It’s been a year of turmoil, difficulty, disruption, and I hope, growth. I could run through the photo files and look for pictures that illustrate turmoil but I really don’t feel like looking at disorderly images. Instead, this is a chronology of my year, through images and minimal text. I’m not going to review the year by picking images from previous posts – these are photos I haven’t published before. (You can enlarge small images by clicking on them).
In spite of the illness and death of my dear partner Joe, there is optimism and pleasure to be found here. There’s darkness, too, and confusion. But quaint as the idea may be in 2025, beauty inspires me to push the shutter, more often than not.
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1. January 5th. A walk at dusk. The ferns sprouting from mossy rocks on the right are Licorice ferns. They go dormant in summer, revive in fall, and stay green all winter. Because of them and the many evergreen plants and trees we have, winters are practically verdant.
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2. January 27th. Cardiff State Beach, California. We planned a winter trip to Southern California that, looking back, was a brilliant idea. Day after day, we wandered up and down wide, delightful beaches. We watched sandpipers, found marvelous patterns in the sand, and enjoyed sunsets over the ocean. I didn’t know then that it would be our last vacation, a precious hiatus.
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3. Our vacation extended into early February, with a walk at the Blue Sky Ecological Reserve near San Diego, Whimbrel-watching on the beach at Dana Point, and up-close looks at Brandt’s cormorants nesting in La Jolla.
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4. In March and April I focused on wildflowers, as I always do – but it was different this year. At home, Joe was trying to figure out how to live as normally as possible while tied to an oxygen supply, day and night. His breathing had worsened, resulting in a hospital visit in March. Now I was tiptoeing around long plastic tubing at home. My mind was split between being thrilled by Spring’s fresh beauty and being scared and anxious for the future. Joe was stoic, a fighter.
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5. May, my favorite month. No matter what worries dominate our lives, we can count on the sun to rise, flowers to open, and ferns to unfold.
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6. On June 1st, Colby, Jeni, Hudson and William came up to Anacortes to join me on a whale-watching tour. It did me good to spend time with them and we had a wonderful time out on the water. The high point was when an Orca rose out of the water and slammed back down with an ear-shattering splash.
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Joe was in the hospital most of the month, first in the intensive care unit at our local hospital, then in a larger hospital 45 minutes away. In early July he was sent home – there was nothing medicine could do at that point. It was time for Hospice. Joe said he never, ever wanted to go to a hospital again. He insisted on having control over his own death. As it turned out, he was home for only four days and took his last breath on July 6th.
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7. I made these photos in the weeks following Joe’s death, on July 13th and 15th.
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8. Through the summer and fall, friends circled around me, Colby called frequently, and people I spoke to as I handled the affairs that inevitably follow a death, were kind. In August, all things considered, I was doing pretty well.
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9. September was impossibly busy. I took fewer walks and labored at home over a strangely timed house renovation and the planning of a Celebration of Life gathering for October. I didn’t get out much, but even a short walk can yield a nice image of Madrone bark. Seeing it now, I think of a ruptured, torn life. A walk up Sugarloaf Mountain exercised my lungs and legs, a good feeling. And one day I took pleasure in photographing the billowing tarps that covered part of a ship under repair at Pier 1 in town.
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10. Friends and family arrived from as far away as New York for the Celebration of Life in honor of Joe on October 12th, his birthday. It warmed my heart to see people from different parts of my life and his all together in the same room, and to listen to what they had to say. At home I burned incense. Outdoors, light seeping into dark places drew my attention.
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11. In November I struggled to get out – the weather wasn’t cooperating, I was busy, I was uninspired. But perseverance furthers, as the Chinese saying (from the I Ching?) says. A tiny mushroom on a branch transfixed me – such delicacy! A single False lily of the valley leaf stood out near a wetland. Their boldly veined, heart-shaped leaves please me even when I’m glum. Sometimes I swung the camera because I simply did not know what else to do. As far as photography goes, I felt lost. As far as my life goes, I had put the hardest things behind me and I was feeling more confident and hopeful.
