In the bounds of Forest Parké,

by the splashing Flower-Fountain,

Stood Edward, the old photo man,

Pointing with his camera eastward,

O'er the water pointing eastward,

To the little ducks a’ swimming.

Today I arrive in Forest Park shortly after 4 PM and park next to the swamp. I think I will collect leaves today. I start to collect some leaf samples, but am thinking there has to be a better way of categorizing them than simply stuffing them into my backpack. 

The swallows are swooping and diving over the algae-clogged waters, so I park myself on the edge and watch for a while. I try to follow the swallows

Between Wells Drive and US Highway 40 there is a tall mound, just north and west of the Park and Forestry Division yard where they keep their trucks, tractors, mowers and other equipment The sky has been calling me today, an overarching field of cyan wandered by herds of clouds, like so many celestial sheep. I scramble to the top to get some big sky photos and see him on the fence around the horse paddock, glinting golden in the afternoon sun. My first gold finch photo of the year! An eastern kingbird also perches on the fence just a few yards away.

Everything has a name, I just don’t know them all. Yesterday I started using an app on my phone, “PictureThis” to identify plants. Today I put it to the test on the southern fringes of the Kennedy Forest, where nature meets the interstate highway.

There is a little stream there, that flows eastward between the zoo and the highway, broadening into a swampy area about where the westbound exit onto Clayton Road starts. It is certainly not quiet there, the roar of the highway is omnipresent, overpowering, dismaying,

I usually pick up trash that I find in the park and put it in its proper place, particularly if it is glass, broken or otherwise. Today I find an empty cigarette pack lying in one of my favorite fields, spoiling the view. So I pick it up, and think uncharitable thoughts about my fellow man. My equilibrium is quickly restored, however, as I walk, by nature’s fecundity. 

It has been raining, and I am walking east of the Central Fields, toward Circle Lake, secure beneath my umbrella and shielded from the abundance of puddles by my boots. I press in close to the blades of grass and leaves of trees coated by the rain

It is not crowded in the park today, mostly because it is quite cool. I have parked on Skinker Boulevard and walked along the bike path into the park but I have not gotten far. Under the canopy of elms, oaks and maples, bloom columbine, blue wild indigo, spiderworts, red raspberry flowers, geranium, fleabane and golden alexander amidst the Virginia creeper, clustered black snakeroot, and mayapple plants. As I am drawn into the spell of the woodland garden, I spy the snake coiled on an old tree stump, and for a moment the flowers are forgotten. I move closer and kneel to get a closer photo.

It has been a long day, what with all the goings on at my studio. Today was the last day of a four day photo shoot at My King Studio of Dance in O’Fallon, and it is not until I have unloaded all of my gear and grabbed my outdoor photo gear that I am able to get to the park. It’s quite late when I turn off Skinker Boulevard onto Lagoon Drive, hold my camera out the car window and experiment with motion blur and sodium vapor lights. 

This business of photographing every day in Forest Park

I have mentioned before the rooms that exist in Forest Park that make it a microcosm of the state in which we live (that’s why I’m showing you). I am in the room of the hidden Creek Savanna and were it not for the noise of the mowers on the other side of Union Drive, I could easily think myself in some remote rural location. Tall grasses grow along the sides of Hidden Creek,

When I arrive in the park I find the Muny to be a real hive of activity, and being the nosy sort of person I am, I set off to find out what’s going on.

“Today is the first day they are selling individual show tickets (as opposed to season’s passes)”, the young woman standing in line with a book to read informs me. And they are passing out hot Starbucks coffee and donuts to those who are present. Cool.

A beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon for a bicycle ride with my friend David Wilde. Now racing around the park on a bike is not the best way to get photographs, but it can make for interesting video.

I think I’ve mentioned before that there have been fish breeding ponds in Forest Park since the late 1880’s - an attractive place for many of the birds as well as other pescatarians. Between the stream that runs nearby and the fish ponds are the bicycle and pedestrian paths, and on a day such as today, no rain, a pleasant weather sort of day, there are bound to be both cyclists and pedestrians filling these paths.

As a long time Sci-Fi fan, I was naturally intrigued by the Science Center’s First Friday event, the St. Louis Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Festival, so I corralled my friend Shaw (not an easy task in itself) and the two of us wandered off to Forest Park and the McDonnell Planetarium. Everything was free! Except the VR experience, which was pretty cool. We floated outside the Space Station to make some repairs, but there was an explosion complete with shrapnel flying every which way and we had to make an emergency reentry to the space station via a different hatch. It’s a good thing there aren’t any

The animals were walking past in a line, neatly paired off with one of each gender when I arrived in the park. It was still raining, and I was thinking maybe this was the 39th day of such precipitation, but then on the other hand, maybe it only seemed that way. I parked between Aviation field and the Highlands golf course and, shielded from the elements by my handy umbrella, considered what I wanted to photograph first.

It was the orange plastic fencing on the other side of the rather muddy looking ditch that caught my eye, but as I considered jumping onto the far edge of it, it occurred to me I should first test the firmness of the surface that would receive me. So, I put my righ

There they were, floating around in the middle of Post Dispatch Lake, eagerly approaching any human who chanced by, on land or on the water. Two ducks of a species unknown to me and a big white goose that looks like the one my grandmother had when I was a young warthog (which, by the way, chased me around her back yard and nipped me). Could they be escapees from domestic servitude, as in Animal Farm? Or was it a more Disneyesque adventure featuring three refugees from the spring floods that find themselves stranded in America’s premier urban park without bus fare for the return home? Or maybe it’s the start of a musical number, “Meet me in Saint Louis, Duckie

We have had torrential downpours today, the ground is saturated, the trees are dripping, all our streams are full, but for the moment we have a reprieve, and although the sky is not clear, there is some light, and I walk through the woods

All around me leaves made more green, if it were possible to out shine spring, by the rain’s sweet caress. Tree trunks shrink from the light dark, dark, darkened by the sky’s relentless tears. Under the canopy of the forest a constant drip of water flows down.

Suppose gravity were to fail one day; we could all just float off into the sky! I lie on my back on a sunny April day, almost May, gazing at the azure sky and the cottony clouds that float by so far away and yet so near. And I think about falling into space. Am I the only one who worries about this sort of thing? When I mention it to others, I just get strange looks, but out here where it’s just me and big sky, I clutch the grass tightly and think that maybe, just maybe I should position myself closer to a tree, so if gravity DOES fail, I can grab hold of a branch as I float by.

As I pulled into the park (The Park, of course, America’s premier urban park - you know the one) off Union Avenue next to the statue of Union General friend Siegel, a hawk soared overhead lazily wheeling around, riding the air currents. I was a bit jealous. I use my phone to email myself notes as I walk, depending on voice transcription to jot my observations and thoughts down. The result is sometimes confusing and sometimes rather funny. “Lazily” for instance, became “laser leaf”

It was Saturday evening and I was rushing from the pressing issues of the day to join the inimitable Mark Glenshaw for another of his great Owl Prowls. The day had started (as so many recent days have) with rain and we had a number of attendees cancel, but there were a hearty few who held to the course and were going to walk the walk. 

It was prom show off time on Government Drive between the World’s Fair Pavilion and Post Dispatch lake, with daringly-clad females

My wife and I climbed the berm between the I64/Kingshighway interchange and Bowl lake next to the McDonnell Planetarium and watched the sun set. It is a noisy spot, being situated as it is beside a major street and interstate highway. If that were not enough, sirens and honking accompany each ambulance as it races to the emergency room nearby.