Stepping Out on World Sauntering Day

June 19, 2013 by 5 Comments
Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones © 2013 Bo Mackison

This is a post assembled partly while thinking about last night’s dream and partly while checking my emails this morning — makes for an interesting juxtaposition of ideas.

The dream? A long walk across water on huge, irregular stepping-stones. The stones could have been a replica set designed by the creators of Stonehenge, the ancient English site of healing, ritual, and worship, but also a funerary and a celestial observatory. In the dream, I cautiously, tentatively, cross a sparkling turquoise-blue bay, intent on reaching the shore of pebbly rocks that always are just out of my reach.

Then came my morning message from Tut, a humorous, motivational email that I read every weekday. It informed me that today, June 19th, is World Sauntering Day. Tut provided a link as confirmation, and sure enough, today IS National Sauntering Day, a day dedicated to the art of sauntering.

According to Wikipedia – a source I trust on this sort of trivia – World Sauntering Day is thought to have started at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan in the 1970s. “The Grand Hotel has the world’s longest porch, 660 feet in length. It was a counter response by W.T.Rabe to a growing movement toward the recreation of jogging. The idea of the day was to encourage people to slow down and appreciate the world around them.” Love the idea of a sauntering day!

According to Thesaurus.com, synonyms for sauntering  include:

amble

linger

meander

mosey

promenade

ramble

roam

sashay

tarry

traipse

wander

So today I intend to take a saunter around the neighborhood pond, wander through the grocery store, and meander in my garden. It will be a nice counter-point to the arduous struggle I encountered in my dream, leaping from one low stone to another, then swimming to the next stone, taller and angular, which I climbed with the strength of a fingernail grip.

Now I only wish I could promenade on the 660 foot long porch of The Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island this evening as sunset drifts into twilight.

Maybe in my next dream…

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She explores wherever she travels, even in her dreams.

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Sunday Series – Oh, the Grasses!

July 29, 2012 by 3 Comments
Grasses

Grasses ©2012 Bo Mackison

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Grasses II

Grasses II © 2012 Bo Mackison

The faster one goes, the more strain there is on the senses, the more they fail to take in, the more confusion they must tolerate or gloss over — and the longer it takes to bring the mind to a stop in the presence of anything. ~ Wendell Berry

Grasses III

Grasses III ©2012 Bo Mackison

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness. ~ Pearl S. Buck

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. On Sundays, Bo shares a series of photographs and quotes she finds full of meaning and inspiration.

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Looking for Rain in My Crystal Ball

July 17, 2012 by 2 Comments
Crystal Ball - Through the Screen Porch

Looking through the Screen Porch © 2012 Bo Mackison

I never saw a discontented tree.  They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.  They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!  ~John Muir

Perhaps John Muir never saw a discontented tree, and he certainly had a long-term love affair with them, but I’m seeing many sad, very dry trees in southern Wisconsin.

While I was experimenting with a crystal ball and my camera, I took this photo of my one of my favorite trees, the red maple that we planted in our back yard in 2001. This maple is doing well since we are watering it weekly. The rest of the yard doesn’t look too perky. In fact, it looks downright parched, except for an area of green around our perennial/vegetable garden.

The weatherman I listened to this morning somehow knows — looking through HIS crystal ball — that we will get rain tomorrow evening, perhaps a quarter of an inch or so. I do hope he has some special connections and his forecast proves true. My green Midwest is no longer lush and green. It is brown and crispy.

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that we were not watering the grass, only the trees. A reader informs me that most grass will survive without any moisture for about 60 days. Our last significant rainfall was in early June, so I am watching the calendar. Another two weeks of this, and we may have to add the grass to our watering schedule.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is experimenting with crystal ball photography while assessing the crispness of the grass.

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Seeded Earth

June 6, 2008 by 9 Comments
Seeded Earth

Seeded Earth © 2008 Bo Mackison

I’m thinking I shot the background photograph for some new business cards for Seeded Earth Photography – without intentionally doing so. Simple and descriptive at the same time. A fitting piece for a photographer based in Wisconsin and the Midwest.

The plants are just peeking above ground in this field in late May. Photographed near the tip of the peninsula of Door County in Northeastern Wisconsin.

 

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