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12. In December, I still feel like my mind resembles this photo I made using intentional camera movement. A lot is going on but it’s not organized at all. Everything is in flux. Stability has not yet returned, but that’s OK. As I’ve said to my friends, I’ve reinvented myself before and I can do it again.
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13. At dusk, five months to the day after Joe died, I stood on rocky Rosario Beach and watched the waves swell and retreat. I have much to be thankful for.
The stalwart old tree trunk pictured above and below belongs to a picturesque Seaside juniper (Juniperus maritima) in Washington Park, on Fidalgo Island. Notable for its geology and plants, the park spreads across 200 acres on a square-shaped peninsula on Fidalgo’s northwestern corner. Though it’s surrounded on three sides by salt water and whales sometimes glide by its shoreline, the park’s location in Puget Sound is 93 miles as the crow flies from the Pacific coastline.
Weather, salt water, and geology have created favorable conditions for some unusual species in the park. The Seaside juniper is the rarest but no one realized that until recently, when a scientific paper published in 2007 reclassified the species. Ever since Europeans rowed ashore, the gray-barked trees with scale-like foliage were called Rocky Mountain junipers (Juniperus scopulorum), the same as a juniper that grows to the east, at much higher elevations. The trees do look similar but genetic analysis revealed the two species to be distinct. Unlike Rocky Mountain junipers, Seaside junipers favor exposures near the sea, growing only in a small area from Southwestern British Columbia to the Puget Sound trough, in Washington. In Washington Park they’re scattered across open, south-facing slopes by the water, but walk a few steps away from the shoreline and junipers disappear, replaced by the region’s ubiquitous Douglas firs.
Pacific madrones (Arbutus menziesii) also grow well on open, south-facing slopes near the water, and the two species can be seen together at the park. They make interesting companions aesthetically – the juniper with its rough, gray, striated bark contrasting with the madrone’s smooth, orange, wavy branches. You can see them behaving like conjoined twins in the small photo below, from a few years ago. When Seaside junipers reach a venerable age, they usually have attractive moss and lichen “accessories” adorning their nooks and crannies. Their furrowed branches can bulge like oversized arthritic knuckles, and dead branches stick out every which way. Even branches that drop to the ground have a way of settling into the grass and looking perfectly at home, especially when the grass has gone pale in the cold months of the year.
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On a November outing with friends, the golden leaves of a Pacific willow (Salix lucida ssp. lasiandra) growing by a lake at Deception Pass State park drew us in for a closer look. Yellow leaves are a tonic for the eyes on gray days. Backing away, I saw the repeating shapes of slender, oval leaves and wiry stems as a flat plane of color and line. That was my thought when I photographed the willow.
A wetland on the other end of the lake had an interesting mix of shrubs. The yellow leaves probably belonged to more willows. Small trees were shrouded in fuzzy, light green lichens, and many stick-like reeds crowded the bigger plants. The subtle autumn tapestry of color was attractive, but it wasn’t easy to translate into a photograph. The colors were repeated in more sombre hues on the caps of a cozy group of mushrooms I found in a dense, quiet forest two weeks later. As the solstice neared and the days shortened, the botanical palette was losing vibrancy but gaining subtlety.
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A madrone branch closeup (below) from early December revealed an especially subtle array of hues. This photograph, taken on a darkly overcast day when raindrops clung to twig tips, shows the cooler side of madrones – but the tree’s typical warm hues still peak through. I used a prime lens that I’ve found to be good in low light, moving close enough to zero in on some indentations in the bark that echoed a gentle wave of the edge of the branch.
The soft curve of a dead branch (right, below) is something I had noticed ten minutes earlier. Maybe curves were on my mind – they often are. In the photo on the left, soft curves mark the water-worn roots of a large driftwood log. That huge, heavy log has been in place for years, long enough for lichens to take hold. You may know that the yellow-green streaks on the wood are lichens, but the white patches are actually lichens, too. Driftwood rim-lichen (Lecanora xylophila) is a crustose lichen, which just means it forms a crust, in this case on driftwood. A fungal layer attaches the lichen to the wood, an algal layer is above it, and a cortex is on top. If you look closely or use a hand lens, you can see many attractive, chestnut-brown, roughly round discs dotting the white cortex of the lichen. The discs are apothecia, spore-bearing reproductive structures that allow the fungus to reproduce by dispersing tiny spores via wind or water. I included a photo from several years ago that shows the apothecia.
