Another Pathway
Last February I wrote here about The Mythic Pull Of Pathways, and included photos of roads, streets, forest paths, and so forth, that have captured my attention.
I recently found another! This pathway is in the Tres Rios Wetlands in Phoenix, Arizona. Who would have thought it? Wetlands in the desert! And this beautiful pathway within it.
I have been writing and publishing photos about Tres Rios at another blog. If it interests you, have a look at these:
Wandering Tres Rios Wetlands
Bobcats At Tres Rios Wetlands
Burning Cattails
Burning Cattails – Aftermath
Paean For Tumacacori
Last week I spent a few hours visiting the Mission San José de Tumacácori. It was established in 1691 in the Santa Cruz River Valley of southern Arizona. Following a stormy history involving a Pima Indian rebellion, Mexico’s War of Independence from Spain, and Apache raids, it was abandoned by 1848 and began falling into disrepair. Preservation and stabilization efforts began in 1908 when the area was declared a National Monument.
I’ll let my photos and a few quotes from the mission’s early years speak for themselves, and I’d love to hear what you take away from them.
The Key To Understanding
There are many matters that I cannot and do not need to understand, such as Love, and God, and why I became fascinated with an intersection in downtown Fargo, North Dakota.
I was in Fargo last week to lead an Open Space session and a Genius Workshop for Jodee Bock and the wonderful people that she always gathers for her annual Bigger Small Talk Summit.
Meaning-Making Is Both Blessing And Curse
…my mind often buzzes with questions about mundane events…
Red Mountain is in close-up view from a picnic area on the southern bank of the Salt River a few miles north of Mesa, Arizona, where the Bush Highway enters the south-west corner of the nearly three million acre Tonto National Forest. I sat there alone at a weathered and rickety picnic bench one day last week, my attention divided between the mountain and a narrow strip of river where a breeze rippled the surface and trout leaped. I had a notebook in front of me to record what I saw, thought and felt.
Making Weighty Matters Light And Light Matters Weighty
As it is with making photographs, so it is with the pictures we make of our lives…
That pictures should be balanced is another general compositional rule. Subject elements are weighted and assigned different degrees of importance depending on their size and their tone or color. (Patricia Caulfield in Capturing The Landscape With Your Camera)
I assigned weight to elements of the three pictures in this post by using color selectively. My choices about where to assign weight were deliberate, but in our lives we often assign weight to objects or events out of habit or predisposition, or because assigning weight in one way or another serves a purpose of which we are unaware. Thus we make weighty matters light and light matters weighty, and sometimes we know it and sometimes we don’t.
Is It Me, Or You, Or An Antelope?
The word “you” acts as a container. It holds the actual you, plus my perception of you, plus whatever parts of myself I project onto you. When I use the container–when I say or think “you”–I make no differentiation between those three, and so I am never aware of referring to one or the other. It is all just “you.” No wonder I become confused about who you are.
During a visit to Wildlife World in Phoenix, I found myself taking portraits of the animals rather than just snapping photos. I was looking for something in their faces, particularly in their eyes. What is in there that I can see, that is available to a human?
The Mythic Pull Of Pathways
I can’t pass up a photo of a pathway. I have dozens of them; all images of roads of one kind or another stretching to a narrow point in the distance. From time to time I puzzle over my attraction to such images. I sense something is at work that I cannot explain with any of my habitual ways of interpreting reality, something mysterious, at least to me.
Follow The Way Of It
What a quote, a camera, and a pack of agile dogs taught me about life.
The Quote
To respect the way of it is to follow the simple directions. If you have the thought that the dishes need washing, wash them. That’s heaven. Hell is asking why. –Byron Katie
I was leaving the house one morning, going for a short visit with some friends, and the thought came: “Take the camera.” There were lots of reasons to argue with the thought at the time but, following the “simple directions,” I took the camera.
