SPRING BEAUTY DUO, also known as INDIAN POTATO [ click photo for next . . . ]`
(V.9.2008) (Claytonia lanceolata) Skyview . . .
On the road in the American Northwest.

INDIAN POTATO!

A member of the Purslane Family, with the early-flowering
Spring Beauty, the entire plant is edible. Flowers. Leaves.
And especially the mini tuber-like corms. About the size of
a dime or quarter, you can dig them out one by one, fill
a small cooking pan within half an hour, wash them in
a nearby stream or spring, and stir-fry. Like wonderful
chestnut-flavored potatoes. Delicious!

Pocket Gophers eat them, too. I've found caches with
dozens of neatly sorted and stacked Indian Potato together
with pealed Lupine root (poisonous to us) placed together,
and then abandoned after spring snowmelt. Under 10 feet
of snow, it doesn't freeze. Just ask these little Pocket Gophers.
They're active all winter. And come snowmelt, I guess that
get rid of all this old money they have in the bank, and start
over again with fresh roots! Go Gophers!


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from 100 MINIATURES

(78) The Dionysian longs for the cold
crystalline nights of high mountain Winter,
and the steady measured movement of ordered,
silent stars;

The Apollonian longs for the rushing sound
of glacier torrents, and the wild rhythms
and summer passion of earth-bound fire.

Which Man or Woman, or Art, or Culture,
would not sanction their perfect, fertile
union?

HERE

On the way,
many beautiful camps
offer themselves for the night.

But to know,
when to keep walking and
when to stay,

and, after stopping,
to know without a doubt
that this place, where one stands,

here,

I am at home.

Hummingbird Pass,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, X.29.2008

ON CARS & CAR CULTURE and HERE are part of
THE LITTLE CLAVIER please preview 150 of 631 pages
w/ my black & white photography [opens in new window]
Let me know what you think!

Please visit my picture-poems.com MOUNTAIN WATER print gallery Above is a set of recent flowing water images. (Mouseover for TITLES & CONTROLS!)

I might just mention here that, following the simple, basic ethical principle, First, do no harm, I never use cars or jeeps or or snowmachines. Instead, I do everything on foot, bike or ski. I think this in a deep and direct way affects my work, and how I see and experience the world generally. So know thaty all the photos collected here were approached on foot -- including all the in between spaces -- sometimes involving journeys of weeks, or even months.

I would not want to work any other way . . .

All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999-2015 picture-poems.com
(created: III.25.2011)