A grand sweep of shapes is interesting, the subtleties of different hues are beautiful, and the tiniest details can be fascinating. All we need to do is look and appreciate it all.
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Here at 48° 44′ N, the winter months are full of cloudy days. The same can be said for late fall and early spring so we have to find ways to bear it. Perhaps even embrace it. The photo below, of a forest reflected in a lake, was taken in early November at 4:19pm. The two photos under it were taken a month later around the same time, back at Washington Park. The murky, shadowy, in-between nature of that almost-dusk time of day can bring up sadness, but look how beautiful it can be.
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Maybe it’s all just a field of sensations, I thought. Always sensations. We are bundles of sensations: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting – even thinking is so often sensation-based. We exist as sensing beings among other sensing beings in a world of motion, from invisible, constantly vibrating particles to perpetually turning planets and expanding galaxies. Shimmering sensations enter our consciousness and create entire worlds, one after the other, after the other. This is our personal world, our field of being. Sometimes it’s delicious, sometimes it’s terrible. Sensations are where we begin. And end.
1. Threatening clouds above a massive glacier at Vatnajökull National Park, seen from the Ring Road. Â
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Mile after mile, the wild, empty landscape of South Iceland unspooled its magic. Jagged mountains leaned in like formidable eminences grises, fat sheep grazed in tawny fields, ancient blocks of lava reached darkly toward the sea. Spaciousness reigns in Iceland, especially in the South. One feels that the land answers to no one. A volcano erupts and a town shutters. A bridge is built and washes away – again. Sulphur colors the ground in strange hues that jump skyward as rainbows.
You know you’re small here. Life snaps back into proper perspective.
As we headed southwest on Route 1 that September, the weeks Joe and I had spent driving past land that was often barely inhabited were building to a climax. Our rhythm had been to follow the road and natural daylight more than any imposed schedule. We were usually outdoors, in the car, or asleep. Food choices were simple, in fact, all our choices were. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the abundance we have at home. But eliminating 90% of the picking and choosing that occupies so much of our time can be a healthy move.
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To untangle the knotted threads of busy lives takes time and openness to change. Largely occupying ourselves with indoor tasks, often on electronic devices, we hanker after rough edges, unfinished textures, the scent of earth. I think this is true for many people but I can only speak for myself. In Iceland, for me the scales were swinging back into balance with every inhalation of sharp, clean air, each step on rock-strewn, boundaryless beaches.
Iceland’s Ring Road, locally known as Route 1, offers a plethora of pleasures, one of which is being in the presence of glaciers. When I saw the first one out the car window, I wanted to get out and fly to the edge of it. What was that long, pale mound of old ice like up close? Such unmistakable grandeur the frozen beast possessed! There was nothing friendly or intimate about it – and nothing manmade, either. It was a landscape to be present for, not one to scroll quickly past on social media.
But before the ice, let’s see a softer and perhaps stranger landscape…
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Clouds glowered and lightened by turns. Perhaps it was the work of the Huldufólk, the island’s hidden people, those cunning, supernatural beings inhabiting a parallel universe in Iceland’s unpredictable landscape. We were headed to Reynisfjara, the famous black sand beach, when we noticed peculiar, greenish lumps everywhere, on both sides of the road. Curious, we looked for a place to stop, soon finding a side road leading to a dirt road. The world grew quiet once we shut the engine and got out. There was scarcely any sign of human habitation. What was this place? We’d never seen anything like it, not in books or online. And certainly not in person.
We slowly eased into the terrain, marveling at the moss-shrouded rocks that seemed to reach all the way to a glacier looming on the horizon. It was at once Lilliputian and extravagant. Shiny, black berries glinted on plants draped over mossy blankets. The bulbous shapes, the fine texture of the moss and the little plants huddled in crevices were enchanting. With no thought of time, I lost myself in a strange world.
