Tag: Nature Photography
What is Your Beauty?

What is Your Beauty?

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White trilliums covered the side of the trail and the slope of the mountain. Wild phlox, their purple-blue blossoms bursting with color, mixed with the trilliums and created a mosaic of color. Occasionally white and purple butterflies lifted off flowers, appearing to be trilliums and phlox taking flight. 

Pink petals, the later stage of white trilliums, golden ragwort, yellow trout lilies, yellow and purple violets, liverworts, bloodroots, heartleaf foamflowers, mountain bellworts, dutchman’s breeches, louseworts, seersucker sedges, blue asters, thyme leaf bluets, twoleaf miterworts, Miami mists, showy orchis, dwarf crested iris…too many to name, much less count….covered areas of the remote trail and surrounding open woodland. 

At one point, I stopped and spoke to a flower: Your beauty is amazing! I stood admiring her and heard a question in return: What is your beauty? I thought just a moment and replied: My beauty is sharing your beauty.

I pondered the answer I felt and walked with it as a mantra, repeating and allowing clarity to come.

As I allow ‘doors’ within me to open, I become a clearer channel for love, for light…for beauty to move through me and out into the world. For a long time, I thought the doors had to open in the outer world for me to walk through; however, the flower taught me that it is the inner door that must open to allow in more light, more beauty. Then…the outer doors open.

My beauty is sharing your beauty–lovely flower, clear-water creek, moss-covered rock, wild elk, magnificent mountain, humpback whale…. The more I can open myself to allow your beauty to fill me, the more I can share with the world. 

Learning about Oneness from a flower….I highly recommend it.
Amazing Beauty

Amazing Beauty

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The painted trilliums were exceptionally joy-producing.

I explored a new area today and asked It to tell me about Itself. It gifted me with play experiences, encounters with wildlife, and amazing beauty. Sometimes there’s really nothing else to say except… I’m so grateful.

Here’s a few photographs with comments. You’ll get why I can’t really add any major story or realizations to this post. It’s just….Amazing Beauty.

This butterfly wing was laying on a rock in the middle of the trail. It has a red spider mite (or some red insect) on it. I thought the colors of the wing, red insect and rock were quite lovely.
The creek was exquisite with many cascading drops.
The timing was perfect. The elk gals were laying down, resting, when I went up the trail. When I came back this cow was drinking and there was an opportunity to observe….(sigh)
This silly girl gave me a big grin as she pooped in the water. I use a Grayl water filter system and drink the creek waters all the time. I will say it gave me pause…..she was such an expression of amazing beauty.
Simple beauty of the day reflected in every element of the Place.

Photography note: All images except the water are with a medium format Nikon D 800 camera. It’s heavy….heavy…so I don’t use it a lot any more. But when I do, I remember why I adore this camera. It’s a beast of high resolution. The water flow image is with an iPhone 12 Max Pro using ‘live’ mode and then scrolling up on the image and choosing ‘long exposure.’ It does a decent job but nothing like my Nikon and Really Right Stuff ball head tripod….but sometimes its just easier to go light.

Keeping it Simple

Keeping it Simple

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Less is more.

My birthday gift to myself was minimizing the gear I wear and take while fly fishing. As the weather shifts to warmer days and my hikes increase in length to find solitude, I needed to drop weight and cool down. The key? Dropping a piece of gear that carries way too many things.

I like my fly fishing vest, advertised as having 30 pockets. Awesome!! (I don’t think I’m exaggerating). The problem is: it contains 30 pockets. And it’s quite warm. The obvious solution was to wear a waist pack. But before the vest, there was a sling and then a large waist pack. The sling remains as a colorful, fun outdoor pack but I didn’t like casting in it and the waist pack was too heavy and kept falling down unless I used the shoulder strap and then it was no different than the sling so it was returned. The vest was the perfect solution.

During colder months, when the extra insulation is appreciated and I’m not having to walk as far to find solitude, the vest is great. But these days, I’m hiking six miles or more with 70 degrees (and climbing) temperatures so a small pack seemed like a good idea.

While the idea of a smaller kit for my gadgets and tippet and fly box seemed great, what about the net? I visited my favorite fly shop in Townsend, Tennessee, and had some awesome assistance in figuring out the net. A simple holster was the answer. A smaller fly box was the only other essential I needed.

