Tag Archives: nature photography

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Community

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Community – is that a portmanteau of ‘common’ and ‘unity’?  What is the unifying thing that all life has in common?  Is it the everything particle?  Is it a Divine Source? Would you just call it Life?  Our community home is a beautiful, spinning sphere wrapped in a blanket of atmosphere.  Sounds cozy!  We dance atop this sphere with all kinds of creatures.  A community dance, an every day Festival, a holiday (holy day)…on ice!  Here’s where my stream of consciousness lands:

winter path

Whether you’ve got skis or boots or hoofs or paws or fins or feathers or roots, we are gliding together on a slippery path.  Let’s hold each other up and work together in common unity!

 

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Grand

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What is Grand? My first thought was of grand opera, but I’ve got to agree with the WordPress folks.  There’s nothing that beats Mother Nature for being truly big and dramatic.  I love this planet!  I’m betting that there are going to be a lot of stunning photos posted.  As my second post of the morning, this one will be brief.  We’re gearing up for some wintry snowfall here in Wisconsin, but I gotta tell ya, it’s not going to be nearly as grand as what they get in California.  Here’s a shot I took in the month of April at Lassen Volcanic National Park.  Gives new meaning to the line from the carol “Snow had fallen, snow on snow….in the bleak midwinter long ago.”

Lassen

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Advent Day #5 – Snow

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Reblogging from 2 years ago with the rubric of a list of calendar gifts in lieu of Advent brings me to the topic of Snow.  Do you get snow in your part of the world?  I lived in California for 15 years without it.  I’ve lived in the Midwest for more than 30.  This year, Steve will be delivering mail throughout the winter.  He’s going to get out there 6 days a week in Milwaukee weather, whatever it may turn out to be.  This is real life!  I like that he’s not afraid to meet it face to face. 

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Believe it or not, we had a green Christmas here in Milwaukee, and we STILL haven’t gotten snow.  I appreciated not worrying about my kids driving on the roads to visit me, and I’ve enjoyed going hiking in the warmer temperatures.  But I also enjoy snow hiking, even though I don’t own snowshoes.  The transformation of familiar objects and landscapes in winter is always interesting.  Without foliage, the contours of the land come out more strikingly.  With snowfall, they soften and blossom like ripe flesh.  We headed out to Lapham Peak yesterday in bright sunshine.  We discovered that they had created snow for some of their cross country ski trails.  Man-made, electricity-dependent snow.  Because this is Wisconsin, dammit, and we just can’t wait around for Mother Nature; winter break is NOW and it oughta be snowing already!  (sigh)  It’s sad to me that humans can’t slow down to fall in step with the planet.  We keep pushing it to keep abreast of us.  It’s like watching parents push their toddlers to be grown up by signing them up for language, dance and art lessons before they even hit nursery school.  It smells manipulative and inauthentic.  I am sniffing around in the other direction, trying to learn to open up to what exists.

The snow-making machine looks like a lunar landing module.

The boardwalk through the wetland has buckled and twisted in the process of freezing and thawing.  It reminds me of the changeable dynamic of a journey, a path in constant flux.  It tells me that my progress was not intended to be in a straight line, that meanders are natural and meaningful.  And that makes them interesting and challenging.  They invite me to adjust my balance, to pay attention, to dance with them.

 

 

I have no idea what is around the bend.  There’s a new year coming up, full of mystery and thrilling movement.  I am feeling less afraid and unsafe in this realization, and more eager to take the fun house walk.

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Re-inventing Advent

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Two years ago, when I first started blogging, I ran a series of posts every day in the month of December.  This series was in lieu of an Advent calendar, which had been a big tradition of my family.  Back then, I had only a handful of faithful blog followers, instead of more than 400.  So, I intend to re-gift these entries.  After all, I am in the resale business! (Check out Scholar & Poet Books – there’s  a link in the side bar.) For my family and for Helen (God bless you!), these will be repeats.  For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy opening your daily presents!