7. This mat of moss has enough water for Crowberries (Empetrum nigrum), or krækiber, to take root, grow, and fruit. Crowberries are circumpolar and are eaten by birds, animals, and traditionally by indigenous people. They’re still picked in Iceland but aren’t as popular as blueberries or bilberries.
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Eventually I learned that those undulating lumps of moss cover an immense old lava field. In the 1780s, multiple eruptions heaved lava across 218 square miles (565 sq km). The historic Laki Craters eruptions spewed poisonous chemicals that wreaked havoc on Iceland’s crops and livestock, resulting in famine. A sulphuric haze reached far south and descended on Great Britain and Western Europe, causing thousands of deaths there. The eruptions may have affected India’s monsoons and caused one of North America’s worst winters ever. It was “one of the most important climatic and socially significant natural events of the last millennium.” (Wikipedia)
Iceland isn’t called the Land of Fire and Ice for nothing!
The eruptions scattered an enormous wasteland of sharp, black lava chunks across South Iceland. Over time, the bizarre landscape that stopped us in our tracks was created, thanks to a plant called Wooly fringe moss (Racomitrium lanuginosum). As a pioneer plant, it can grow and thrive on bare lava rock. Because the moss grows very slowly, a hard step on those plump, inviting pillows can destroy a century’s growth. I instinctively sensed that walking on the moss wasn’t a good idea but I was tempted!
Eldhraun – firelava in Icelandic – was a revelation. We hadn’t seen references to Eldhraun when we planned our trip, which meant we were free from preconceptions. That innocence bestowed on us the thrill of discovery, which in turn connected us to the landscape more intimately than if we had known about it. Traveler’s luck!
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Guides to South Iceland always reccommend seeing Jökulsárlón, an iceberg-filled glacial lagoon. The parking lot is beside Jökulsárlón’s narrow outlet to the sea. As we approached the area I could see dozens of tourists lining up by the water, competing for the best view. Tangled knots of cars and RV’s strained to enter or exit the parking lot.
This was not our scene.
Luckily, the guidebook I had mentions a smaller glacier lagoon just down the road. Easy decision! Fifteen minutes later the two of us were peacefully sitting on the rocks at Fjallsárlón, watching icebergs float away from an immense glacier called Fjallsjökull (“jökull” means glacier). There were only a few other tourists around the lagoon. We were quietly transported to an icy, otherworldly realm where rakish icebergs rested almost motionless in a mirror-still lake, their sharp angles mimicking the mountains behind them. Across the lagoon the glacier loomed large and glorious.
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I squinted at the jagged patterns on its deeply fissured surface: dark, sooty cuts, flanks of tropical turquoise, washes of palest gray – this ice seemed far more alive than a clear cube in a glass. There was a feeling of movement, a march toward the water or a slump down into it. It was some other entity: elemental, ancient, unknowable.
That glacier is an outlet glacier of Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull, which occupies 8% of the island. Again, Iceland is the land of fire and ice! Underneath this immense cap of ice are volcanos. Imagine what happens when one erupts under all that frozen water – it melts the ice, big time! The floods create lakes under the ice that can burst through, like they did in 1996, when 38 days passed before the water from a major eruption finally broke through the ice. Part of Route 1 was obliterated and the flow was so big that for a few days it was second in size only to the Amazon River.
As the sun sunk lower in the sky that afternoon, massive floods were far from my mind. I was mesmerized by the unlikely turquoise glow inside a huge, triangular hunk of ice resting quietly on the lake’s surface. The icebergs seemed to be full of possibility. Change is inevitable, isn’t it? I wondered how long it takes for the icebergs to melt, to change visibly. How long does it take for one to float into outlet stream and out to the sea? Beside me, tiny, bright yellow Saxifrage plants displayed the last flowers of the season between gray and russet cobbles. Joe and I barely spoke, not wanting to break the spell. Looking at the picture I took of him now, I wonder what was going through his mind.
