Beauty in an Autumn Fog

Autumn Fog

Autumn Fog © 2013 Bo Mackison

“In nature, everything has a job. The job of the fog is to beautify further the existing beauties!” ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I have been waiting for the sun to brighten the landscapes in the Madison area.

I had a list of places I wanted to visit during Wisconsin’s beautiful autumn. I waited and waited. And those magical sun-filled days did not appear. I held on so tightly to the idea of “need sun for this explore” and eventually I had to cross several places off my list – places that close for the season on October 31st.

Yesterday I finally took a long look at the calendar, and realized I was not getting a single one of all those October days back. True, it’s been a busy, eventful month, but there were days when I changed plans due to weather, thinking I could fit a visit in when the weather was more suitable. Yesterday, I realized there were only two days left in October, and I had not visited many of the places I usually visit to soak in the autumn beauty.

It was foggy, a bit misty. But I pulled out my winter coat, waterproof and warm, and went for a walk in a nearby park. The fog was moody, thick in some places on the trail, but it offered an interesting color intensity that I would likely have missed if I were walking in bright sunlight. In the gray mist, the colors that do show through are mystical and mesmerizing. An unexpected gift.

Today it is no longer foggy. The rain has washed the foggy blanket away. Perhaps today is a good enough day to explore a rainy autumn day.

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Disclosure: There are several good reasons why I pack up and head to Arizona for the dark seasons of the year. I do love Arizona’s stark beauty fiercely. I also love her sunshine., especially since I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the lack of sun plays havoc with my biological chemistry. I delayed my travels this year, for the very best of reasons, and decided to play it smart once I noticed the effects the diminishing sunlight had on my moods and energy levels. I have a thing about taking medications, but there is a time when it is the right call. The treatment appears to be helping, hence the photos of the park in yesterday’s fog.

Arizona Sycamores in Autumn

Sycamore in Autumn

Arizona Sycamore in Autumn © 2012 Bo Mackison

I live in the desert, but I am only a fifteen minute drive from one of the Sky Islands, the Santa Rita Mountains. And in the riparian area of the Madera Canyon the sycamores are still dressed in their autumn colors.

Madera Canyon

Madera Canyon ©2012 Bo Mackison

Arizona sycamores grow in riparian habitats. In Arizona, these habitats bordering a river or other waterway make up only  one percent of the total land area. Yet these narrow strips along streams and canyon bottoms hold the greatest diversity of plants and animals of any habitat type. Birds and wildlife flock to these areas. Large numbers of plants live in these corridors that cannot survive in the more arid lands.

Madera Canyon

Red and Green in the Riparian Corridor ©2012 Bo Mackison

Riparian areas are often seen as green ribbons in the landscape. But in autumn, they take on a different character, a mix of green and red. The leaves are already falling though. Soon the riparian areas will return to their more typical green.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She has returned to her winter home in the Sonoran Desert and is already exploring her favorite places.

A Time for Every Purpose under Heaven

Wisconsin River Sandbars

Sandbar Fingers © 2012 Bo Mackison

Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares that will not withdraw from us. ~ Maya Angelou

It is autumn along the Wisconsin River.

The river is low, a result of the drought in spring and most of summer. August’s rains were not enough to fill the banks of the river. And so sandbar fingers stretch from shore. As far as I can see, peering from the bridge, there are sandbars edging from shore and sandbars rising from the river’s middle.

Trees across the river have changed their summer greens for autumn oranges and yellows, and soon, it seems too soon, the glorious autumn colors will change again. They will turn into autumn’s piles of crisped, brown leaves below bare branched trees.

Change. Nature manages its changes, coinciding with the seasons, recycling over and over. Nature responds to changes that aren’t cyclical on a yearly calendar also, ones that track over decades and centuries. Rivers overflow, flood the nearby lands and the nearest buildings and roads in river towns. Rivers run low, exposing land that is usually hidden from sight, once only the realm of underwater creatures.

