Tag Archives: nature photography
Weekly Photo Challenge: Who You Callin’ Dense?
I appreciate the beauty found in the thick of things, like a solid mass of redwood roots…
…or lush undergrowth…
…or tangled hunks of kelp…
…or billowy cumulus clouds.
I like my environment filled in, robust, varied and fecund. A sparse monoculture is not my aesthetic ideal. 
There is great wisdom in diversity, and intelligence in supporting it.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Green is Easy on My Eyes
I work for a Conservation Foundation. We try very hard to be green! Protecting watersheds and wildlife habitat while preventing the development of natural lands into human-dominated environments is a labor of passion and commitment for me. Green is not just my favorite color and the highlight in my eyes, it is my preferred world view! Here’s my green gallery:
It IS Easy Being Green!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Atop
Mountaintop experiences give you a spiritual perspective. The sky is bigger; the minutiae of the earth is even smaller.
Humility and awe meet you at the top of your climb.
The view (and the climb!) is breathtaking.
And the opportunity to stay atop a while and ponder your place on the crust of Earth is a special reward.
Seek higher ground. It’s good for your soul.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadow
The shadow side is dark but not evil.
It may look like a negative, but it is not bad.
A shadow presents a contrasting view.
And may highlight something you might otherwise have missed.
So I try to appreciate the shadow side as well as the sunny side. After all, we need both in order to see the richness and depth in life.
Flowers! Just because….
The sun peeked out today for the first time in about a week. Cold, gray, snowy, icy, cloudy, foggy Wisconsin tends to get me down. Getting up in the dark, working through a sunless day, and then going home in the dark seems to pull all the shape out of life. And the news is even more depressing. So, I’m injecting some color and light into things with this post. Enjoy!
Weekly Photo Challenge: The Nature of Grace
This is the challenge of a lifetime. Grace is my middle name – for reals! I have been striving to live gracefully ever since my parents explained to me what that name means, hence the blog motto above. I find subtle differences in the nuance of the definition now that I’m learning Buddhism and leaving the Christian world view that I was raised with in my background.
There is something of elegance, but not a worldly elegance.
There is an element of casual generosity, an unearned favor and abundance.
The Buddhist perspective lends the flavor of ego-less-ness to it; it is beauty without attachment, as ephemeral as frost.
To live a life of grace is to open yourself mindfully each moment to being in the flow of the kindness of the Universe, in a way. To walk in harmony with my surroundings – people, places, things – and to be a living benediction is my aspiration. It sounds pretty lofty and ethereal, like a cloud, and I don’t claim to be doing the metaphor justice. But I might as well aim high in my practice.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Ambience (or Ambiance)
This week’s challenge reminds me of that old joke, “Why are there no restaurants on the moon?”
“No atmosphere.”
So, what’s my ambience? or ambiance? (seems there are two acceptable spellings). It’s Wisconsin. It’s January. The light is distant, southerly, and often behind clouds.
The air is dry, sharp, and very cold (even in my living room!). 
The mood is stark and immediate, like survival, but it brings a certain excitement to the senses. We are alert, light on our feet.
There’s a certain pride in the folks who are out and about in this weather. 
They are hardy and happy, eager and resilient.
There’s something in the silence of snow – in the wide, white spaces – that brings out a solitude from which we derive a certain strength.
Welcome to Winter Wisconsin. I find it refreshing.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Path
I can totally relate to Cheri’s picture of taking a boardwalk path through a fragile eco-system.
I can also relate to my personal path changing dramatically in 2016. I, too, moved to a new place – to be closer to my job – and then experienced an abrupt twist in the path when my boss resigned. Paths can always lead to the unexpected, even a path you’ve traveled many times before.
Humans have a strong tendency to try to control and predict, to make crooked paths straight, to eliminate as much random chaos as possible. And that means we can often be frustrated, disappointed, or anxious on the path we’re traveling. But we don’t have to be. We can be delighted, wonder-filled and accepting. The path is what it is. How you travel and with what baggage is up to you.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Anticipation
One of my favorite Advent anthems I used to sing with our church choir was titled “Anticipation”. It was a jewel of tight 20th Century harmony supporting a beautiful poem whose author I cannot find. It goes something like this:
The sky is black
The dawn is but a promise
and here I wait
impatient for the light.
My dearest friend is coming back
Tomorrow.
Anticipation fills the endless night
and soon the sky will fill with golden sunlight.
The day will break with joy beyond compare,
and I will fly…I will fly…
to meet him in the air.
I haven’t got the music or the lyrics to cite the source, but it haunts me in these long nights of darkness waiting for my dearest friend, The Sun, who warms me and enlightens my soul. Soon we will celebrate the Solstice, the return of the Sun, and days will lengthen steadily. That is a hope and a joy to anticipate!
scillagrace 