A day of beauty and surprise

Since summer ended, I’ve been itching to photograph new locations with the drone. So I marked my calendar, and on the appointed day drove northwest to the area of Caledon, Ontario.

I planned my first stop a few miles below the headwaters of the Credit River near Orangeville. From there it runs and curves and falls, until near Mississauga it empties into Lake Ontario.

I launched the drone near Belfountain, where a picturesque suspension bridge overlooks a waterfall.

Falls and suspension bridge over the Credit

I had chosen this date because the weather forecast called for sun all day. But now in early afternoon, I began to worry. The sky was becoming disturbed, with complex cloud formations forming in the west.

At different altitudes I could see sections of overcast, the ice crystals of cirrus clouds and cirrocumulus-ripple clouds (near the top right), and long streaks of cirrus uncinus (sometimes called “mare’s tails”).

I was concerned that all that weather converging might obscure the sun at my last planned stop of the day.

Adding to my anxiety, the Credit runs close to dense forests, which I realized would make flying complicated. So, as much as I enjoyed the challenge of positioning the drone safely beneath the bridge – making sure to avoid running it into the bushes and trees all round – I was also anxious about the sun being covered later on, when I would particularly need it.

So, having taken several pictures of the bridge and falls, I landed the drone and moved on.

When I planned this trip, the maps showed several lakes next to Caledon Village. Thinking they might allow for beautiful photographs, I made that area my next destination.

But before I had reached the town, I realized with a shock that those lakes were something quite different from what I expected.

I discovered that Caledon is prime sand and gravel country. The materials for much of our construction industry is wrenched from the ground right here. I parked beside the locked entrance to one of the gravel pits, wondering what I would see.

As the drone ascended, I was shocked by the extent of the devastation. These were no recreational lakes.

An enormous acreage like a moonscape came into view. Vast mountains of raw materials destined for construction sites met my eyes.

In the distance, that chain of lakes suggested the work of previous decades. Once the pits were mined and exhausted, they were allowed to fill with water. But on these lakes I saw no sign of recreation, no boats, no human life, only the extraction machinery standing nearby.

Frankly, I felt torn.

On one hand, some of the aggregate mountains were truly beautiful, like the ridges of sandy deserts. This one reminded me of a blooming flower. On the other hand, the destruction of natural land was emphasized by straggler trees that had escaped the machinery.

I had to recognize – reluctantly – that we desperately need raw materials, bricks and mortar, to build homes in an age where homelessness is a major affliction. But what I was seeing through the drone’s lens confronted me with the cost to our mother Earth. We’ve littered the landscape, the matrix which provides our basic needs like oxygen and water, and on which our wildlife depends, with vast unnatural deserts.

I documented as much of this difficult site as I could tolerate, then landed the drone and headed south for my final location of the day.

This stop was the Cheltenham Badlands, a unique and beautiful area with an intriguing history. Although it’s much smaller, it is reminiscent of rock formations in badlands of South Dakota.

In recent days you can see that it’s been protected by long pedestrian walkways. But 450 million years ago, this area was the bottom of an ancient sea. With tectonic shifts through the ages, it rose above the surface and dried out, forming the soil, nurturing the forests.

And then, during the last two centuries, the land was cleared by European settlers in order to grow crops.

Topsoil erodes, revealing shale patterns

With the protective forests gone, the shallow topsoil began to be eroded by rain, melting snow, and cycles of freezing and thaw. The shale below it was exposed.

In time, the farmers abandoned the site, leaving the forest to regenerate wherever there was sufficient top soil. And where there wasn’t, this unique landscape of ridges and gullies remained visible.

Seen from above, some of the rock patterns suggest human characteristics. For a moment, I thought I saw a person’s hand here, with the thumb on top

I imagined the shape of a hand in the rock

From another vantage point, one could imagine a sculpture of the outstretched legs of vacationers lying on a sandy beach.

The ridges and gullies suggest the long legs of beachgoers

Drones are excellent at displaying the patterns of the landscape. But a big challenge for aerial photographers is that, when shot from above, everything, even hills and valleys, can appear to be flat.

That’s where the late afternoon sun comes to our aid. Shining from just above the horizon, it casts long shadows which help to emphasize the topography of this area.

You can see how important the shadowed contours are to these photographs. That’s why I’d been hoping all day for sunshine.

And I was lucky. The sun broke through the complex cloud patterns that obscured it, and the flying camera was able to take detailed photographs of these creases in the rock.

Here we see white cracks in the shale, caused by massive upheavals long before history, extending vertically in this image, reaching from one edge of the badlands to the other.

For all we know, those cracks may extend outward for many miles, unseen beneath the soil.

By now I’d taken a lot of photographs and the drone’s power was getting low, so I landed it to replace the battery. Then I launched it again, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything in the golden light of this remarkable landscape.

The sun was setting as I finally landed the drone and packed up, concluding a really satisfying day packed with beauty and surprise.

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