Made with Xara Thank you for visiting this photographic sanctuary. These images were made within a few miles of my home on one of the most beautiful isles on Earth.Welcome to HornbyAN ISLAND OLDER THAN SUVs...Seeing Hornby Island in just three dimensions, we overlook the crucial fourth: time. Hornby was born, writes Olivia Fletcher in Hammerstone, of “a hundred thousand tons of bubbling basalt” just south of the equator, 350 million years ago. Riding 4,700 miles north on massive submerged plates at a few centimetres a year, Hornby’s rocky bones were delivered here in just 185 million years. Over succeeding eons, Hornby weathered four oceanic retreats and advances during glacial and interglacial periods. Rising from the sea each time, this unique island was layered by five cycles of sedimentary laydowns. We walk the island’s old bones today between Ford Cove and Heron Rock, Phipps Point and Shingle Spit, Helliwell and Tribune Bay. Sandpiper’s shale is another layering. Pterodoctyls once flew here. Though I cannot photograph the swooping ichtyornis and baptornis of the Cretaceous, I can point my lens at their tern and grebe-like descendants, and the gulls that have resided here since prehistoric times. 10 million years ago, there was no water in the Gulf of Georgia. Hornby was a hill amidst grasslands, where prong-horn antelope and mastodons roamed. On present-day Olsen’s Farm grazed pliohippes, precursor to Hornby’s horses. 10,500 years ago, Hornby was a rocky barren boomerang about one-mile long by a quarter-mile across. “There was no Denman Island.” 5,000 years ago, Pentlatch-Coast Salish visitors from Deep Bay harvested here. The first foragers on Hornby endured long winters of seemingly endless rains of water and ash. They left behind bowls and pestles, knives and hammerstones. This several hundred year old birth glyph was placed at a birthing place near a stream where salmon spawned. When we stop to touch the stones and listen to the trees, we can hear whispers from long ago.Light first draws the eye. Then composition arrangesitself within the frame.
Made with Xara
Thank you for visiting this
photographic sanctuary.
These images were made
within a few miles of my
home on one of the most
beautiful isles on Earth.
Welcome to Hornby
AN ISLAND OLDER THAN SUVs...
Seeing Hornby Island in just three dimensions, we overlook the crucial fourth: time. Hornby was born,
writes Olivia Fletcher in Hammerstone, of “a hundred thousand tons of bubbling basalt” just south of the
equator, 350 million years ago. Riding 4,700 miles north on massive submerged plates at a few
centimetres a year, Hornby’s rocky bones were delivered here in just 185 million years. Over succeeding
eons, Hornby weathered four oceanic retreats and advances during glacial and interglacial periods.
Rising from the sea each time, this unique island was layered by five cycles of sedimentary laydowns.
We walk the island’s old bones today between Ford Cove and Heron Rock, Phipps Point and Shingle
Spit, Helliwell and Tribune Bay. Sandpiper’s shale is another layering.
Pterodoctyls once flew here. Though I cannot photograph the swooping ichtyornis and baptornis of the
Cretaceous, I can point my lens at their tern and grebe-like descendants, and the
gulls that have resided here since prehistoric times. 10 million years ago, there
was no water in the Gulf of Georgia. Hornby was a hill amidst grasslands, where
prong-horn antelope and mastodons roamed. On present-day Olsen’s Farm
grazed pliohippes, precursor to Hornby’s horses. 10,500 years ago, Hornby was a
rocky barren boomerang about one-mile long by a quarter-mile across. “There
was no Denman Island.” 5,000 years ago, Pentlatch-Coast Salish visitors from
Deep Bay harvested here. The first foragers on Hornby endured long winters of
seemingly endless rains of water and ash. They left behind bowls and pestles,
knives and hammerstones. This several hundred year old birth glyph was placed
at a birthing place near a stream where salmon spawned. When we stop to touch
the stones and listen to the trees, we can hear whispers from long ago.
Light first draws the eye.
Then composition arranges
itself within the frame.
