Textures

Back in early August, Tammy and I took a couple of walks near the Cuyahoga River (Cleveland area) and found ourselves thoroughly enjoying the experience.  Of course, the camera came out and many images were captures because...  well, it's a digital camera and you can do that.  And, the walk was about relaxing and immersing ourselves in the natural world.  I sometimes find that I can enhance that experience by taking the time to view things differently and then seeing how it turns out through a lens.

 

I also saw capturing the images as an investment.  It was an investment in my own sense of awe and wonder.  

You see, I knew the walk itself was going to have some time constraints on it.  I wasn't going to be able to meander on these trails all day long for days on end.  But, also, the light and the wind and the feel of the world around us changes constantly.  There were some beautiful moments I wanted to savor a bit longer - so I tried to grab the ghost of that moment in a picture.

Sometimes, the image was for future exploration. What kind of mushroom was that?

Sometimes, the image was to remind me of an observation I had about the forest floor.  It was early to mid-August and look at all of the leaf litter on the ground.  Last year's leaves (and probably some of this year's) were providing cover for the soil.  The forest canopy was so dense that there was very little in the way of understory plants - and yet nature still provided a blanket of organic matter.

I've often had a fascination with dew drops as well, so it makes sense that I might try to chase them wherever they might form.

They softened the look of trees that might seem, if you don't look too hard, to be quite prickly and uninviting.  But the dew droplets cling to them happily, reluctant to fall away.

Maybe they know something about these trees that we don't?  Perhaps they are better hosts than they let on?

At one point, I followed a stray beam of light that had infiltrated its way through the tree canopy.  I don't think you can say that it sneaked in because sunbeams are quite direct in their intentions.  They either get through or they don't.

This particular sunbeam was lighting up a fallen tree trunk that was smooth, having lost all of its bark.  And what should I see from a distance on that trunk?  A bright red object, beckoning to me.

Needless to say, I had to go look and I had to record that moment.  

It was a little bit like so many movies that use the beam of light to illustrate a promised land or some amazing treasure.  In this case, the treasure was a bright, red leaf - placed there as if it was of great value to the forest itself.

There were also textures that were not of the natural world.  The trails evidenced human intervention and there was evidence of the need to record our presence on a few of the trees near that trail.

I was here!  So was I!  Did you notice?  This is me!

I, of course, refrained from doing the same.  Instead, I recorded the moment in digital form.  And, I wondered about this need to mark our territory and our inability to see how our cumulative efforts to carve a niche can wear a bigger hole than we ever intended.

Of course, I took time to look up.  I don't know when I started this practice, but it's a new habit of mine to stop at several points during a walk just to see what the world looks like above me.

If you do any hiking on uneven trails, I am sure you understand that looking down is part of the program - if only to avoid meeting said ground a bit more forcefully than you want with more parts of your body than you need.  And, of course, looking ahead is just a human's default given the orientation of our head and our body.  Looking side to side is fairly simply as well.

But, looking up?  That takes some thought and some effort.

And it can be very rewarding.

The intersection of the bones of the Earth with living green things always fascinate me.  As a person who has cultivated plants in the good soil for a long time, I can't help but exude a bit of wonder at how lichen and moss do what they do.

My sense of cultivating growing things tells me that the ground here is not the kind that supports green and growing life.  Yet, here it is.  

And then, there is the sculpture that comes from the interaction of soil, water and plant life.  Trees and bushes also were finding their way despite not having feet... or even inches... of top soil to get their starts in life.  

How wonderful.  

It doesn't take much, but there is life.  And I was given the chance to observe and appreciate that life.  And now I can appreciate that moment once again by viewing, considering - and writing about - the images I have.

There was a strong chance that these pictures would remain covered in a virtual pile of rock slabs.  Newer images piled on top of older images on the disk drive of my computer.

This is how things work when you live in the present.  The most recent things reside closest to our minds, so that's what we see when we cast about for things to say or do.  But, we need to remember that the things that lie on top are not always those that reside closest to our hearts.  Sometimes, we have to dig through the pile to find those things.

And when we do, we add texture to our lives and to the present.  And we provide depth to the past.