Morden Mine Nanaimo

Chapter 2: Morden Mine
My home of Nanaimo, British Columbia was colonized by coal miners. It has a rich history with many wild stories to go along with it. Mining was dirty business, (pardon the pun) and if you can imagine the blackness of a misty mining coastline which was ruled by the sound of the boss whistle, it could give you shivers. But, the beauty of nature has healed those holes. Growing slowly over the years in the rich earth, it is now a utopia for anyone who is willing to walk around a corner to look. Many of the sites I have visited for the Ditch Girl Shoots are rich with coal mining stories.


Morden Mine is one of those places. Although not where I originally drew my inspiration for this project, it was where I felt an overwhelming urge to put it into motion. While working on another project that involved spending much time there, I felt the strongest sense of the passion that evolves out of perservering through turmoil.

Morden Mine was at one point clear cut and dug up with men working long exhausting days, many of them losing their lives to the coal dreams. I can only imagine the smell of stagnent water, mules and sweat. The sounds of the tipple and the creaking of the earth as she was wiped of her coal.

Yet today, it is a magical forest overgrown with second growth trees and lush native plants. There is a special place down the path where wild geraniums grow and an old twisted tree looks like the perfect place for a centaur to sit a while and play a pan pipe.

The most profound beauty is found in a sleeping log that lies across a pond, resting its tip on a little island in the middle. I have never seen weathered lines in wood as beautiful as this. It is as though its strength to endure the years and rest there in peace has been rewarded with rare beauty. I can only hope to see my own wrinkles with as much appreciation.

This is my utopia. I live in an age where there is no land left undiscovered, new ideas are few and far between, like trying to register a .com, they have been already thought of and taken. Yet, here in this patch of woods I see the new growth thriving over the used up soil and I am inspired to begin my Ditch Girls project.

Chapter 3: .....looking for models, must be totally comfortable with partial nudity in public!

Ditch Girls

So here it is. My very first blog, unless you consider facebook updates in that catagory.

I want to share a project I have been working on with you. It is called Ditch Girls. Many years ago I was driving down a windy country road, well actually my bf was driving and I was staring out the window at all the tall weeds shining in the late afternoon sun. My mind wandered and somehow I saw myself on a ladder straddling the ditch taking photos of women dressed in the weeds.

The visions of women in weeds would not leave my head, but I run my own boutique, am a mother, fire dancer and event planner and have very little spare time for extra projects in my life. So for years, about 5 to be precise, I left it to only imagining and went about my other adventures.

Then this June I had a contract to help facilitate a major fire production called Whizzbang: Stoked! The production was based on Nanaimo's coal mining history. And the research took me to many old mining areas and on long walks down train tracks.

The spring had been really wet this year, which had made the plants jurassic in size. And being surrounded by all the beautiful thriving native plants made my desire to start doing these photo shoots really strong.

Then I discovered a place called Mordin Mine. What happened there was what gave me the overwhelming urge to begin. I will explain more tomorrow. But for now I will leave you with one of the photos from the first photo shoot that I did and offer you my website in case you would like to see more.

Good night,
Willow