine plan until I found myself watching the season pass by whilst I sat in Glasgow, editing a television programme about morbidly obese patients. Now, I don’t mind being frustrated by fish all day long but the frustration of not even making it to the river is one which will now nag me all winter long.

Grayling on the Calder anyone?

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A British Summer, Part One. Words & pictures by Nick Small.

At this time of year I’d normally be bamboozling the fish and photographing the glory of endless sunsets in Swedish Lapland. Sadly, for reasons too dull to go into here, this year I’m spending summer at home instead.

As it turns out, this isn’t a terrible ordeal, despite some rather indifferent weather. The Pennines are glorious in summer, even when periodically assaulted by squalls that flit through the landscape like unstable girlfriends, causing fleeting havoc before shooting through, leaving just memories and the occasional flood behind.

This changeable weather has had one consequence very much appreciated by me and mine. Nestling beneath the larch, pine and birch of the Ogden Water woodland is a dense carpet of bilberry bushes. Just twenty metres away, walkers pass by oblivious to the splendid bounty dangling from vivid green stems: huge, fat berries, bursting with brilliant purple juice. The Swedes call these blueberries, though they have little to do with the insipid so-called super foods found in supermarkets at prices that would make a gold merchant blush. These, our native bilberry (also known as whortleberries amongst other charming folk monikers), are truly rich in flavour, as well as those much vaunted antioxidants, chief devourers of pesky free radicals. Bilberries were, it is said, used in WW2 by fighter pilots, in the belief that they improved night vision. The plant also contains a compound which lowers blood sugars, but all these medicinal properties are but a sideshow to their main appeal: they taste great, they turn your mouth (and everything else) a deep violet and they are FREE.

Ok, gathering them isn’t always without cost, being time consuming and laying the berry picker at the mercy of woodland midges but this is more than compensated for by popping the odd one into the mouth and savouring the explosion of berry goodness on the tongue. Oh, berry fights are good fun too…like paintballing without the quasi military trappings.

But what to do with the harvest of bilberries, dear foragers? Well, traditionally bilberry pie with cream was always the ultimate reward in my youth. However, these days they go down best when stewed for a few minutes with a bit of sugar and then poured warm over generous dollops of good vanilla ice cream. The juice adds a new dimension to your summer elderflower cordial and, if you are really into this sort of thing, can be turned into a good home brewed plonk. Bilberries: I love them.

I also love my local rivers. The summer at home has brought opportunities to fish a few of them but by far and away the most enjoyment I’ve had with the lad was wading around in the Hebble Brook removing shopping trolleys, beds, old boots, batteries and bikes from a favourite stretch of water.

The Hebble Brook begins its life on the high peat moorland above Halifax before tarrying for a while in Ogden Water, where some of it is diverted for human consumption. Little more than a mile below the dam the brook winds through meadows before tumbling over a small weir in a wooded glade beside an old stone mill. Despite being little more than a beck here, it holds a good stock of wild brown trout. On most days local kids can be found here lobbing their worms into the brown stained water, larking about and occasionally catching a brownie. It would be an idyllic spot were it not for the fact that they would be casting amongst shopping trolleys, fridge motors, discarded clothing and other trash.

Not so long ago, I took the young lad down so that he could cast a line or two. Whilst he was involved with the water, I looked around. The steep banks were strafed with glass, rubble, builders’ waste, bags, bottles, cans and other accessories. The water trickled under a divan bed which had clearly made it all the way down the bank to the water from the spot beneath the old railway viaduct, where it had been unceremoniously tipped by some dickhead who couldn’t be arsed to take it to the tip, less than half a mile away.

So it was that we returned a morning last week in the company of the North Halifax Green Action project and Calder Future (actually just two good blokes who care) to clean the place up. It took five of us a couple of hours to fill a skip with trash and the back of a van with metal bits for the recycling plant. The young lad and his mate had genuine fun, whilst earnestly expressing disgust that people could treat a beauty spot with such disdain. The grown ups tried to stay dry in their waders, waterproofs and gloves, but the kids’ enjoyment peaked as the stream over-topped their wellies and they drenched each other with brook water, rendering the downpour that signalled the end of our enterprise totally irrelevant.

