The Art of Sticking Around (and Falling Apart)

The Winter Forest

These images depict a small but dense winter forest with a mix of cedar trees, fallen branches, and signs of human or natural intervention. The snow-covered ground contrasts with the dark tree trunks and tangled undergrowth, creating a sense of stillness and quiet. I have been visiting this site for several years. The sticks, broken branches, and occasional chairs (they appear to come and go from nowhere) seem to be shuffled around from visit to visit, moving from place to place. The sign that warned you of aggressive coyotes is being used, face down, as part of a bridge across a small culvert at the entrance. It is face down, apparently no longer an urgent issue.

In several photos, the trees stand tall and close together, with a mix of green foliage and bare limbs weaving through the image frame. The atmosphere feels somewhat untouched, with really only faint traces of disturbance. The trees have been carefully placed here. At one time, they were likely a garden of shrubs grown by a local farmer, then when abandoned, grew to their current size.

In another photo, you see a makeshift wooden structure resembling a rudimentary shelter or lean-to standing among the trees. The arrangement of branches suggests human intervention, possibly an abandoned shelter or a temporary woodland construction. The snow on the branches and the empty surroundings add to a sense of isolation and mystery. They have telltale signs of things unseen, just slightly covered.

In another photo is a small, partially collapsed wooden structure that sits atop a hole in the snow-covered ground; it is surrounded by dense trees and undergrowth. The scene appears more enclosed, with overhanging branches framing the view. The placement of the wood and sticks suggests either a natural accumulation or an incomplete or abandoned project. Over the years, other items have covered this hole, including a blue-painted board with the word DANGER printed across it. Eventually, that board was used in a campfire and now is lost somewhere under the snow. There are other similar holes, but only this one, near a small exit you must crouch down to use, gets this treatment.

These photos capture a quiet, almost eerie winter landscape where nature and human presence subtly interact. The emphasis on texture, light, colour, and composition evokes themes of decay, impermanence, and the passage of time. A chair, usually here, is now near the edge of the woods.

The photographs capture a landscape in transition—between habitation and abandonment, structure and collapse, nature and human intervention. The dense cedar trees, tangled branches, and makeshift wooden constructions suggest the presence of recent activity and the quiet persistence of nature actively reclaiming the space. The snow-covered ground functions as both a visual blank slate and a record of disturbance, where fallen branches and human-made structures stand as ghostly reminders of actions now past.

Over the years, the most striking aspect of the images I have taken is their ambivalence toward human presence. The wooden lean-to in one image suggests an act of creation—perhaps shelter-building or play—yet its decay signals impermanence. This structure has been repeatedly moved from one site to another in this tiny forest. In another image, already addressed, a collapsed arrangement of sticks over a dark opening evokes a burial site or an entrance to something unknown, hinting at themes of disappearance or secrecy. These images resist the romanticism of untouched nature, aligning more with the New Topographics movement’s interest in landscapes shaped by subtle, often unseen forces. People in these images would be inappropriate.

These photographs also play with the tension between order and disorder. The vertical repetition of trees creates a structured rhythm, while the chaotic sprawl of fallen branches disrupts that sense of stability. Oddly shaped trees break the order and rhythm of the forest. This interplay mirrors broader ecological and cultural questions: What is built and abandoned? How do we mark a landscape, and how does it erase us in return?

Ultimately, these photos linger in a space of quiet disquiet. The winter forest is not a site of pristine wilderness but a layered, evolving space where human and natural histories intersect. In capturing these traces of absence, they ask us to consider what remains and what fades long after the builders have left.

As I walk through the forest again, I wonder, are those sticks over the hole a warning or an invitation? Is the surrendered lean-to a memory someone stopped caring about. It has all the romance of childhood fort-building, but it’s also falling apart, sagging under the weight of its own ambition. Either way, it suggests someone thought about these things briefly before moving on. And over the years, all of these elements, the sticks, the ropes, the chairs and gathered rocks were all somewhere else the last time I photographed them.

That’s the trick with these photos of this place: They don’t lean on straightforward narratives. They don’t say, “Look at the beauty of decay” or “mourn the loss of the wild.” They just sit there, letting you decide whether this is a crime scene or a campsite, whether you feel nostalgia or unease. They don’t make grand declarations, but they make you look.

Maybe that’s the point. These aren’t landscapes. They’re propositions. They ask, What do you do with a place like this? Walk away? Stay a while? Pick up a stick and add to the pile? Whatever your answer, the forest doesn’t care. It was here before, and it’ll be here after.

Look at the lean-to. It’s just barely a structure—more of a suggestion than a shelter. Someone built it, or tried to, and now it’s falling apart, held together by habit more than intention. The sticks over the hole are the same—deliberate but unspoken, like a gesture left unfinished. Over the years, this spot has gathered and lost things, shifting in small, almost imperceptible ways. Nothing dramatic. Just the slow work of weather, of people passing through, of things being forgotten and found again.

These photographs don’t make a big deal about any of this. They don’t ask you to read them as a statement or a warning. They just hold you in that in-between space—between habitation and abandonment, between making something and letting it go. They remind you that a place doesn’t have to be untouched to feel wild and that the traces we leave behind don’t always amount to a story. Sometimes, they’re just traces.

These photographs offer no grand pronouncements. They don't demand interpretation or warning. Instead, they invite you to occupy that liminal space—between habitation and abandonment, between creation and release.

Perhaps this explains why I continue photographing this location. It resists resolution. It refuses categorical definition. It simply persists. The trees will remain standing, snow will arrive and depart, and whatever structures emerge here will eventually succumb to entropy. Yet something essential endures—the quiet dialogue between place and time, between presence and absence.

Today’s essay is a bit different than usual, I’m working on writing descriptions of my work. Sometimes, I write essays, sometimes review books and videos and sometimes focus on one of my projects. You can support me by subscribing to my Substack, or re-stack the article so it gets seen by others. Re-stacking is really appreciated.