Three Trees © 2012 Bo Mackison
The sky and the strong wind have moved the spirit inside me til I am carried away trembling with joy. ~ Wavnuk
Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is taking an August break from writing long blog posts, but the photos continue.
Approaching NYC © 2012 Bo Mackison
Living on the edges means recognizing those places and experiences that do not offer easy answers, those fierce edges of life where things are not as clear as we hope them to be. There is also beauty in the border spaces, those places of ambiguity and mystery. ~ Christine Valters Paintner
I am in New York City.
Sherpa and I flew in a few days ago, had a beautiful view of the city as we landed. Twinkling lights, rows of brighter street lights, the sun already set in the west but still lighting the skies with those border colors between day and night – the ribbons of yellows, oranges, purples, grays.
We spent a busy weekend walking the streets in Midtown, walking the criss-cross of trails and paths and roads in Central Park. We visited with our eldest who took the train in from Long Island. She’s lived in a half-dozen places in NYC, and so, is more than qualified to know the ins and outs. We had a couple of marvelous meals in out-of-the-way spaces, and of course fit in a few touristy type activities, too.
But today Sherpa heads to a training course – the real reason we are here – and our daughter returned to LI for the start of the work week. That leaves me here, on my own-some, with plenty of plans and a couple of maps and a list of places I would love to visit. And yet, here I am, still in the hotel room at 8:30, in that place of ambiguity, on my own personal border where I will have to sacrifice my comfort if I want to explore the beauty in the border spaces, in the places I am not familiar with, nor at ease with.
There was a time, not all that many years ago, where I chose to stay in the hotel while others took care of their city business, waiting for someone to return. Only then would I venture beyond the places and spaces I knew.
This spring I managed living solo near Tucson, a frequent visitor to a desert I did not know, but taught myself to love by frequent visits. And so I shall do the same with the streets of New York. Perhaps it isn’t my beloved desert nor my familiar Midwest prairies and forests, perhaps in my mind I am as far from the Sonoran Desert or the Northwoods as I can imagine. But I am on my way, out the door.
The only way I will learn to love this new space is to explore it, be okay with the ambiguity and embrace the mystery.
So . . . off I go.
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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She lives in the Midwest, loves the Southwest, and is now exploring the Big Apple. With her camera, of course!
Sonoran Desert Twilight
Seeing form with the whole body and mind.
Hearing sound with the whole body and mind.
One understands it intimately.
~ Eihen Dogen
When I am in the desert, I have two responsibilities — to listen, to see.
I watch as nature busies herself doing the quiet things not easily seen, sometimes only sensed. A lizard scooting from under a cooling rock. Cactus wrens darting from their nest holes in the saguaros to the top of the cactus, on alert, the look-out. Then swooping about, catching an insect or two, and a return to the nest inside the huge saguaro.
A pack of coyotes sing. A second pack joins, in harmony. Silence. Then the who-ooo of an owl. I hear it, I never see a twitch of movement.
I am content, also, to hear the sound of silence. Silence has a sound. I feel surrounded by the desert, as if she has a hold on me. The desert wakens all my senses — sacred senses.
Now is the time to remember that all you do is sacred. ~ Hafiz
I stayed in the desert overnight. There was no roughing it for me. My days of primitive camping ended decades ago. This time I had my car, a sleeping bag rated warm enough to keep me comfortable in the desert night. (The low reached 38˚F — not too cold.) I had a backpacker stove and a French press coffee cup. I had coffee and soup in a box for dinner and granola and fruit for breakfast and lots of bottled water. I had a lantern. I had the necessities. I also had my iPad, a last minute addition to my camp gear. I was set. Luxury camping.
When I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep, I sat in the car and read The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko on my iPad. Now that is really desert camping in luxury. I didn’t wait the first touch of daylight to make my coffee. The sun rises late in the desert — I don’t know why — and I got cold. I finally maneuvered in the dark and heated water and made my first cup of coffee by the yellowish-orange hazy lights of Tucson reflecting off the clouds.
By the time it was light enough to follow a trail and not walk into the desert plants, I was dressed in layers and had my hiking stick and coffee cup in hand. I followed a trail along an arroyo and was quite pleased to be out in the desert, alone, at dawn — until a pack of coyotes ran across the trail twenty feet from where I stood.
Once I got my heart out of my throat and back into my chest where it belonged, I turned around and hiked back to camp. All those sacred senses were on alert.
But it was a great explore.
My first overnight camping trip in the desert.
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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is exploring the Sonoran desert.
Fish Creek Harbor © 2008 Bo Mackison
The weather was changeable in Door County – sunny skies followed by thunderheads and a brief storm just after sunset. Then at midnight, the skies cleared and the Milky Way poured a hazy band of white light that spanned the sky in a celestial arch. The moon was fully new and the stars put on a deafening show.
Can stars be deafening?
In the northern part of Wisconsin, with no light pollution to diminish the show, yes – the stars were truly deafening in their splendor.
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child– our own two eyes. All is a miracle. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh
