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!