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Photography 101: Water

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Water in the desert.  It’s a huge factor, and not in the way you’d think.  Water shaped the desert landscape, even though you might think there’s none there.  The canyons and caverns of the American West were formed by water.  I heard a very enthusiastic Death Valley National Park ranger named Jay Snow expound on this amazing fact.  He was right.  Death Valley is all about water.  So is the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns and all those other iconic desert places.  Many of them were once part of a vast inland sea, believe it or not.  Water is ancient and powerful and wild.  When we’re not tampering with it, that is.  (and that’s a huge topic for another post on my ‘In Wilderness…’ page)

Upper Falls at Bandelier

Upper Falls at Bandelier

Carlsbad Caverns ceiling

Carlsbad Caverns ceiling

 

 

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Photography 101: Street

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street

Highway 4 near Jemez Springs, New Mexico

The Photo 101 prompt says, “try to capture an establishing shot: a wide-angle photo that sets up a scene. It might mean moving back some steps, or finding higher ground (like climbing stairs) to fit all of your scene in one shot.”  Here’s the ‘higher ground’ I used to get this shot:

scilla in NM

photo by Steve

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Photography 101: Home

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I’ve found another Word Press Photography challenge!  Joining my pals Jeff Sinon and Mariah of Great Follies, I am going to see if Photography 101 helps me to get better at picture taking.  The first assignment is ‘Home’. 

I have was born on the East Coast (Salem, MA) and lived on the West Coast for 15 years, but the Midwest is where I’ve spent most of my life.  I raised 4 kids here and brought myself through elementary school and mothering years by staying connected to woodlands and prairie.  I photograph the land quite a bit.  But home is movable.  I love to travel and feel at home in lots of places.  Where my heart is vulnerable and needs sheltering, centers around the table. 

When I share a meal, I am inviting you into my deepest home.  I am offering care and sustenance, as I need to be cared for and sustained.  The people who eat at my table are family, whether by blood or by honor.  We create Home together in mutual covenant.  It is a sacred space.  

photo by Steve
photo by Steve
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Elect Eco Leaders!

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As you head to the polls, I want to encourage you to Look UP! 

Battleship Rock

Battleship Rock, Jemez Mountains, New Mexico

Look up from your life, past your own career, beyond your own neighborhood.  Look to the wider world when you vote.  What kind of leadership are you electing for the future?  What kind of vision are you supporting?  Are you helping to put in place legislatures that will protect natural resources or exploit them?  Are you voting for human development or for the environment that hosts all life?  These are challenging times, and much hangs in the balance. 

How will you stand on the Earth? 

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Wilderness and the Myth of Nothing

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“There’s nothing out there!  It’s a barren landscape.  Why would you want to go there?  Why should we preserve that useless place?” 

Nothing out there, eh?  Well, if that’s Nothing, it’s pretty spectacular.  It’s vast, for one thing.  Stretching in all directions, as far as the eye can see and further.  And it’s limited, encased in a single droplet from a juniper berry, sweet and pungent in my mouth, yet powerful enough to stimulate a rush from my salivary glands and wet my parched throat.  You could live on Nothing.  Many have, and left their artwork in symbols on the rocks.  Yes, they had time for Art in ‘subsistence living’.  Do you have time for Art in your life?  It is barren of some things.  There are no strip malls.  There are no straight lines.  There is a meandering curve of vegetation down there.  It’s a lot more narrow than it used to be.  The air is warming.  The climate is changing.  Fecundity is fighting the curse that foists barrenness upon it. The energy of life will not give up easily.  And that’s why I want to go there.  To learn.  We must preserve it in order to let it teach us.  We are ignorant.  We ignore the wilderness and call it Nothing.  There is a story there.  A Myth.  One day we may get wise. 

the myth of nothing

The Ojito wilderness

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Saints, Souls and Scorpions

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What are we, really?  What is our essence?  Is it distinct? 

