prairie long poems

sticks/stones The fourth piece in this series...the left panel is an image of the standing stones at Stenness, not far from Stromness in the Orkneys, while the right panel is an image of 'dolphins' in the Fraser River North Arm near the river's mouth. The dolphins are the pilings that log booms are moored to as they are brought into the river, prior to being hauled upstream to lumber mills. They also help as navigational guides for boats heading up or down the river, as the landscape here is very flat and in a fog the river banks can be hard to see. The central image was taken from the window of the hotel I was staying in at Stromness, looking out over the harbour. Stromness was the last port that many ships called into before heading for North America, including all the Hudson's Bay Company ships. They collected water and food here, and often picked up a few crew members as well, as Orcadians were known as hardy sailors, well-suited to the North Atlantic. Those who stayed in Rupert's Land (the HBC holdings in North America) were likewise well-suited to the harsh life of the barrenlands and boreal forest of the fur-trade environment. In the hotel itself, the public bar is called the Hudson Room, and has a large map of Canada on the wall showing all the Hudson's Bay posts. The large standing stone circle at Stenness is about an hour's fast walk from Stromness, and dates to the neolithic age about 5,000 years ago.