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Iceland rewards the curious. Graced by wonder after wonder, I was captivated. Traveling across a sparsely populated land, meeting warm, honorable people, and experiencing a myriad of uncommon natural wonders was an unforgettable experience. Here’s a slideshow that hopefully offers a taste of the island’s charisma.
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That’s all from Iceland for now. Next up will be a look at late autumn on Fidalgo Island.
1. Stacked like building blocks, columnar basalt forms an extraordinary backdrop to Svartifoss.
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Two years ago Joe and I circled Iceland on the Ring Road and immersed ourselves in a unique culture and landscape for three unforgettable weeks. With its raw power and strikingly dramatic features, the landscape alone is reason enough to visit Iceland, but for us, meeting Icelanders made the experience far more meaningful than just visiting attraction after attraction. Over the course of a thousand years of human occupation, a unique culture manifested in Iceland. Life was rigorous in a place where arable land is scarce, winters are long, and the weather is challenging. A strong national identity resulted from years of hardships shared by the relatively small number of people who lived on this isolated island.
Now the post-pandemic spike in tourism threatens all that makes Iceland unique. Realizing how much could be lost, Icelanders are striving to preserve their traditions and protect the island’s extraordinary landscape. We admired the proud, un-pretentious, gracious nature of residents we met. I’m sorry I didn’t photograph more people going about their daily business; most of my photos show the landscape. But there are many ways to get a taste of Icelandic culture. Read some Icelandic sagas or Nordic noir novels, watch Gylfi’s videos, or better yet, go there yourself.
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2. Dreaming of the South Coast.
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Our itinerary began at the capitol city of Reykjavik and took us in the opposite direction from South Iceland. Heading north, we spent four stimulating days on the Snaefellsness peninsula, sleeping at a traditional guesthouse. Our room overlooked the backyard garden of a woman who checked on her chickens in a head-to-toe, pink bunny suit. We visited extraordinary yellow and black sand beaches and chatted with a man from Columbia who ran a small town cafe. That espresso was good! Driving farther north, we stayed in countryside guesthouses and explored Iceland’s second city, Akureyri, a place whose name twisted my tongue. We learned about the trails of very short growing seasons from a gardener at the botanical garden. I waited for a half-hour at a cafe for the coffee beans to be flown in from Reykjavik, and yes, it was worth the wait because I met wonderful people. We took a small ferry to tiny island, hiked hilly trails along the edges of fjords, and inhaled the warm, sulfurous stink of geothermal vents. Then we traveled east and south, tracing a zig-zag route through picturesque fishing towns huddled at the ends of fjords, where ice-cold water slapped the black slopes of forbidding mountains. Any of these regions – west, north, east – would have been more than enough. But on our final push across the south of Iceland and back up to Rekyavik, we encountered the most impressive scenery of our trip.
Every day, my camera clicked away but it was never as busy as my eyes! Whether hiking up and down hills or coursing across rugged landscapes in the car, my eyes were taking in far more than my camera could keep up with. I wanted to write a note each night to narrate the gaps between photographs. I should have written about how good it felt to be in a landscape that humans had hardly altered, how exciting it was to experience patterns writ large – giant blocks of stone, waves wider than I could see. But sleep always called my name too soon. The sensory impressions, spontaneous conversations, and countless surprises weave about like layers of filmy curtains in my mind now. Joe is gone and I can’t rely on his memory to bring the trip’s details back to life. I’m grateful for each picture I took of him in Iceland. I’m glad I published a stack of posts about the trip after we got home, too. Looking at them again, the thrill is rekindled. It’s time to go back and see a little more…
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3. Here is another rendition of Svartifoss. “Foss” is Icelandic for waterfall. It has a nice onomatopoeic quality, with the “sss” sound that water makes. “Svart” as German speakers will easily guess, is “black” in Icelandic.
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4. Hundafoss is a smaller waterfall that can be seen from the trail to Svartifoss. Learning that “foss” means waterfall and memorizing other Icelandic words like “fjall” for mountain and “kirkja” for church made the trip more rewarding. The effort to separate the syllables in typically long, Icelandic words helped me feel less like a stranger.