What a burning question!  How we long to know that we are special, unique, inimitable and eternal in some way.  Our egos seek definition, boundaries and refinements.  This is me!  That’s not me! But is that really how the Universe is made up?

Carl Sagan says that we are made of star stuff.  Ah!  What a beautiful idea, connecting us with the cosmos, the eternal past and the eternal future.  Thich Nhat Hahn says that we are ‘continuations’, the recycling of energy into life.  Environmental education seeks to instill the understanding that we are a part of, not apart from, the natural world. 

I love that today is a day for celebrating those connections.  All Saints’ Day, Dia de los Muertos, Steve’s Birthday, my sister Dharam’s Birthday, all of those holy notions come together today.  We ‘inter-are’, we interconnect, we are interdependent with all forms of life.  It so happens that those born on this day share the zodiac sign of Scorpio.  That reminds me that we are interconnected with forms of life that are not human.   And somewhat scary.  I saw my first wild scorpion in Texas one week ago.  He was promenading around in the light of the bathroom facility at Guadalupe National Park’s Dog Canyon campground in the middle of the night.  I was making a night visit without a flashlight but aided by the starry host. Had he not been directly under the security light, I would have missed him.  He was pale and small, and I walked right past him in my drowsy stupor.  It wasn’t until I was ensconced in the bathroom that it dawned on me.  “That was a real scorpion!” By the time I emerged, he had moved on.  I was sorry I missed a better look.  And I wish I had a photograph. 

The manifestations of star stuff that we get to see are fleeting and fascinating.  Enjoy them.  Look long and hard.  Take pictures if you like.  You may never see this combination again.  And you will see other combinations to delight you instead.  What a thing to celebrate!

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Descent

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I wish I’d taken my camera up to Alcove House at Bandelier National Monument.  I did not.  But those ladders were thrilling! Here’s a shot from tripadvisor.com:

ladder-to-alcove-house

photographer unknown

The descent is about 140 feet.  Not bad.  Another favorite spot is Holy Hill in Wisconsin.  There are 178 steps in the tower.

Holy Hill025030Hiking in New Mexico and Texas this month led us down into some beautiful canyons: Mills Canyon (1000 ft. elevation change)…

Mills Canyon…the Frey Trail down to the Visitor’s Center at Bandelier (484 ft. elevation change)…

frey trail…and our favorite, the ‘strenuous’ 1500 ft. Lost Peak trail that gave us views down into Dog Canyon and to our riparian campground on the other side.

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Of course, in hiking, what goes down frequently also comes up.  Steve turns 50 tomorrow, so we’re working on keeping our knees in shape!  Which way is more difficult depends…he beats me uphill, I beat him downhill.  (‘Course, he’s 6’2″ and I’m just 5’4″ and we’re weighted differently because of gender…and because I carry a pack and he doesn’t.)

May all your ‘down days’ include scenery like this!

(scroll down for another Halloween post ‘treat’!)

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Photo Challenge Substitute: Dress Up

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Now that I’m working from home, I find myself waiting on the Weekly Photo Challenge from WordPress like it’s the only thing I have to do.  Not so: there’s bread to bake, a pot roast to get into the slow cooker, and much more.  So, rather than stall my day, I’ve decided to come up with my own Halloween Photo Challenge.  My favorite part of Halloween has always been the dressing up.  Yeah, I worked for a theater company for 7 years.  I love costumes & make-up!  But I’ve matured beyond the days when I helped my 4 kids transform their ideas into actual outfits (‘an explosion’ is my all-time favorite) and dressed myself up for parties.  I did work as a costumed historic interpreter for the past 3 years, though, so the thrill hasn’t completely died.  My village decided that Trick or Treat day was going to be last Sunday, and I was driving from Texas to Wisconsin at that time, so I missed it.  I’d love to see some creativity in dress!  Here’s what I’ve got on file:

Handcrafted T
Photo credit: Carol Toepke
photo credit: John Meyer
photo by Steve
photo by Steve
photo credit: Kim Schultz
Tenebrous at the Fairie Festival
Not a costume nor an actual pirate. Diabetic retinopathy for reals. Still, we tried to have fun with it.
photographer unknown
photo by Marni (RIP)

What have you got in yours?

