When farm life is overwhelming, the practice of taking photos helps me to notice beauty and fight back against the urge to throw my hands up in defeat. Here's one of the good ones.
Sometime in the 1990s, I was in grade school and was volunteering with my mom to help serve the food at a benefit concert. There was rain, so we were lugging boxes and coolers and coffee makers into a backup location, a recreation center in the neighboring town. As we walked through the doors, both my mom and I stopped short at what we saw: men, grown men , playing basketball, in the middle of the day. I stood there, gaping, until my mom whispered at me to stop staring and keep moving. Looking back, now I know that these men were almost certainly white-collar workers who met to play sports over their lunch breaks, and there's really nothing too unusual about that, but the concept of this was so foreign to my life at the time that I could not make sense of what I was seeing. In my world, working men were sweaty, hungry, and tired at lunchtime, and they were happy to get a break to sit down and eat. After lunch, they might stretch out and take a "10-minute snooze," as my da...
A savage storm blew through and left the cottonwood tree upside down, uprooted, and now it lies in a tangled heap. Our minds cannot comprehend the scale of this loss, how it can happen - something so strong, sturdy and lovely is now simply - gone? This object of contemplation, perch for innumerable birds and critters - those that make it a home and those just passing through, companion for morning coffee and Sunday afternoon strolls, landmark and compass, And now - gone? The storm of cancer blew through and left its own devastation, lives turned upside down, now lying in a tangled heap. Our minds cannot comprehend the scale of the loss, how it can happen - someone so beautiful, kind and open-hearted is now simply - gone? This wife, mother, daughter, and friend to so many - who loved shared laugher and the warmth of family, of home, companion for midmorning tea and ...
Last week, there was a sign on the side of the road vaguely announcing imminent construction work. We soon learned what the sign indicated: the bridge we travel every day was going to be closed for many months. Suddenly, the rivers that separate here from there seemed to rear up and reclaim their rightful place as topographic barriers, unforgiving terrain that needed to be considered carefully as we, pioneer-like, plotted out the least inhibiting place to cross. As I drew a new squiggly-line commute, I found that I was investigating local maps in a different light, asking questions like: where exactly do those two rivers meet? And, what does that mean for the watershed of this area, including the creek that runs by my house? I then wondered how the land use changes as the topography changes, and I was led to investigate many environmental connections that I am sorry to say I had not given a good amount of consideration before this imposed inconvenience. I find this s...