Playing with a Photograph of Lichen – A Meditative Process

Playing with Lichen

r Playing with Lichen on Red Rock © 2014 Bo Mackison

“…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.

A Wildness in the Garden

Exuberance

A Wildness in the Garden © 2014 Bo Mackison

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe. ~ John Muir

Amidst the Water Lilies, the Sky, the Clouds…Replenishment

Water Lilies and Reflection

Water Lilies and Reflection © 2014 Bo Mackison

“What call thou solitude? Is not the earth with various living creatures, and the air replenished, and all these at thy command to come and play before thee?” ~ John Milton

Becoming aware of limits. Of the need for time to rest and replenish.

How much can I schedule in one day or one week or even in one month or one season? And when I have completed my work, how do I replenish, refill my well?

By slowing down. Leaving space in my day and my evening time. Planning, in necessary, twenty minutes of nothing time. Just observation and awareness time. No phone, Facebook, email checking, messaging. No television, music, sports in the background. No reading, writing, or ‘rithmetic!

“I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough.” ~ Thomas Merton

Day dream. Watch the outdoors through a window. Notice how the wind swirls through the leaves of nearby trees. Or how the clouds drift across the sky.

Better yet, connect with nature by heading outside.  Stand barefoot in the grass and connect with Mother Earth. Close your eyes and hear the sounds in the environment. Silence, when listened to closely, turns into chattering and trills, a bird symphony. Breezes rustle the dancing leaves in the trees and shrubs, and whispers through the taller grasses.

I have put slowness into my photography practice. A time when I purposely keep my camera is in its bag and I sit and just watch. Watching the water garden, I noticed dragonflies and damselflies flit across the reflection pond. Bees sipped nectar from the water lilies and a turtle glided underwater, occasionally breaking the surface of the water. Clouds slid across the pool, reflecting sky in water.

Replenishing my well.

Paper Birch – A Study of the Nature of a Tree

Paper Birch Tree

Paper Birch © 2014 Bo Mackison

…It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
~ Robert Frost, Birches

Known as a Canadian tree,
its habitat dips into the cooler regions of the United States.
Northeast, Midwest, Pacific Northwest.

Paper Birch Tree

Three Trunks, Paper Birch © 2014 Bo Mackison

Birch tree, a variety of common names.

Paperbark birch
White birch
Paper birch
Canoe birch

Paper Birch Tree

Paper Birch Bark with New Life © 2014 Bo Mackison

Trees just beginning out in life and newer branches on settled trees are white barked,
smooth at first, then knotted with black spirals,
finally emerging as papery bark,
shades of browns, grays, greens and creams,
multiple layers,
wild and messy. And precious to the eye and hand.

Paper Birch Tree

Paper Birch Tree and Canopy © 2014 Bo Mackison

The canopy is my space. A place to spy on visitors and nature’s ways.

Like me, it too must have sun, a place of its own in full sun,
or it will not thrive.

Yet it is a pioneer. After fire or clear-cut, the birch is an early returner.
It makes do with less than tolerable conditions as long as it has its sunlight.

Paper Birch Tree

Paper Birch Bark © 2014 Bo Mackison

Its botanical name is Betula papyrifera.
Papyrus. Oh yes.

If you’ve ever handled the fibrous papyrus, woven horizontal and vertically and pressed flat,
then you will see evidence of those very first papers in this curling, peeling bark
its deep reds and oranges exposed.

Textures so full of depth, the longing to add a human element is strong
and equally strong, the urge to let it be as it is.

Paper Birch Tree

Paper Birch © 2014 Bo Mackison

An arborist writes the “catkins offer little special interest”.
I disagree. Delicate and pale green, swinging with the rhythm of spring winds.
Seeds feed the redpoll, pine siskin, chickadee; the catkins feed the ruffed grouse.

Catkins transform into nutkins, winged and fringed,
and fly the seeds away from its parent in autumn.

Roots and wings, the parent tree provides.

Paper Birch Tree

My Three Trunk Seat © 2014 Bo Mackison

Once the birch was utilitarian –
Bark as canoe cover.
Containers – baskets, bowls, baby carriers.
Comforts – mats, bedding.
Giver of light – torches.
Tool maker – spears, bows and arrows.
Transportation – snowshoes and sleds.
Sustenance – birch syrup, beer, medicinal tonics.

My birch?

It continues its tradition as a container – as I perch in its tri-trunked seat.
As a comfort – when I hold its wildness in my hands
As a giver of light – of the interior sort.

And as sustenance – for my heart and soul.

Tenacity – Part II, Showing Up Every Day and Hanging on

Happiness is a Red Balloon

“There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”
~ Terry Pratchett

This has been a summer of choosing to hang on, even through periods of wanting to let go, cut my losses, and retire to the Canary Islands.

Well, not quite. I’m definitely not retiring and I’m definitely not traveling to the Canary Islands, although I hear they are charming and have black, sandy beaches.

But I have had plenty of conversations with Arizona, as it continues to beckon me home.

I am home AND I am not home.

It’s a delicate – and difficult – balancing act to connect with two disparate parts of the country as my “home”. Even with strong, well-thought out reasons for being/living/working in the Midwest half the year and in the Southwest the other half, it can be a bit crazy-making at times.

“When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

So what could be better than to tie a knot at the end of a red balloon, and hang on while appreciating great moments in Wisconsin — walking the Capitol Square, shooting the flower-laden prairie. Be busy. Be still. Be in the present.

I’m keeping an eye out for red balloons!

After all, everything looks brighter when one’s guide is a big, red balloon!