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As we approached Reynisfjara from the east, the landscape popped out of the horizon as if it was just hatched, hinting at the wonders ahead. One of Iceland’s premiere attractions, Reynisfjara is a black sand beach fronted by spectacular basalt formations. Sea stacks just off shore add to the drama. Tourists are greeted by signs printed with bold warnings not to turn your back on the water because unpredictable sneaker waves have swept people out to sea. As you might expect, the signs don’t stop tourists from posing on the rocks for their Instagram feeds.
A giant fan of columnar basalt that looks like a movie set is evidence of Iceland’s “Land of Fire and Ice” reputation. These formations result from hot lava cooling unevenly and cracking into joints that intersect with other joints when tensile energy is released. The variety of forms let loose by long-ago geological events was astounding. Drinking in and delighting in the patterns and shapes, I forgot about the other tourists. I was in a world of my own.
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10. Reynisfjara’s sea stacks interrupt the horizon with fearsome force.
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Part 1 finishes with a slideshow of rock patterns and shapes. Most are from South Iceland and some are from other regions. #7 shows patterns of deposits on the ground next to a geyser. #12 and 13 illustrate a variety of lichens inhabiting rocks.
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Note: I’ve ordered the photographs to tell a story about South Iceland’s landscapes, so they’re not in geographical order. If you traced our actual route from East Iceland to South Iceland, you would visit the Fjallsarlon Glacier Lagoon and Diamond Beach first, then Svartifoss, the Eldhraun Lava Field, and finally Reynesfjara, with its spectacular columnar basalt formations and black beach.
Most visitors don’t have time to drive all the way around Iceland. They approach South Iceland from the capitol, Reykjavik. Busloads of tourists leave every day headed for South Iceland, disgorging tourists at several different sites and returning to Reykjavik by nightfall. People who have several weeks usually choose the Ring Road, traveling either clockwise or counterclockwise. Arguments can be made for either choice – we went clockwise and were tired by the time we reached South Iceland. But beginning our trip north of the capitol took us to a quieter region with small villages and striking scenery. It was good to begin with a taste of small town Icelandic life. If we had gone the other direction, we would have seen South Iceland first and would not have spent time in towns. The region has always been sparsely populated because harsher conditions there make farming and getting around very difficult. South Iceland’s economy is very tourist-driven these days. Other regions invite tourism but also depend on fishing and energy-related industries. If I go back – and I would love to – I’d want to see the West Fjords, explore more of East Iceland, and visit the Central Highlands, which are only accessible in the summer using 4WD vehicles. Dream on, Lynn!
Whether my mind is muddled with worries or bright with confidence, it seems I keep on going. These strange and troubling times for our world are unusual for me, too. I find myself enjoying a piercingly clear insight but just as often, I’m awash with unintelligible emotions. Losing my dearest companion in life would have been enough to unmoor me but in the midst of that, most of our belongings had to be packed into scores of boxes. Why? To make way for new floors to be installed in every room of the house. The overwhelming task was eased by good friends coming to the rescue. Now most of the books are back on bookshelves that sit on lovely new wood floors.
Unsettled is the password that unlocks my days. Time for walking outdoors has been scarce so when I do get out, I cherish the magic of it all the more.
These photographs are from two outings: a walk at a familiar place in the fog and a meander along a river I don’t know well on a clear afternoon. The foggy day wasn’t surprising – in this part of the world, the advent of fall brings frequent foggy mornings, a welcome change from the parched days of summer’s end. Thick in one place and thin in another, fog comes and goes on its own unfathomable schedule. Billowing upward or hanging low and heavy, it may stick around longer than you expect or burn off in minutes. It often lasts longer near water so on one recent foggy morning I drove over to Bowman Bay.
It felt good to slow down, sink my feet into the sand, and yield to the water-laden air with all my senses. The moisture in the air creates an immersive experience – sounds were muted and silhouettes manifested tentatively. Tiny drops of water hovered right in front of my face in a tantalizing, close-up view of fog’s fragments. I don’t remember ever witnessing fog that way. Moments like that remind me that with all its troubles, it is a privilege to live on this earth, still alive, still turning. All I need to do is notice.