To everything – turn, turn, turn
There is a season – turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven.
~ lyrics from Turn, Turn, Turn by The Byrds

It is autumn in my life, too. I walk through the yearly calendar’s changes. Month by month, I anticipate spring, summer, fall, winter. Sometimes I know what to expect. Some things are planned – a joyous wedding, a planned holiday with family, a special birthday. Some events are unplanned – a family member’s lost job, the death of a close friend, a change in a long-standing relationship.

Perhaps one of the most difficult is the aging of parents and the responsibilities that come with that change in family status. Elderly mothers and fathers are no longer the matriarchs and patriarchs in charge; middle-aged sons and daughters are no longer the ones that obey. Shifting responsibilities, shifting emotions.

Our lives follow similar patterns to those found in nature. The river runs low. Our energies run low. Sandbars are exposed, exposing that which had been underwater, out of sight, for many years. The status quo is disrupted. Secrets spill open, lives are altered. There is no taking back the time, no denying the newly discovered information.

The trees drop their leaves and only the gray skeletons remain. Some changes are short-term, like the bare limbed trees. Spring brings budding leaves; summer, a fully leafed tree. Flowers bloom, grass grows.

Sitting silently
Doing nothing
Spring Comes.
The grass grows by itself.
~ Zen Haiku

Some of nature’s changes take longer periods of time, like the deep river that will only stretch to its edges after many rains and deep snowfalls. Even then, there are subtle changes in its ebb and flow.

Some of the changes – severe damage to the earth from which it cannot recover in a many a generation’s lifetime or a death in a family – they leave a more enduring mark of change. Time passes. We adapt to the constancy of change.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is searching for clarity amidst many changes.

Quiet Space – September’s Photo-Heart Connection

Quiet Space

Quiet Space © 2012 Bo Mackison

The beginning of a new month! When I turn the calendar to a new month, I know it’s time to look for a photograph for Photo-Heart Connection from the last month’s photos. I look for one that speaks to me in a special way.

Here is my choice from the many photos I took in September. I took it on the last day of September, on an early Sunday morning when Autumn’s sunlight cast a spell on me. I stopped at this set of prayer benches situated high on a hill overlooking the city I call home.

It was a quiet morning.

A quiet time in a quiet place and I was grateful to spend some time resting on one of these benches.

I felt a deep connection with place, a sense of renewal, a new strength. I acknowledged that I am at a crossroads, and that simple acknowledgement gave me an inner peace for which I had been searching.

“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”
~ Chas. R Surndoll

This photo is my choice for this month’s Photo Heart Connection.

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She joins other photographers at  Kat Eye Studio and posts a photo taken the prior month that “connects with her heart’ during the first few days of the new month.

Autumn, Overlooking Madison

Autumn, Overlooking Madison

Autumn, Overlooking Madison © 2012 Bo Mackison

“Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity;
but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance.  What man can stand with autumn
on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling
hills that reach to the far horizon?” ~ Hal Borland

I stood on a hill-top this morning overlooking a prairie remnant, then a line of ash trees dressed in the brightest of yellows, next a small woods touched with a variety of color – dark greens, yellow greens, yellows, oranges, reds. Beyond the woods, the blue of Lake Mendota in the early morning contrasts with the city of Madison that rises from the shores to the gently rolling hillsides. I could see the University of Wisconsin and the State’s Capitol building in Madison’s downtown.

It’s a sight that made me pause, filled me with a deep joy that Sherpa and I had decided to settle in Madison nearly three decades ago. Madison in autumn with the change in the weather to pleasant days, cooler nights; Madison in autumn with its glorious colors — Madison is at its best (in my opinion) from mid-September through mid-November.

Viewing Madison, and a bit of the surrounding countryside, from the top of a hill is one of those perfect autumn moments.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Since autumn’s cool weather arrived, she’s been spending many an early morning at a prairie remnant just north of Madison — wandering, thinking, and taking a few photographs, too.