‘Tis A Season

When I was a kid, I always had an Advent calendar to count down the days from the first of December until Christmas Eve.  I had the same tradition with my own kids.  The secrets hidden behind each door were often Scripture verses.  It was important to tell the story of Jesus’ birth and make sure my kids knew that was “the reason for the season”.   There are other little treasures we could open each day, though.  When my son was taking German in high school, they sold Advent calendars with chocolates in them.   My father used to make us calendars out of magazine pictures and various old rotogravures with fortune cookie strips for the daily message.  We made our own calendars for each other, too, with simple crayon symbols behind the cut out doors.   The season has multiple images in my mind, and now I’m trying to figure out what it means to me at this point in my life.

I will always have respect for Jesus and the Christian story.  They were supremely important in my life for many years.  My spirituality was formed around them.  I think it is good to examine and re-examine beliefs, though, and strive for genuine and authentic expressions of experience.  My experience is expanding as I age, and I want to include more of those experiences in my belief system.  I want to include respect for other cultures, other religions, other parts of the planet and the universe.  I have a sister who is Sikh, a son who identifies with Buddhism and Native American spirit stories and a father who once taught science.  There is a lot going on all over the world in this season.  What do I want to acknowledge or celebrate?

My youngest daughter has always loved this season.  She used to go to the local Hallmark store in the middle of the summer to look at the Christmas village set up there.  What was that about?  Sparkly, pretty, cozy, homey, yummy expectations of treats?  Possibly.  Peace, love, joy?  Possibly.  Emotions?  Definitely.  Why not focus on pleasurable human senses and emotions?  Up in the northern hemisphere, we are spinning away from the sun and plunging into a cold, dark time.  Light becomes more precious, warmth becomes holy, food is life itself.  Why not celebrate that dependence?  We are sustained by the sun and the producers of this planet that make food from its energy.  Evergreen trees remind us of that.  Gifts remind us that we receive from the producers; we are consumers.  Gratitude is the attitude of the season.  Giving is the action that sustains us.

Vernon Marsh, sunset (click to enlarge)

I sent a text message to each of my kids this morning saying that the gift for Day #1 this season is sunshine.  The sun is shining here, showering us with Vitamin D and all kinds of other goodies we need to be healthy and happy.   We are blessed, saved, sustained, given life in this universe by an amazing set of circumstances that we did not originate.   However you acknowledge that and whoever taught you to acknowledge that deserves attention.  May you be happy as you think and act in awareness of this.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unexpected

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Surprise!  It’s not what you expected.  How do you respond?  Laughter.  Disappointment.  Curiosity.  Do you set it ‘right’?  How did you come to have an expectation about this, anyway?  Expectations produce emotions.  They set you up, mostly for suffering, if you become attached to those expectations.  If the discovery that you have harbored some expectation takes you by surprise, but you’re not emotionally invested in it, it can be funny.  “Oh, yeah, I guess I wasn’t expecting that.  But there it is.  How interesting!”  Steve’s favorite story about this goes something like this:

A Zen master who had recently had a mini-stroke was invited to perform a traditional ceremony of calligraphy.  He had practiced this art for years and participated in the ritual often.  He calmly took his place and lifted the long, slender brush.  Carefully, he dipped it into the ink and raised it above the thin rice paper.  The assembly was silent.  His hand was still.  Moments passed.  Gradually, a wondrous smile spread across the master’s face.  He laid the brush aside and beamed.  “I’ve forgotten how!”  he laughed. 

May you know delight in all that unfolds.  Peace, my friends.

unexpected

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Layers

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Complexity.  Wow.  There’s an important concept that we’ve invented to describe our Universe.  It’s based in observation and experience.  We can feel that our world is complex and give myriad examples.  And we often have a reaction to that complexity.  Awe.  Anxiety.  Does simplifying make you feel more comfortable….or uncomfortable?  Does digging deeper or looking wider make you feel more anxious or less?  Does acknowledging the limitations of your grasp bother you or free you? 

