The Filling Tree

Old Oak

Ancient Oak © 2013 Bo Mackison

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” ~ Pablo Picasso

This tree, an ancient oak, stands a few yards from the mown path through meadow and a prairie restoration. Solid, deeply connected in the earth, a tribute to time.

Whenever I pass this tree, I stop. Compelled to stop. I seem unable to walk past the tree without pausing, walking through the brambles and sticks of growing sumac, until I stand next to this giant. Rest my hand on its bark. That’s all. Just rest my hand upon it, and connect its pulse with my pulse. Sap beat. Heart beat.

I think. I wait. I breathe. I peer into he upper most branches. I feel my feet grounded on the earth, as the tree is grounded the earth. I run my finger through along the ridges and the valleys of the wood. I see pictures in its wavy trunk lines. I listen the woodpecker’s drumming. I stand in the shadow of the tree, and notice the breeze that swirls around the both of us. The experience fills me.

And then I continue on my walk.

————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She explores wherever she goes, with and without her camera.

Windswept

Windswept

Windswept ©2013 Bo Mackison

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

And that when we no longer know the way which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry

My old ways, my tried and tested ways, no longer seem to fit. What happens when the stories I’ve lived these many years feel too small and restrict my breathing, my feelings, my actions? There is a spark on the edge of the shadow, and it shimmers.

The wind sweeps in, brushing away the old, allowing space for the new to take seed, grow and thrive.

—————

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is exploring creative photography and emotion in a  series called Desert Lines – a combination of visual lines and written lines.

Twisted Trees – The Desert Mesquite

Twisted Tree Grove

Tree Grove ©2012 Bo Mackison

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.  Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all.  But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.” ~ William Blake, 1799

Mesquite trees are an Arizona symbol – tough, adapted to desert living with a root system that grows deep into the earth. A tap-root can extend as far as 150 feet into the ground in search of moisture.

They bring flowers to the desert, first in spring and then again after the monsoons, and provide nectar for bees which then produce a sweet mesquite honey. The seeds are ground into flour in many desert cultures, a practice that has lasted for centuries, and continues to this day.

The mesquite improves the soil in which it grows, as it is a nitrogen stabilizer. A natural fertilizer.

The grove of trees in the above photograph grows next to the mission church at Tumacacori National Historic Park.

They may not be tall and stately like the California Redwood, nor provide a spectacular display of autumnal color like the Eastern and Midwest hardwoods, but there is a fascination with the gnarled, sharply angled branches extending from the mesquite’s thick trunk.

————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.

Rise Up Rooted

Sycamore III

Sycamore in Black and White ©2012 Bo Mackison

. . . if we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

-Rainer Maria Rilke from Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

I traveled into the mountains this morning, and walked along the edge of Madera Creek. The creek was dry, or so I imagined, when I began my descent at 5,000 feet. But by the time I had walked a half mile, I noticed damp Sycamore leaves, recently shed from the overhanging trees and dropped into the creek bed.

Another hundred yards and the creek pooled in deeper crevices. Dark and bubbly, it followed a circuitous route as it descended the mountain.

I watched the water swirling around large piles of leaves. Single leaves danced along, bobbing on the water’s surface. I listened to the creek’s song, low and splashing, accompanied by an occasional bird’s song.

The sounds of life, the language of nature.

As Rilke wrote, “if we surrendered to earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

——————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She continues to explore some of her favorite places and read some of her favorite poets.

Walking with the Trees

Bare Branches

Bare Branches ©2012 Bo Mackison

“Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees.”
–   Karle Wilson Baker

I think if I ever decided to limit myself to only a few subjects to photograph, I would choose first the tree.

When I photograph a tree, I capture the structure of the tree, and its beauty, its strength. But it seems the tree portraits become self-portraits in a sense, as they often capture my mood and state of being, too.

—————-

Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. During this month of endings and beginnings, of many journeys and quite a bit of upheaval, I will be posting iPhonography.