Nov. 1 addition — My sister Sarah just sent this, so I thought I’d share:

Sarah as Dr Who

And just as I post this, Word Press comes through with their challenge word….Descent.  Stay tuned!

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What’s Important? – revisited

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Way back in February of 2012, I wrote a post titled “What’s Important?”.  It was an essay describing the evolution of my  ideas of “right” (as in “being in right relationship with”, “righteousness”) from the evangelical Christian tradition to a broader, Buddhist-influenced experience.  It led to a string of great comments and word analysis. 

My moral development has been challenged lately by the speakers, storytellers, and advocates I heard at the Wilderness 50 conference.  What is “Right Ethic” or a right relationship with our planet?  Where do we experience the emergence of this ethic?  Does it come from the top down, imposed by authority in law?  Does it bubble up from feelings of connection to places, plants, animals, ecosystems, communities?  How do we evaluate our interactions with Earth?  And how important or trivial is that interaction in our daily lives? 

Having immersed myself in a 5-day arena of wilderness philosophy, it’s very strange to return to the Internet world and gaze on its landscape.  Yahoo! news articles bombard my senses: “How to Crack an Egg”, “Romantic Move Goes Awry”, “Horse Rescued from Pool”, J-Lo, Renee Zellweger, sports teams, iPhones, who wore it best, etc.  Is this what life on Earth is about?  Really?!  Even gazing on the more thorny parts of the landscape seems a little flat.  Is death news?  Is human drama relevant or manufactured?  And what about the lives of the non-human inhabitants of this planet?  The life of the Ebola virus, for example.  What do we really care about that, other than the way that humans are effected? 

What is important about Life?  Just my life?  Just human life?  Just life that I recognize?

The keynote speaker in many of the Wilderness 50 sessions was Dave Foreman.  He is a much-loved, original eco-warrior who is now 68 years old and retains the spit and vinegar of his activist days.  Raised in the Texas atmosphere of Biblical preachers, he knows how to tell a story and describe a cause.  He used this illustration in a few of his addresses: he visited a ficus tree, of the fig and banyan family, whose broad canopy is one of the biggest in the entire world.  It stretched over his head and spread out in a space bigger than a football field.  And each limb supported hundreds of leaves.  A massive thing, this tree!  He likened it to the Tree of Life and stood in awe.  And then he realized that human beings, our species, of which there are more than 7 billion individuals, represent just ONE leaf on this great tree.  That one little leaf right….there.  That’s us.  How important are we?  How aware are we of the rest of the tree?  Of how we influence it and how it influences us?  Do we think about that…often? ever?  Or do we pay more attention to our celebrities, bank accounts and pet peeves. 

What’s important?  What fills your landscape?

new-mexico.jpg

© 2014, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Cover Art

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The weekly photo challenge came out on Friday morning, as usual.  Only this Friday, I was setting up camp in the Dog Canyon campground in Guadalupe National Park, a wilderness park in Texas where there is no Internet (ya think?).  I returned to Milwaukee just this evening, after 2 days of driving with only a 3.5 hour stopover to sleep in a rest area off the interstate in Missouri.  Needless to say, I’m tired.  This is a going to be a quick post.  But the Cover Art example on the Daily Post reminded me so much of a shot I took during this 2.5 week journey, that I have to share it.  To see the prompt and the example, click here.  My ‘magazine’ is a periodical covering aspects of wilderness preservation.  (Having spent 5 days at the Wilderness 50 Conference during this trip, I have much more to say about that…but I won’t go into it…yet.)  And here is the cover shot:

Cover art

I’ll be sharing a lot more about Wilderness and environmental ethics on this blog in upcoming posts.  Stay tuned, please!