Around the third week in August every year, runners of all ages descend upon the tiny Dales hamlet of Burnsall for the annual Feast and Sports day. We were heading there this year because the lad wanted to take part in the junior fell race. The senior event, known as The Classic, is one of the most prestigious in the calendar. The runners leave the village from the stone bridge which spans Yorkshire’s best trout river (the Wharfe) and climb 900 feet, almost vertically, before hurtling back down with reckless abandon. This year it was won by local sheep farmer Ted Mason, just the latest in a long roll call of legendary figures (such as the incredible Fred Reeves who, who completed the course in an unfeasible 12 mins 47 seconds back in 1977).

There’ll be more about fell racing in part two, but the reason I mention this little jolly into the Dales is that the journey there took us through Bolton Abbey, where we happened upon Grove Rare and Antique Books. Displayed prominently, close to the door, was a display cabinet full of New Naturalist books, with their immaculately illustrated covers. I’d never seen them before but thought to myself, surely there’s a Caught By The River contributor out there who could write knowledgeably about them. Judging by the pristine dust jackets on these old volumes, no-one actually reads them, but who needs to know about “The Life and Loves of a Pochard” when the cover illustrations are such beautiful works of art.

British Summer, Part Two will be a Yorkshire Dales special.

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Pike. Words & picture by Nick Small.

“perfect Pike in all parts” *

Pike really would be the perfect fish to eat, were it not for the rather irritating, secondary set of fine “Y” shaped bones along its flanks. The French, who know a thing or two about food, love to eat Pike. I do too….though the locals up in Sweden are more likely to discard the dead corpse amongst the reeds than wrap it in foil with garlic and butter. Young Pike are best. Anything over 5 or 6 pounds is likely to have acquired a slightly earthy taste, but I suppose Pike are a product of their environment. If you pull one from a muddy canal, it’s likely to be less appealing than this specimen, rudely taken from this pristine lake of sub-arctic melt-water.

The flesh of the Pike is as white and flaky as you could wish for: like freshwater cod or haddock. It tastes fine on its own, but delicately flavour it with garlic, butter and herbs of your choice and it really is delicious. So what to do about those bones? There are large portions of the flesh which come away cleanly, and which do not contain the dreaded “Y” bones. These can be served up like fish steaks. The flesh doesn’t take a lot of cooking….just until opaque is best.

It’s easy to remove the large sections of flank which contain the “Y” bones from the main skeleton….then simply break it up into small flakes with your fingers and a couple of forks. There follows the rather painstaking job of picking out the “Y” bones as you find them. If you are thorough, you are left with a mound of lovely white, flaky flesh which you can gently warm up again in a flat pan. Squeeze over some lemon…job done.

This is an old snap. I dug it out because I long to be on that lakeside beach right now. You’ll notice that there is a conveniently placed outdoor kitchen. The Swedes are good like that. Not only have they enshrined in law the right of all men to roam freely to discover these beautiful spots, regardless of land ownership; they are also happy to create barbecue places with lean-to log shelters and well stocked firewood stores in appropriately attractive locations. Sometimes these “fire places” are no more than a section of concrete pipe filled with sand but, more often than not, you’ll find well constructed grills, which swivel over the cooking fire at different levels. Nature provides the willow and myrtle branches which can be sharpened to hold sausages over the flame. These fire places are everywhere….beaches, lay-bys, river banks….there to be shared and enjoyed by whosoever drops by. I’ve often thought that it would be great if these barbecue places were commonplace in our own beauty spots. The thought that followed was a depressing one.

* From “Pike” by Ted Hughes. Read it here

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Fire. Words & pictures by Nick Small.

