Every winter I sit and look out my window at the birch trees and marvel at their seasonal transformation. In the winter rain they glisten like jeweled necklaces, the wetness revealing red undertones to the normal drabness of the branches. Nude and dormant, the branches sway like a metronome, ticking off the days until they awaken once again. When the buds start to swell, the redness intensifies, and then, exploding in a day, they burst into lime-green radiance. It is the same every year. Yet, with each vigil, I wonder if this is year that spring might not come.
Regular readers of this blog know that I have a certain fascination with a tree in the town park. The tree is an easy object of affection. It is an impressive sculptural expression of nature, set on a flat plain and surrounded by green grass. It has cinematic appeal—seems larger than life.
Photography is a medium that lends itself to series. Theme and variation. One can create a visual fugue with a photo series, a knitting of space and time into a fabric of singular vision. I know of no other medium that invites an artist to explore series in such a natural way.
When I was a young boy I would visit, with my grandparents, my great-great uncle's farm in South Jersey. That part of New Jersey, in those days, was flat and rural. I haven't been there in many years but I imagine it's still flat and probably less rural. I've heard stories that Uncle Walt's farm is now a condominium complex, a thought that often saddens me. For, in those days, the farm was a place both exotic and foreign, a spot where nothing much happened and nothing at all ever changed.
I have rekindled my love affair with black & white. For awhile I'd been seduced by the juiciness of vibrating color. Push and pull. Chroma. Intensity. Color is a magic carpet that can transport our emotions to faraway places. It is a lifetime obsession in emotion, physics, mathematics, chemistry, and alchemy. Once smitten, color is impossible to shake off. Lately, however, it has given me a hangover.
Every walk has moments of insight—fissures in the quotidian facade. One step, another step, a drone of steps. The crunch of earth under foot is like the shaman's drum. The drum beats and magic swirls with the wind. Dreams give us clues. In dreams one lifts off the ground when walking. Walking becomes floating. Floating turns to soaring. Waking up after a soaring dream is ever a disappointment, as if being awake were actually the dream instead.
Every hike introduces one to new friends. Yesterday, on a hike at Point Reyes National Seashore there were few people to be found, only a cold fog that had settled in the night before. Our hike took us to a high mound of hill where we were to meet our only companions of the day; a herd of dairy cows.
The other morning I looked out the window. Rain. I wondered how the tree in the park was. The rain was falling straight down—no wind. That probably meant that the tree (and all the trees around it) hadn't suffered wind damage. It was simply wet and cold, good for trees, not for walking.
Four hikers in the distance. I moved in with my zoom lens for a closer look. Four hikers. Within ten minutes we would meet on the trail. Halfway between there and here. I wondered about their story; who they were, how they knew each other, why they were here. They were winding their way to us and we to them. We'd pass one another, exchange greetings and then, probably forever, never meet again. The mystery would remain unresolved. A brief engagement, a simple moment. Then the four hikers would be gone.
The gentle ebb and flow of seasonal light is jarringly interrupted with the change from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time. Everyone seems cranky on the Sunday of the change. Yet, some people proclaim enthusiasm for the illusory, extra hour of light. I am not one of those people. I prefer the natural flow of light and dark, watching how my body and psyche slowly awaken to spring and then fall off to hibernation in winter.