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Then there was the clear, sunny afternoon in a moss-draped forest hours away from home. A slow walk by a shallow, stone-filled river with friends yielded lovely mountain vistas that pulled my eyes upward like an aspiration. We found a spotted frog that stayed absolutely still while we photographed it and was in the same position 15 minutes later. Amphibians are having a tough time on this planet so I’m always grateful to find one. The unexpectedly ebullient song of an American dipper rose above the splashing water and caught my attention – yes, birdsong in autumn! Dippers live near cold, rushing mountain streams. The stout little gray birds are a treat to watch, plunging straight into the water no matter how strong the current. They poke their heads under to see what’s there and dive down, actually using their short wings to swim. If that wasn’t enough, our Dipper sang while perched on round river rocks and kept on singing as it swam! A dive, a few notes, another dive, more singing. Hearing a bird’s song in fall is reason enough to rejoice but to see a plain little bird with an urge to sing that’s so strong it keeps singing while it swims? Amazing. A gift.
I moved toNew York City when I was an impressionable 18-year-old and the city was a lot rougher around the edges than it is today. Back then it was also the center for new movements in art. The radical changes that were fomenting aligned perfectly with my intense curiosity about art and philosophy. Conceptual art, performance art, feminist art, land art…each new movement created another sparkling edge of innovation. I had no interest in looking back then, I only wanted to absorb the atmosphere of experimentation in art and living going on around me. It was a heady time and a good time to be young in the city.
My roots were actually more in the prickly texture of green grass than the hard, monochrome surfaces of skyscrapers and pavement. I was lucky to grow up amidst simple pleasures like tulips in bloom and lightning bugs on summer evenings. As much as I reveled in the pleasures of a sophisticated, stimulating city, I never lost this fundamental identification with nature.
I am deeply, deeply in love with the substance of this world we live in, with the pattern of spores on a fern frond, the quickening of a fresh breeze on my face, the whoosh of whale breath floating across the water, and the sweet spring song of a pint-sized wren. It’s enough just to feel the sensations, to notice them. And often enough, I also like to record life’s visual fugues and cantatas with a camera.
Sometimes those art world influences from long ago show up in the images on my computer. A grassy meadow begets an abstraction that barely recalls what caught my eye in the first place. Rock faces, tree branches, plants crushed under a plastic tarp – all are grist for the mill that is my brain, a brain crammed with impressions from a fairly long life.
The earth is growing weary of what humans are doing these days – the climate is wobbling, people are fighting, species are going extinct. This suffering can be hard to face, but we may as well face it: times are very hard for a very large number of beings. This is what has come to pass. Perhaps there’s something you can do, some small act that would honor the pain, though we should probably admit that adding to the pain or ignoring it are often easier. It seems overwhelming, so overwhelming. But small steps may be all we can do now and that may be enough. I’m trying to drop a little beauty into the world, a little beauty that might cause someone to notice the world differently. Paying attention can be revolutionary.
1. Driftwood laughs at me. If only I could be as sanguine about change as this old piece of wood is.
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2. Kelp would not be kelp without changing tides. Watching the sea tugging on the kelp forest below me feels like what I need. These days, water’s ceaseless motion and hidden depths are especially nourishing. Bodies of water like the sea, a wide bay, or a lake have a mix of movement and constancy that reflects my current emotional state of quick eruptions underlain by a feeling of stability.
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3. The water draws back like a curtain, revealing shallow tide pools studded with Aggregating anemones, their colors smoothed and intensified by the lens of moving water. I learned recently that these anemones exist in symbiosis with photosynthetic algae. Together, they have evolved a complex, mutually beneficial relationship involving carbon dioxide, oxygen, ultra-violet radiation, and antioxidants. These pretty invertebrates seem to exist peacefully on their rocky substrate, but in fact, Aggregating anemone colonies sometimes attack other colonies of the same species that have a different genetic makeup. Life is not always peaceful…so Lynn, remember: life is change. Don’t ever stop adapting!