I’m lucky to have some of the world’s finest moorland on my doorstep and, taking full advantage of the extended warm and dry Easter, I decided to enjoy it with my lad. We trudged up onto the tops, sharing space, if not time, with Heathcliff and Cathy or whomsoever they were modelled upon. Eight miles into the walk, we crossed the threshold of gesticulating cotton grass and onto the great sponge that is Ovenden Moor’s peat bog. Ordinarily this is ground you would circumnavigate, lest you risk finding yourself chest deep in the soup of decaying vegetable matter…a soup from which some of our nation’s rivers seep, then trickle and flow. On this occasion though, we could walk across the surface, accompanied by snap and crunch rather than the usual squelch.

It was great. We watched, and talked about, Curlews, nesting Grouse, Lapwing chicks, Wheatear and Skylarks. The lad took it all in, as lads do, avaricious for knowledge. Then I added caution. The moors, I told him, are a volatile place when so dry. We noted several carcasses of spent Chinese Lanterns and we talked of the risk they might pose to a moor so tinder-dry and willing to burn. We talked about how fire gets into the peat and burns for days, spreading underground and erupting through the crust in spontaneous inflammatory bursts.

The following day, the moors were ablaze, the flames apparently fanned by the wind turbines (but in reality, by a brisk Easterly). Countless fire fighters, beating forlornly at the infernal pest for days like Sysyphus with his boulder, were aided by tenders, bowsers, helicopters and willing volunteers armed with no more than the love of this beautiful landscape. Myriad banknotes drifted off, no more than smoke in the eyes of austerity’s face.

When the first fire (caused by a criminally negligent smoker) was extinguished, a couple of youths, giddy at the spectacle, started another. It burned for the best part of a week. The fires crept into a precious area of woodland. The whole lot would have gone up, destroying a local beauty spot which was in the nation’s top 10 favourite parks had it not been for a quirk of fate that the winds remained in a favourable direction.

As it is, the moor is now a charred wasteland. The nesting birds have deserted, many having lost this year’s progeny. It may be some time before they return. There’s drama, beauty, pathos and sadness in the pictures…and a fairly obvious message.

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This photograph of a rather strange, beautiful sky, seen here exactly as the camera recorded it, is the result of a shutter-click, yet so much more.

A few weeks ago I went to the Lake District, tasked with making a short film for the One Show. Presenter/photographer Jamie Crawford would create a series of Spring photos, available for download on the One Show website for viewers use as desktop backgrounds. We had typically changeable Spring weather as we shot Wordsworth’s daffodils in the morning, and newborn lambs in the afternoon. We needed a dramatic landscape, and wanted to catch sunset and sunrise too.

This involved myself, Jamie, David and Mark (camera/sound) and Kieran (AP) getting up to Angle Tarn, high on the fells, a location with good panoramic views East and West, where we would camp for the night. We were assisted by local mountain man Ross Wallace, who provided us each with an 85 litre expedition pack. We had a fair bit of gear to take up. Ross and I had been keeping tabs on the weather forecast…there would be clearing skies for our overnight, but a rather unpleasant front carrying torrential rain on 60 mph winds was due the next morning. Exactly when it would arrive, we didn’t know and could only hope for the best.

At 5pm we took some shots of the waterfalls at the foot of Angle Tarn Gill and made the decision to climb the most direct (near vertical) route up alongside the cascades as the sun was getting low and I didn’t want us to miss the sun setting behind Helvellyn. Now this is a long and steep ascent without kit, but with a 40 grand HD Camera, tripod, head, sound equipment and all the camping paraphernalia this was a brutal assault on our middle aged physiques. How David got up there carrying the camera, I have no idea….we were on all fours for long sections of the long slog. Ross, the younger, fitter mountain goat kept us encouraged though and we made it to the tarn just in time to capture dramatic cloud sweeping across Helvellyn’s summit, backlit by the retiring orb, with the sun’s amber light painting the moorland grasses of High Street to the east, shades of pink and gold. The splendour was like morphine: the pain we’d endured soon ebbed, as triumphant euphoria numbed the aching limbs and tickled the pleasure parts of our tired minds.

