Saturday, January 31, 2009

Up On The Roof

It must have been about mid-October when I was inspired to climb to the roof of the New Grand Hotel to take some photos of the town. Now, usually it was my job to make sure that no one went onto the roof of the hotel, because part of my job was security, but I made an exception for me.

I had worked the midnight shift at the hotel and one of the highlights of this position was watching the sun’s rays sweep into the valley at the break of dawn. I learned a lot about Nature during my time at the hotel.


One thing that I had never seen before was a snowline, which appears on the mountains during this season. This line – with snow/frost on the topside and forest below – is absolutely horizontal as it stretches throughout the region. And it changes elevations from day to day, too!

I had just gotten off my workshift and while I was walking home I noticed that not only did this morning’s chill bring another snowline to the mountains, but a really cool occurrence of clouds was passing through the area, as well.


The clouds hovered just feet above the trees and as they moved with the soft winds they seemed to catch like cotton candy onto the trees, getting torn and stretched.


I went home, got my camera equipment and went back to the hotel to climb the roof.


From this elevation it was easy to see all the shadows created by the morning sunrise.


Nelson was a delightful place to live in for our year and half. There are lots of interesting old buildings and roads that are built into the side of this mountain.


The early builders planted lots of trees, so now, many years later, most of the houses are hidden from view when the trees are full of leaves.


And in the distance we see BOB. Nelson’s famous Big Orange Bridge.


The first time I heard someone tell me about BOB I had a good laugh!

I was nearing the end of my roll of film (in twenty years people will wonder what a roll of film was - LOL!) so I decided to do something funny. I had brought one of the hotel’s walkie-talkies with me and I made a call down to Bernie. Bernie was the dayshift personality for the hotel and everyone really enjoyed sharing a laugh with her. I told her that something was on the roof of the hotel – I didn’t tell her that it was me – and that she had to go out and take a look up. She did…


… and ‘snap’ I took her photo.

Jim

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