Nature Photography Archives -

Breaking Free

By Simone Lipscomb | May 26, 2025

A primeval-feeling forest of red spruce and Fraser fir trees lined the trail. I had just turned off the Appalachian Trail onto a less traveled trail and was enjoying solitude. A few minutes prior I had put out a request to the Universe to help me learn how to regain emotional sovereignty during these times of intense turmoil in the world. I asked to be shown a key to understanding how to regain my joy amidst the insanity of the times.

I hadn’t gone but maybe a quarter mile up the trail when I saw a beautiful owl feather laying perfectly positioned beside the trail. As I touched it, I heard… ‘so you can fly without noise.’ I always think of the ability to see in the dark as being owl’s greatest gift, but noiseless flight was what Owl presented.

I recalled a large owl flying within a few feet of me and not making one sound…not a whoosh, or swish….totally silent flight. Decades have passed and I still vividly remember that experience.

As I continued up the trail, I pondered the answer that Owl brought to me. Two miles I walked, down 1000 feet of elevation and back up 1000 feet of elevation, allowing my mind to piece together the answer to my question….how can I gain emotional sovereignty during these trying times.

I thought of the quality of owl feathers, their softness and velvety texture. I also thought of using inner vision to fly within myself to see in the dark, but with gentleness and softness…like owl feathers…. not a wrecking ball of clearing uncomfortable emotions. As I imagined the gentle, soundless flight into myself, a surge of emotion arose within me and tears came. Along with the clarity I had asked for in my earlier request.

I’m only a victim as long as I am willing to allow the chaos of the world to make its way into me and ‘plug’ into me. Victimization happens when we allow what’s happening around us to determine how we feel, think, and act. Freedom comes from unplugging from the chaos outside ourself, to regain a sense of personal power.

It isn’t only claiming sovereignty—personal power—over my emotional triggers. It’s also about having agency…knowing that I have the capacity to act independently and to exercise free will. And therein lies the key to freedom from victimization.

I have a choice in how much I allow what’s happening outside of me to influence what’s happening within me. One way of looking at this is like a loving and strong inner guardian setting boundaries that keeps harmful bullies from hurting me. This guardian doesn’t block everything from touching me, only the hate, the meanness and everything that goes with those intentions.

After retracing my steps, I turned back onto the Appalachian Trail and within a few minutes saw a beautiful doe grazing on ferns, just off the trail. She looked up at me as I paused. Deer brings gentleness into our lives. She was a reminder to be gentle with myself, to be soft in my inner explorations, and to know that I have choice. I can choose to be free.

And a closing thought….colonizers, dictators, and authoritarians try to take away sovereignty by limiting rights and freedoms, and they try to take away agency as well. They don’t want the people they are trying to control to think they have the ability to act independently and exercise free will. We will do well to remember that nobody can take away our power over ourselves and our ability to think, feel, and act independently of anyone’s approval. We always have choice with our inner freedoms.

Finding Polaris

By Simone Lipscomb | May 23, 2025

The nervous system was never meant to deal with the amount of information overload we are faced with every day. The mind is constantly spinning and the body becomes more and more stressed as the nervous system has no time to rest and unwind.

Last night, while standing under a sky filled with brilliant stars, galaxies, planets, and nebula, I reflected on how much star gazing—in particular photographing deep space objects and landscape astrophotography–has helped me learn to slow down. Several weeks of cloudy skies has taken away that meditative time in the dark outdoors and left me with an uncomfortable angst.

When I started photographing deep sky objects, I would jump from one amazing galaxy to a beautiful nebula or luminous star cluster, rarely allowing the telescope time to capture the long exposures needed as it gathered more light. I recall sitting outside under crystal clear winter skies feeling antsy and impatient at waiting. And waiting. And waiting for images to appear.

Finally, I understood the stars and all that deep space deliciousness was healing my nervous system. They were attuning me to a natural pace—the rhythm of Nature. Since we are all part of Nature, it’s odd that we are so disconnected from the rhythms of It.

While under the night sky observing, it’s impossible to see the stars and planets moving. But as you pair stars with earthly landmarks and continue watching, you will notice they have moved. Or if you place an object in a telescope view finder to see it, eventually it waltzes out of the field of view and you must reposition the telescope. The most telling sign of movement of sky objects is star trail images.

How lucky are we to have one object in the sky that doesn’t move…Polaris, or the North Star. Everything revolves around Polaris. If you set up a camera on a tripod facing this stillpoint and take a series of long exposures, and then stack them while processing, you see amazing movement. How can anything that appears to not be moving, move SO MUCH!?! That’s the magic of Nature.

