…after a time the trees stood skeletal against a sky of weathered tin. The land lay bled of its colors. The nights lengthened, went darker, brightened in their clustered stars. The chilled air smelled of woodsmoke, of distances and passing time. Frost glimmered on the morning fields. Crows called across the pewter afternoons. The first hard freeze cast the countryside in ice and trees split open with sounds like whipcracks. Came a snow flurry one night and then a heavy falling the next day, and that evening the land lay white and still under a high ivory moon.”
~ James Carlos Blake in Wildwood Boys
Kangaroo Lake in Door County – The Magic of Studying Details, Then Turning Around
The mid-October day was mercurial – one moment skies were blue, the next a wave of gray clouds pushed in from nearby Lake Michigan. Blustery winds buffeted me, causing me to lose my balance more than once. Then calm would descend for a brief respite for the wind and chill.
October in Door County, for sure, Wisconsin’s northeastern most point, a peninsula sticking out into tempestuous Lake Michigan.
Kangaroo Lake is one of the more protected places on the peninsula in fresh water lake in the center of Door County, and a wonderful place to go during the autumn festival days. Most of the crowd who comes to enjoy the views hug the shore of Door County, bay side and lake side. But there is much to be said for the wild beauty of the interior, too.
I loved studying the autumn changes of Kangaroo lake, standing on a narrow bridge of road that crosses the northern most bay. Fallen leaves were bobbing on the surface, the reeds were stripped of there green finery and their fuzzy seeds, and stood knee deep in the cold, stunningly blue water. Beyond, fir trees lined one side of the lake, and deciduous trees in this year’s last blaze of glory hugged the opposite side.
Then the sun disappeared in the scattered clouds.
Once I had taken in the scene with all my senses, as is my habit, I turn around to see what is behind me.
And the sun slid from the cloud cover, causing the lake ripples to shimmer in a sheet of dancing light.
A solitary island caught my attention. Birds were darting from the trees to the water and back again. Creatures were slipping in and out of the shadows and the shoreline brush.
Kangaroo Lake — its two faces. Both to be explored and adored.
Fierce Winds. Fierce Rains. Fierce Color. And an Awakening.
The winds were fierce, the rains were fierce. Deep in the forest, the rain turned misty. The bright leaves shimmered in yellows and oranges. I followed a muddy path through the forest, trees clumped tightly together, clinging high along the cliffs above Lake Michigan.
Traveling the Middle Road, nearly deserted because of the inclement weather, a bit like a ride through Middle Earth. Sights of bright trees, sounds of creaking branches, leaves twirling to the ground. An awakening of the senses.
Deep in the forest, the rains stop. Leaves drip, the path is soggy-slippery. And the quiet is held in a heavy tapestry of quaking yellow. Sacred.
Tree roots gripping the earth. I grip the earth. Fierce in determination. Fierce in the sacred. I find myself awakening deep in the forest, soaked with rain, feeling so aware, so alive.
Playing with a Photograph of Lichen – A Meditative Process
“…there’s a silent voice in the wilderness that we hear only when no one else is around. When you go far, far beyond, out across the netherlands of the Known, the din of human static slowly fades away, over and out.” ~ Rob Schultheis
Red rock and lichen.
A variety of lichen, but truly, there are at least 946 kinds of lichen in Arizona/Utah combined, and so there will be no identification of lichen in this post. But how glorious they are! Such simple fungi, but in glorious shapes and textures and forms.
Yes. This is a “fun” photo – one that I played with for an hour or so. Not so much to get the perfect photo or abstract, but more to observe the creation of pattern and color. It becomes a meditative process.
I’m not sure what it is about the processing part of photography, but I can get lost in the play of it. Explore the combinations of colors. Make the crevices a blue-gray while keeping the brilliant rock of southern Utah its deep orange-red. Add purple shadows, highlight the yellows, pull out the turquoises.
“We need the tonic of wildness… At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. ~ Henry David Thoreau in Walden
Hiking while taking dozens of photographs of rock and pattern was itself a meditative process.
I was off trail, but following close enough to the Colorado River so orientation was never a problem. Most of the rock was slickrock, wind-polished and swept bare, but there were pockets of lichen and the tiniest of wildflowers.
Crevices would suddenly appear, when I was anticipating solid rock, and there was the challenge to either step across, climb down and back up, or follow the edge until it descended to level rock. But I spent most of my time sitting and staring at the space.
The rock is endless. And the land is silent, only an occasional whisper of wind or the swooping hawk in search of prey. The land immense enough to roam, explore, study, and then realize that an hour stretches to four without notice.
The call of wilderness — silent and yet singing in a crescendo, lifting my spirit. Heaven on earth.