Stormy Weather

I did not expect to be photographing many storm clouds on this trip, but the journey started with a severe storm as we drove from Edmonton to Saskatoon. Since then the weather has been warm and sunny most days.

Yesterday I enjoyed using my view camera in the back yard at the Wallace Stegner House here in Eastend, Saskatchewan.

Storms developed last night which brought hail (known in Saskatchewan as the great white combine) to nearby areas. A tornado caused severe damage in at least one Saskatchewan town. On CBC radio this morning a woman quite calmly told how a tree fell through her roof into the living room of her house.

I've just returned from a walk in strong and gusty winds. The clouds are moving very quickly, and I expect that we may get a severe storm later this evening.

The small digital camera I used to make these images is approximately the size and weight of the light meter I use for the 4x5 view camera in the photo above: but that's another story for another day.

Thanks for your positive reactions to the storm cloud and other images I've posted during this time in Eastend. I hope you enjoy these photographs as well.

Comments

[Philip L. Fradkin]

Your photos that I, too, have enjoyed take me back to my visit to Eastend and the Stegner house three or four summers ago when I was researching a biography of Stegner published earlier this year. As I recall, this is not the time of year when the smell of wolf willow is prevalent, which is about the only thing that I missed when I was there. I camped in the city campground near where Stegner and his wife camped when they visited the town incognito in 1953 and spent time in the house and the town and walking along the Frenchman River. What struck me was how little change there had been. Most of the landmarks that Stegner mentioned in Wolf Willow were still there. Change was most evident in the "ghost" farming towns nearer the border. I am sure Ethel Wills and the others have made your stay enjoyable. I hope to return some time to this timeless landscape.

Philip Fradkin

[Lynn Stegner]

Beautiful photographs, Mr. Martin. I had forgotten how omnipresent the sky with its billowing clouds is in the prairies -- and the clarity of light.