When we allow ourselves to sync with Nature’s rhythms, we slow down, but that doesn’t mean we stop. We simply go at a more natural pace that allows the nervous system to function normally…we sleep better, feel better, have more energy.

During these challenging times, never has it been so important to pause and allow the nervous system—the body system—to be in neutral stillness. Attuning to the rhythms of Nature aligns us with home, with our own North Star within. When we connect and live from that place of perceived non-movement and stillness within, we allow life to move around us instead of us trying to keep up at a frenetic pace. Let us find Polaris within ourselves and learn to be observers of the chaos instead of participants in it.

Cycles

By Simone Lipscomb | April 17, 2025

Laughter erupted spontaneously as the stars witnessed my sudden understanding. Photographing the night sky, whether through a camera and tripod or a telescope, is a master course in patience. You cannot force the stars to move any faster, if you are wanting to capture their movement to create a star trails image. You can’t stop clouds from moving in to obscure the galaxy the telescope is imaging. The moon won’t slow its rising to give another 10 minutes of dark sky. The sun won’t go down any faster to help you start the imaging session sooner. The laughter emerged when I realized I was having to embody the cycles and timing of Nature…to S L O W down and be present. A nearly constant message coming from every direction these days.

For months I’ve been ‘listening’ to trees. Or feeling trees. However a human might interpret that idea. To me, it’s listening to them. Why do humans go so fast? That’s the question I hear when I’m hiking among the old ones on the high trails. My answers have varied. Snow’s moving in, gotta make it to my car before the road closes. Wind’s picking up, don’t wanna be hit by a falling branch. It’s raining. I’m hungry. The list grows.

But when I take the time to sit on the moss-covered, fallen tree, I meld into the forest. I slow down. I remember cycles. I remember to breathe.

The stars teach me this, too. Inhale………..exhale. Pause. Inhale………exhale. Pause. Let go. Remember.

I am the cycles of Nature. I am the stars, the moon, the galaxies. They are me. We are part of a whole. Separation no longer exists. Peace comes….and then? The clouds creep in. And it’s okay.

The Anchor Point

By Simone Lipscomb | April 16, 2025

“The stars serve as an anchor point of stability in a dangerous and ever-changing world.” This quote from The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars, sang in my mind last night as I stood beneath the blanket of twinkling beauty.

I don’t recognize the country that I dearly love. It has become a war zone of political insanity, with fear being the commodity propagated by the current administration. It’s unbearable to stay fully informed, but the small news bites I allow to filter through my boundaries, drive me deeper into the woods and cause me to linger longer under night skies absorbing the beauty and capturing it to share, with hope that it brings comfort to those who also need an anchor point of stability.

May we gather in beauty and celebrate it, in its many forms. It is possible, in that space of undeniable grace, that we may find each other again and come together in Oneness.

The First Astronomers: How Indigenous Elders Read the Stars by Duane Hamacher with Elders and Knowledge Holders.

Spiraling Star Dust

By Simone Lipscomb | March 23, 2025

I laid on the porch, gazing into the clear sky, as Orion slowly moved across the sky. In another area of the immenseness of space, my little smart telescope took 10 second exposures for 1 ½ hours of a small section of Ursa Major known as M 81 or Bode’s Galaxy.

The stars seemed to enhance the stillness of the evening as I allowed my mind to wander through constellations and galaxies. All chaos of the external world dropped away and the ‘I’ slowly dissolved into the vastness of the heavens.

I’m finding the night sky my haven, my place of refuge and safety, during these times of social discord and unrest. This quote I came up with sums it up for me:

The image I see on my iPhone–as the telescope works its magic–is below, but what I see when I look into the night sky is pure awe sprinkled with the stardust of Oneness.

If you want to know how the Hubble telescope sees in the M81 galaxy…..

M 81 is 11.6 million light years away and is a 6.9 magnitude spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. In the center is a black hole 70 million times the mass of the Sun. This image taken by Hubble uses visible light and infrared light. Ultraviolet light from hot, young stars is fluorescing the clouds of hydrogen gas. M 81 is 15 times the mass of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Thanks to NASA for the information and image.

My images won’t be perfect. I do very little post-processing because I want more moments under the sky and less hours in front of a computer. Some amateur astrophotographers devote hours to stacking, color correcting and come up with lovely images and that’s their bliss. I’m super-grateful there are those who choose to push the boundaries of software and computers to show us even more beauty. I’ll just sit outside as long as I can with a far-away look in my eyes and an open heart to the magnificence of the Universe. That’s my bliss.