The stones were carved from mountain rocks such a long time ago that thyme has re-colonized them. All the way to the top of church towers. A Provence village is a taming of the wild, a wilding of the tame, an ancient balance of sun and shade, a garden. And each fountain is a miracle (see "a walk in provence", a new series in OTHER SEASONS).

Ice, further north, is different. Here, in Toronto, it is a sad and mean thing, the greyish byproduct of snow and traffic fumes. Not so on the north shore of Lake Huron. No so on Lake Superior. Ice there is pure and glorious and free. If you look into it, you won't see the mangled remains of human obsessions. What you'll see is a blueprint of the world. I fell under its spell.

There are three new series in WINTER: ice anatomy; superior 1, frozen experiments; superior 2, blue song. 

    I was treated as one of them, a kindness I will never forget. They knew I was not, of course: my skin is of a single (rather dull) color, while theirs are riots of yellows and greens and blues and reds. My shape did not impress them much either--entirely predictable, they said, why do you humans all look the same? They were concerned about my breathing, this weird tube which kept me on the surface of things. And my swimming left to be desired. Overall, they saw me as a well intentioned loser hardly able to function in their world. But fish are extremely polite. They went on feeding and mating, exploring canyons of corals and underwater forests, and trying not to stare at me. A large Chaetodon, more curious, or less busy than its siblings, followed me for a long time, its big round unblinking eye full of surprise. One request they made: no photos. You can look, they said, and enjoy, but do not try to turn anything down here into an image. Just snorkel. Flow alongside us. The problem with you humans is that you want to make the world your own. 

    This is why there are no pictures of fish in "yucatan medley", a new series in OTHER SEASONS (and because my camera does not like water). Butterflies, yes, and spiders and pelicans. But fish? No. Even though they were the most intense experience of my trip. When I close my eyes, I see them, so graceful, a riot of colors.     

The Yucatan ocean, brimming over with light and tickled by a thousand yellow fish, was in a playful mood that day. It churned out wave after wave and threw them against the rocks with peels of laughter. Sheer delight as spray obscured the sun. I danced naked on the warm sand. There was no one on the beach but an ancient Mayan God who refused to tell me his name (see "Ocean frolicks", a new series in OTHER SEASONS).

They are handsome and they know it. In best narcissistic tradition, trees spend an inordinate amount of time generating their own image in lakes and rivers. Even puddles get enlisted in the service of arboreal vanity: any body of water will do, as a short walk by the Crowe river makes clear. But who's making use of whom here? And who's the greater Narcissus? The Crowe, near Marmora, is a wily river. The blurred reflections it yields display its own surface--textured by winds, encumbered by half-melted ice, full of sky. I was in good company. (See "by the river crowe", a new series in WINTER.)  

Zinnias are the flowers of my childhood. My mother and I would go to the garden in the morning, she carrying cutters and I a wicker basket as big as myself. We made huge bouquets. "They will keep sadness away," she said. And they did, most of the time (see "zinnias", a new series in SUMMER).

Maybe the universe we are familiar with is only one among many. I have stumbled upon what seems to be another world while doing photography, and felt something of Gulliver's amazement the day he woke up in Lilliput: here is another reality, infinitely small, which I did not know existed. Mosses (SPRING: travels in Lilliput-1) and lilies (travels in Lilliput-2) have dramas of their own, matters of life and death. They pursue them with passion and utter indifference to human concerns. Are they even aware of our presence?

It was not really a surprise, there is always a frost in May. But it was a shock. A summery April, bolstered by much talk about climate change (has not somebody claimed that Canada might be one of a handful of countries actually benefiting from the warming of the earth?) had lulled my tulips and I into imagining this year might be different. There would be no frost in May. Summer was here for the believer. They grew with wild abandon, these tulips of mine, while I, ignoring the warnings of several trees who wisely held back their leaves, planted tomatoes. The poor things did not stand a chance, they died during the night. My tulips drooped. They may not recover. To say the truth, I felt rather rough myself. Until the sun rose, this creator of beauty. It made the ice sparkle and I ran for my camera...  (see May frost, a new series in SPRING) 

Images of the human are usually excluded from this site but I had to make an exception for the fishermen of Caponga: their work, their bodies and their boats are immemorial, as ancient as the ocean. The endurance of these men belongs to nature (See Caponga-1, a new series in OTHER SEASONS). Another exception is made in Caponga-2, the person is so small under the sky, and walks the beach with so much respect... Maybe Caponga is one of the rare places where humans are nature.

PS: Caponga is in North-Eastern Brazil, near Fortaleza, Cearra. 

They do feel like other seasons, these climates of distant places. They are neither spring, nor summer, nor autumn, nor winter, as we know them in Ontario. Nature in Brazil, or in Arizona, follows a different song. OTHER SEASONS, a new album, will gather pictures of other lands and their unfamiliar seasons.