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Save some sky for me |
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| FTLComm - Tisdale - Tuesday, October 14, 2003 Images by Andrew and Timothy Shire | ||||||
 The pictures on this page were taken late Saturday and those at the bottom of the page were taken Monday night. Skyscapes around Tisdale are common to this website for that there are two reasons; first my wife and I really missed Saskatchewan for the years we spent in the North and when we came back home, it was the sky that we had missed. The second reason is that Tisdale and its flat surroundings is a place where the sky is always available and sometimes intrudes into one's life. The top of the page is at the golf course looking East. |
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| Only a few miles North of town we spotted a really large flock of snow and blue geese and we drove out to look them over. Their social nature | ||||||
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 As we headed from the site of the QuickTime (above) the sun was heading for the horizon quickly and we went a few miles North then headed West once more. We came upon an old metal bridge and you can have a look at that scene on its own page. The sky in these scenes is filled with stratocumulus castellanus. The mottled flattened but fluffy formation, castellanus describes the mottle holes. Using the flash and low light produced the blurred bush along the roadside seen below. |
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 This picture above and the one on the right that Andrew created, give an almost hand painted look. In the scene below, just North of highway #3, Andrew capture the sky after the sun had worked its way below the horizon. For the most part, the sky is one of those things we can share with each other, each appreciating what we see in our own way and each inspired by the experience as it seems appropriate to our own personal needs. I share with many others the belief that we are influenced deeply by images around us and the vastness of a prairie sky is one of those |
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 humbling things in our world that helps us to realise our personal insignifigance, yet being able to experience the immensity of the sky and the emptiness of space beyond, tells us also of how important we are to the whole scheme of things. For indeed, we are among the few beings on the planet who know and understand something about the sky above and that knowledge is a comfort and assurance of our own self-worth. In this picture Andrew has the camera about twenty inches above the pavement looking back toward the fadding red glow and the castellanus cloud formation in sharp contrast to the flash illuminated side of the van. The van's 100 kph velocity at the time dwarfed and insignificant in the realm of the sky above on a planet spinning at 1,000 miles an hour and drilling its way through the near emptiness of space as it finds itself trapped in an endless loop around a middle classed star. The Alfalfa dehydration plant is not puffing water vapour from its stacks in the image below and Northern Steel's tanks in the process of production, stand as |
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 quiet witnesses to the end of yet another day. Here the railway warning sign is lit with the camera's flash while the image below that is natural light. It is a good thing that we in Canada take this first weekend in October, just after each year's harvest has ended, to consider the measureless rewards of life. For each sunset that takes place and each sunrise that follows, we mark yet another day, when we can sample the adventure of continued life. I have a friend who suffered a stroke a couple of years ago and decided that |
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 without those things that were robbed of him with the stroke his life is no longer worth continuing and is now in hospital not expected to come out of there alive. He is 86 years old, has lived a remarkable life, but has botched the best part of it, the end. For indeed, were the day not to end, we would never have the opportunity to reflect on what it has brought us and what we have |
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 done with the time we have been given. For me, this Thanksgiving was most precious, as my wife and I had with us the three sons that have made and given meaning to our lives. Each of them are making their lives in their own way working through accomplishment and set back, the things for which they are most assuredly thankful. Several times during the weekend my thoughts were of my neice who has lost her partner less than a month ago and though she suffers from this extreme loss, I am thankful for the blessing for her having shared her life with a |
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 person who in turn cared for her so very much. On the outskirts of Saskatoon last night (above) the moon was climbing into a cloudy sky, the thanksgiving weekend now over and once again treasures being stored for another year of experience and wonder. I stopped East of Wakaw and captured this image of the moon peering through another set of castellanus clouds. Be it the dark of the moon or the middle of the day the sun's light and air around us conspire to remind us of why indeed we should be truly thankful. |
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