I actually feel both.  I like to be in control, and I like to be reminded that I’m not in control.  I often set out to “fix things” and then realize that they don’t need to be fixed, and so I let them be.  “How does it work?  Oh, never mind.  It’s amazing.”  I have seen a few David Copperfield shows, and I laugh at my reaction.  I’m not content to be entertained; I want to figure out how he creates those illusions!  And then I give up and admit I’m amazed.  Visual aides of this complexity concept are always engaging to me because of that dynamic.  Here are a few examples: my photo and a link.  First, the photo…

cone headNow, the link.  This is a Science Project created by two 9th-graders, and it is absolutely outstanding!  I may have posted it before, but I don’t hesitate to do it again.  Enjoy The Scale of the Universe 2! 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Horizon

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Wisconsin horizon

Wisconsin horizon

Ever since I was a young girl, I have been enamored of “rolling hills” and farmland.  My third grade class studied farm machinery and went out to the plains of Illinois to see a farm.  It was nice, but when I caught a glimpse of Kentucky and Iowa on a family trip that summer, I raved about the “rolling hills”.   Now I am living up in Wisconsin, where ice age glaciers left deposits across most of the state in landforms known as moraines, kames, drumlins, and eskers.  I am in heaven when I venture west from the city of Milwaukee and wind my way around farms nestled between these ancient hills.   I am planning to aim toward this horizon more intentionally in the future.  Steve & I are hoping to move next year to a more rural village and live a simpler, slower life.  May we all reach our desired horizons before the darkness comes!

P.S. to enjoy this horizon in a wider view, just click on the picture!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You

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I have always identified with autumn colors.  My eyes are brown and green, flecked with gold.  My hair is a sort of light brown with golden strands that catch the sunlight.  I was a true blonde until my late teens when I began to shun the California sun for indoor time with my studies.  My sister nicknamed me “Golden Girl”.  I have never colored my hair and have only one gray one (which I pluck when it gets more than an inch long!).  I love to stroll the green spaces where I live, and I get a little uneasy in a plane when all I see below are dusty expanses.  Green is my go-to color.  My mother never liked green and made pronouncements about why it was “bad” for a kitchen, for clothing, for just about everything except plants.  I grew up revering my parents’ opinions, and learning to develop my own style is something I’ve come into rather late, I think.  Sorry, Mom.  I WILL wear green and decorate my indoor space with it liberally!  This picture reflects a wonderful tapestry of fall colors, with a blue sky for background and a towering church which seems like it is being overtaken by vegetation.  This is also me: my monumental Christianity is slowly being eclipsed and colored by a more prominent display of natural life.  This is the hue of me:

Holy Hill

Holy Hill

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Leaf litter

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leavesThis is the type of untidiness that needs not to be swept into piles and discarded in the gutter or collected in bags or cans.  This is the dazzling detritus of Autumn, the fancy foliage of decrepitude; this splendid scattering of scarlet and gold makes sweet decay a glorious fate!  Go ahead, Death, be proud!  Come, decomposers, you fungi and millipedes, and create symphonies underfoot!  Take a shuffling walk about this afternoon and breathe the perfume of change (if you’re not allergic!).  Ain’t life (with Death included) grand?!

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Focus

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Focus.  Concentrate.  What is important?  Who decides?  And what about the other stuff?  Again, photography acts as a metaphor for life.  How do you get the experience of your own powers of creation?  Make decisions, make art, and you know that you are making a universe.  Then, unmake it, and you’ll know what you can control and change.

Is the glass half empty?  Half full?  Is the glass solid or as liquid as its contents but moving at a different speed?  Am I half done with my life or beginning a new day?  Are the things that exist only in my memory real or not?  If they exist in my memory, have I lost them? 

I had a birthday on Wednesday, and a good cry on Thursday.  The quiet, summer afternoon transported me to another time and place.  My husband was alive, snoring in the Lazy Boy in my living room.  I had a living room – a full house with 4 bedrooms.  My oldest daughter was in her room, reading children’s books.  My son was in the yard playing with a next door neighbor.  My two youngest daughters were entwined on a bed, thumbs in their mouths, damp curls encircling their sleepy heads.  It seemed so palpable…and so untouchable.  Never again; though, yes, it was.  Once.  LOSS loomed in my brain.  A word I envisioned; I’d conjured it like the scene of that composite day.  When I focused on it, I was awash in gut pain.  It was powerful.  Over moments, the focus softened.  Its power faded.  It became a muted background of warmth, of subtle longing, a wistful smile.  There are other things in my life.  Some embryonic, some ripening.  That previous life is like the green light of a summer day.  It is there, all around.  It is not in focus, though.  It is enough.

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