Once we’d pitched camp and hungrily devoured the Spaceman food, expertly served up by Ross, we were treated to a pristine night sky, swept of all cloud and haze by the near freezing breeze. Save for a faint orange glow to the south east, betraying Greater Manchester’s presence, light pollution was almost totally absent. Some of our party were seeing the Milky Way for the very first time: Orion, Taurus, Cassiopeia, The Plough all clear and bright. We stood in the cold night air until late, sharing the majesty of it all. It was an “I love my job” moment.

None of us slept much. I seemed to spend much of the night fighting gravity and thought sleep had evaded me completely…though I was assured that I had indeed nodded off by those who had been kept from slumber by my snoring.

Ross sounded the dawn alarm at about 5 am. We all managed the contortions necessary to dress for the frigid morning inside tents that a five year old might consider cramped. The eastern sky started to brighten, minute by minute changing hues from deep blue, right through to the warmest gold. There was an odd dark shape in the sky…like a frontal system, but the front we were expecting was to come from behind us in the west. As the light grew more rich and intense, wavy lines echoing the landscape started to appear, picked out in bright threads of vivid colour. What we were seeing, and what you see in the photograph, is lenticular cloud. When the conditions are just right, lenticular clouds can form downwind of mountain ranges, where tiny ice particles are formed in a standing wave which rears up into a stiff breeze, just a fast flowing river swooping over a submerged ledge or weir, forms a stationary breaker.

For this photo to happen, the perfect combination of rare conditions had to occur: ripples of moist air rising and falling at the point of crystalisation, picked out by the brief intensity of dawn sunlight and, rarest of all, we had to be there, high on the fells when most sane folk were tucked up in bed.

As an added bonus, when I finally turned around to look west, I saw this….Helvellyn basking in the glory of it all. Just two hours later, the entire landscape was consumed by a storm.

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Squirrel. Words & picture by Nick Small.

I’d seen his footprints in the sand at the lake’s edge before and assumed the slender toes to belong to a bank vole or rat. The lapping waves undercut the bank adjacent to our little beach, and I had guessed there to be small mammals enjoying the prime waterfront location, sifting through the flotsam, like furry little beachcombers, for titbits of food…fresh water mussels, remnants of pike lunch and sundry vegetation washed from the opposite shore. Certainly they would be in good company, as the bank also seems to provide nest sites for various little waders…you know the type, the ones that all look alike.

What I didn’t anticipate, certainly not at 6 am as I watched my float bobbing amongst the reeds, was to find myself in the company of a Red Squirrel. I heard him first (I’m guessing it’s a man squirrel on the grounds that he appears free from self-doubt). It was a barely audible scuff of shingly sand. I looked down and was astonished to find him at my feet, staring straight back up at me. I forgot about the fish completely. I was transfixed.

As a boy I used to visit a popular local park in Middlesbrough: Stewart Park. It was a regular turn on a Sunday afternoon: arrive in the car park, have a look at the highland cattle in the paddock, run about a bit, watch my Dad show off his side-step, fly a kite, go to the monkey house (a large glass house, ironically free from monkeys but with a talkative Minah Bird). There were various small animal enclosures with Golden Pheasants, chipmunks, guinea pigs and stuff. Centrally placed, and clearly a focal point with paths radiating from its orbit, was an oak tree. The bottom portion of this oak was clad in a cage. This was the Red Squirrel enclosure. It might as well have been the Snow Leopard enclosure, so slim was the chance that you might catch a glimpse of its occupant. Some naysayers would even venture to suggest that there was no Red Squirrel in that cage at all. For me then, seeing a Red Squirrel acquired some serious nature-spotter points.

So on the shore of Järvträsk, there I was being eyeballed by this little fella, seemingly as curious about my alien presence on his native turf as I was about him. He hopped around me a little, casting a glance in my direction from time to time. He wouldn’t see too many people, if any, on his daily rounds. He certainly hadn’t formed the opinion that I was in any way dangerous, as he seemed quite comfortable sharing an intimate moment with me. I was besotted and afraid to move, lest I spook him. Rather untypically, I wasn’t carrying a camera at the time, so once he had disappeared into the abundant Meadowsweet and Bog Myrtle between the beach and the forest edge, all I could do was treasure the memory.