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4. Another day, another beach. Floating on the shoreline, this fragment of life looks to me like an egg-yolk jellyfish but it’s too broken to be sure. Life as a jellyfish, whatever species it was, is over now. I imagine these cells will keep breaking down, nourishing other beings and morphing into other life forms, as surely as the seasons change.
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5. On a weathered branch that hangs over a bay, Lace lichen breathes with the breeze. Sometimes I find a crystalline bit of clarity in my thoughts, like this clearly defined patch of lichen surrounded by fuzzily out of focus fragments of the whole.
*
6. Last week I hiked a trail on Lottie Point and came to a spot with a view toward Lighthouse Point, where I usually walk. Three years ago Joe and I hiked Lottie Point and sat right here to eat lunch. I remember feeling glad to be sharing it all with him. Around us under the Madrones and Doug firs, little Flat-spurred Piperias (also called Royal Rein orchids) were flowering.
*
7. I found this Flat-spurred Piperia (Platanthera transversa) blooming in a small, compact clearing in the woods near Heart Lake in July. If the sun shines through the long spur behind the flower you might see tiny drops of nectar there, waiting to be sipped. I think enchantment is always available, as long as we release ourselves into its space.
*
Last week a box came to me special delivery. Joe was in it. His body had been transformed into soil over the last 6 weeks. There are many different kinds of soil. They’re all sacred, I suppose.
*
8. This is how I felt last week, buffeted by the winds of change.
*
9. I took a morning walk at Bowman Bay one day and saw this graceful sweep of eelgrass making music on the sand. My eyes were delighted, my camera helped me record the finding, and now…well now the moment is over. But the moment obviously exists now – just look. In fact, past and future only exist in this moment. As I remember the past, as I imagine the future, it’s all in the now. The everpresent, everchanging now. Remembering that is somehow reassuring.
*
10. Sometimes it helps to look at things differently.
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11. Today Sharon and Richard helped me face the box that came special delivery last week. After opening it, the three of us quietly regarded ten containers of soil, neatly stacked and labeled on the bottom with Joe’s name. They are attractive, medium-sized cylinders covered in a soft green pattern of swirling lines. I carried one with me today as we hiked through the forest. Soon I’ll open it. Maybe.
***
“When I walk alone in nature, I fearlessly entertain the notion that the world is magical and that sensation is the original way to meet it. …When the mind is empty and senses are full, space is made for connection.”
After the hoopla, the photo ops, and the big carbon footprints,
one can only hope the big, blue-suit meeting
won’t further erode the possibility
that children in Kiev
might live without fear.
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Yet –
wandering around the yard
and further afield, I photograph
the unbalanced earth,
still
beautiful.
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Notes on the photos
1) This is a photo of two leaves that fell onto a 3-foot square pane of glass that I placed on the ground where the leaves are prematurely falling from a Red alder tree (Alnus rubra). For the sake of aesthetics, I increased the difference between the color and detail of the two leaves on top versus the everything on the ground underneath.
2) A crop from another photo of the ground under the piece of glass. A frond from a Western Sword fern plant (Polystichum munitum) heavy with spores, was interwoven with alder leaves, like a sweet embrace. I slightly desaturated the color and added grain to the photo.
3) An old apple tree frames a patch of early morning sunlight.
4) I processed this photo of tree branches bending toward the water at the edge of a lake with an infrared effect.
5) This photo was made on the edge of a shallow bay in the Salish Sea. High tides and wind had twisted some strands of eelgrass around a branch of a leaning tree. It could be weeks or months before the tide reaches this branch again. The eelgrass blowing in the wind makes me think of party streamers – I know, the color is dull and they probably don’t smell great, but that’s what I see.
6) Peeling bark on a Pacific Madrone tree (Arbutus menziesii). I never tire of the myriad ways the bark peels on these trees, revealing warm hues and and interesting, often jagged shapes. The world is indeed a beautiful place, even as it falls apart.
7) A small Buddha sits on my windowsill. The window is open.
