Life got in the way

It’s been a while since writing… Life – well, it got in the way.

How did life get in the way you wonder? I lost my childhood friend who inspired me to photograph the White Mountains of New Hampshire a few years ago. We had met the year before and had made plans to catch up this past summer. Not intentionally, I put down my camera and pen away for a while.

I did pick my camera up again when I found myself on a mountaintop at the Horseshoe Bend Farm Wines. I was traveling en route to workcamp on the Mississippi river. The winery was a Harvest Host stop in Tennessee for a night on the way. It had been a rainy humid day and the owner mentioned that in the morning the valley which enclosed the meandering Duck River would probably be filled with fog. It was spectacular and once again nature found its way back into my soul.

From the soul of a man reaching for understanding – nature calls me. Over the summer, and into the fall, I’ve struggled. I often sit down to write and scratch some notes and thoughts on a yellow pad. Reading it later, decide not to publish it – thinking whether I should or not… I became a good procrastinator. Yet, not writing, haunts me…

Tonight, long after many have gone to sleep, I think of the early American writers, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I go back to find their words…

From Thoreau, I read, “Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared to our own private opinion, what a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”

Thoreau’s words made me recognize that my thinking is dictating my direction and giving me roadblocks to doing what I love. It made me realize how much being in nature — photographing opens my heart and soul.  

Emerson writes, “But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.”

I’m not looking or wishing to be isolated, I’m alone, but closer now than ever to nature, to the peace and comfort I find walking along a babbling stream or wandering through a forest deeply scented by the Loblolly pines and fragrant cedar boughs.

Here, in nature, I’m never alone. No… I’m connected with nature and at peace within myself, free from man’s complexities and urgency. Here, I’m free to be attached like a beacon radiantly embracing life at its roots. My soul rejoices in being set free without boundaries.

Over the past year, I found myself on some detours dealing with the loss of my friend and later one of my brothers. Yet, despite these sad dealings, I found a new connection with friends and family. Perhaps, it’s the realization that our time is precious. One cannot wait for tomorrow’s offering as it might not ever arrive.