I’ve seen the squirrel’s footprints time and again since, but our brief encounter has never been repeated, much to my disappointment. The only other time I’ve clapped eyes upon him, he was watching me from a perch some 15 feet up a pine tree. On that occasion I did have my camera, and he was good enough to adopt a first class squirrel pose for my benefit, and now yours. Wouldn’t it be great if this was a common sight in our (no longer to be privatised) woodlands?

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A couple of years ago I wandered around a few of my favourite local waters in Lapland, taking with me a small domestic handycam. Yes, I know normal people use those to document family fun. I do that too, honestly.

Anyway, these little portraits of lakes, rivers, brooks and ponds, shot hand held (I’m getting my excuses in early…I’m no Hugh Miles) have been sitting on a hard drive ever since. So, as a little gift to the good folk of Caught By The River to welcome 2011, I cobbled them together and set them to music….a Nick’s Motion Pics for the New Year.

Lapland from Guidepost on Vimeo.

To me the scenes evoke a deep sense of longing…to be back there, tossing flies clumsily at the surface, drinking in the view, watching the wildlife and daydreaming. Of course, at the moment all these waters will be invisible, frozen under a blanket of snow, seemingly lifeless. Yet, within six months they will once more be glistening beneath warm skies, teeming with grayling, trout, char, roach, perch, pike and surrounded by dense verdant forest. Perhaps they will evoke the desire to be there even in those of you who have never even considered venturing to these Boreal forests of Swedish Lapland. I hope so.

The music is “How You Dug Your Own Grave” by Elin Ruth Sigvardsson. It was playing a lot on Swedish radio that summer and for some reason it seemed to resonate perfectly with the landscape: The voice is sweet, but the song is dark and, a stroke of genius, the chorus is a Duane Eddy style guitar refrain. It’s worth using headphones rather than tinny laptop speakers. The MP3 is available in all the usual places pop pickers.

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The Beauty of Chance. Words & picture by Nick Small.

I was flying back up to Manchester from Newquay a few weeks ago, gazing out from my window seat, when I saw parallel contrail lines tracking rapidly across the sky. I managed to switch the camera on and focus just in time to press the shutter as the trails passed in front of the lonely moon. No time to think: just see, react and shoot. Zen, and the art of snapping.

I loved the result. In an instant, the image conjured two of my favourite lyrics from obscure recesses of my memory:

“A white moon appears like a hole in the sky,
The mangroves grow quiet.
In the Brisa de la Palma
A teenage Rasputin
Takes the sting from a gin”.
The Go Betweens “Bye Bye Pride”

“Like a pale moon in a sunny sky
Death gazes down as I pass by
To remind me that I’m but my father’s son”
Billy Bragg “Tank Park Salute”

The image and the words, created by different people, years apart from each other, all forever married by the moment.

There are some people for whom contrails are portents of doom, believing them to be laden with chemicals designed to adversely affect our weather, or simply to gradually poison us. I don’t mean Climate Change worriers, who may have some justification for seeing air travel as problematic: no, I mean people who believe in lizard folk, alien invaders, an elite force of evil beings hell-bent on wiping out the world’s population, and who believe that we are being sprayed from the stratosphere in some demonic pest control exercise. These are not contrails, innocent water droplets crystallizing like piped icing against the deep blue of space. No, these are those toxic instruments of death: chemtrails.

Whatever the trails are (and who am I to gainsay these prophets of annihilation?), to me they make this photograph very beautiful indeed.

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Lapstrake in Lapland. Words & picture by Nick Small.

The Byske River, just as it meets the brackish waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, that narrow finger of the Baltic that separates Sweden from Finland. Beneath the beguiling blue calm, thousands of migrating Salmon set their sat nav for the hills, hell bent on procreation and the frustration of over optimistic anglers along the rugged forested banks.

A rich source of vitamin D, Salmon flesh is an important food for people denied the sun’s rays for much of the year. Where survival rather than sport is the name of the game, a net and a boat bypass the vicissitudes of casting flies with a rod.

And what a boat this is: a casual monument to the creative forces of necessity, nature and nurture. Lapstrake or clinker built, a product of the forest, formed with function in mind, but sculpted by the eye of an artist. Beautiful lines from beautiful pines. It has been liberally lathered in tar, coaxed by fire from swamp gathered pine roots…the oils which nature designed to protect the living tree from rot being the best waterproofing in the timber afterlife.

Folk arts and crafts aren’t some heritage industry in Swedish Lapland, and nor are they an experiment in Ray Mears living. They are part of the fabric of a place where things have to be made, because they can’t be bought. Every Loppis (second hand shop) is full of turned and carved wooden artefacts, hand crafted textiles and naïve paintings…usually signed by the hand that created them decades ago. Much furniture is made in the woodshed, and although IKEA is invasive, it doesn’t have the staying power of Grandad’s rough and rustic shaker-esque masterpieces, crudely painted in glossy reds and grey.

This boat encapsulates many of these things I love about life in the Boreal Forest. There’s the contrast between the finesse of its form, and the blunt functionality of the oars. There’s the casual way in which it is simply beached and abandoned, not even tethered. Any upstream rain storm, or wind to break up the surface, would see this boat loose, and at the mercy of the elements. It is in its place and of its place: a product of the environment and somehow, still perfectly at one with its surroundings. I love it.

See previous Nick’s pics here.

Another Boring Sunset. Words & picture by Nick Small.

The camp fire contemptuously spits pine resin at the man made fibres that keep the mosquitoes off my legs. Ignoring the threat of spontaneous combustion, I pick up my camera to take this shot. It is the umpteenth photograph I’ve taken of this particularly riotous display in the past hour or so. My good friend sitting next to me, sharing the view and the Akvavit, pipes up “I really don’t get the point of taking photos of sunsets”.

I’m quite taken aback. He’s a visually creative fellow, my companion, and a dab hand with a camera himself. He’s also fully aware that I have photographed the evening light and the way it plays upon this particular skyline so many times over the past five years that it has become a standing joke.

“It’s just a sunset” he volunteers, “Everyone seems compelled to take a photograph whenever they see one”.

I say nothing, but as I continue to shoot the ever changing view, I start to think. Maybe he has a point. Why do we find so alluring the sight of the sun, glowing warmly as though medicated by a nightcap, slipping into its slumber, leaving us in darkness until morning? Why do we in photography and film refer to this, and the period around dawn as The Magic Hour? Why do the hoards flock to the West coast of Ibiza to get all giddy and spiritual as the big disk does its stuff?

Maybe it’s primal. Perhaps, just the knowledge that they’d made it through the day without being eaten by a sabre toothed tiger was enough to get our ancient cousins high on endorphins.

But then that doesn’t explain why artists have, for centuries, tried to capture the light, the colours of the spectrum, the liquid palette shifting, moment to moment as the sun daubs the clouds with carefree abandon (for a truly great sunset, you need cloud). I don’t suppose anyone said to Turner “Oi, Billy boy, it’s nice and all that, but knock the sunsets on the head, they’re a bit tedious”.

I look at the glowing embers in the campfire and the wisps of smoke dancing their way heavenwards. Then I look back at this view. Be it fire, sunset, the structure of a fern, a starry night, or the ripple a trout leaves in the centre of a lake….Nature creates more vividly than we ever can. All we can hope to do is capture or emulate the essence of what we’ve seen, and perhaps share our joy and wonder with others.

The ire in me subsides, and so I bathe in the unique beauty of what I’m privileged enough to witness. Inevitably, I come to a rather obvious conclusion: to be tired of sunsets is to be tired of life.

see previous Nick’s Pics here.