As I begin to unload the vest and store things like the small emergency blanket pack, the drying towel, the heavy fly box, I laughed at how much ‘stuff’ I was carrying on my fly fishing hikes. No wonder it felt heavy.

Figuring out how minimal I could go was actually quite fun. Lightening the load felt like a puzzle I was solving. How much can I leave behind? How much do I really need? Such important questions….not just for fly fishing.

Six and a half miles yesterday hiking and wading was the maiden voyage of the small waist pack. The overall feeling? Freedom. Nothing weighing me down, cooler as the temperatures climbed to 72 degrees. I felt lighter with more room to move and cast and bend over to photograph wildflowers that were blooming everywhere.

So often fly fishing (or wading-with-a-10-foot-stick, as I call it) mirrors life so perfectly. Letting go of things I don’t need is good, but letting go of thoughts I don’t need is even better. Once in a while it’s helpful to inventory what we are carrying–that we no longer need–whether it’s gear or thoughts or burdens. What keeps us weighed down? What can we do to keep it simple?
Divine Madness

Divine Madness

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Filled with beauty, I didn’t think I could receive any more. Yet a short distance up the trail, more cascading pools of crystal-clear, cold water greeted me. I stopped to gaze into the bubbling, churning whitewater as it leaped over moss-covered boulders. WOW, I exclaimed out loud. WOW!

A few weeks ago, the same area created the need to open myself more—to expand—to be able to take in the outrageous beauty. Like then, I stood there today laughing hysterically, tears forming in my eyes, and felt drunk on beauty, inebriated on the pure energy of this sacred place. I felt my body staggering as if under the influence of some potent cocktail; instead, my body, mind and spirit—my entire being—was in flow and balance with Nature, with all life. Completely at One.

The first part of the trail does not affect me like this. It is beautiful and wonderful there, but energetically it’s not as pure. It’s two miles up the trail when the real shift occurs. Fewer humans venture past that place so Nature is less tinkered with, abused or interfered with the farther up the trail one goes. 

There are places that I call Fairy Lands after about three miles. Tiny, white flowers carpeted the forest floor today as random boulders sat stoically among massive trees. The wind tossed the tops of trees and further up the ridge, a sort of roaring, rushing sound of wind through tree limbs created a stereo effect with the music of the creek.

The rare humans one meets up there are different than those that venture only a mile or so in and then turn back, having seen enough of Nature. Those that go further and commit to experiencing Nature are changed by visiting this special place.

I was surprised today when I had such a strong reaction. I expected the awe was used up when I visited it the first time. I thought it would be pleasant and beautiful; however, I did not guess that I would go through the same feelings I did before—discomfort that I couldn’t open big enough to take it in. Yet, as I listened carefully to inner guidance, I heard: Open your heart, breathe in what you see. When I practiced that guidance, a huge shift happened within and I experienced the inebriation of Oneness, of beauty, of the pristine energies of Nature that pushed me into a state of Divine Madness.
Taking It In

Taking It In

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The beauty was absolute. I found myself struggling to take it in: gray boulders; clear, cold, rushing water; soft, green moss; trees standing naked in their late-winter/early spring anticipation; intense, crystal-clear, blue sky. 

I breathed and opened my heart. It was it challenging to create a space large enough, within myself, to receive such profound and amazing beauty.

I sat and allowed my mind to still. As I scanned my body, I discovered something akin to pain as I attempted to take in such bountiful beauty. In stretching on the inside, and releasing whatever blocks kept me from receiving, I moved deeper into communion, into Oneness.

So many times we expect our growth must arise from dark, difficult times. But what if inner growth can happen just as powerfully from experiencing good things, beautiful things. 

For many years I’ve asked Spirit, What can I do to make a difference?, I received the same two words: GO OUTSIDE. I challenged the answer, doubting the significance of how that could make a difference, yet it hasn’t wavered. I follow that direction more often as I have discovered that Nature draws me into deep communion with all life and helps me be grounded and present. If distractions keep me from the friendship with Nature, I get out of balance quickly.

Today, as I melted into Oneness, I felt intense grief arise for every moment I’m not in deep communion with Nature. I was in my natural state of being…in wonder and awareness of Oneness. I wasn’t separate from the water, rocks, trees, sky…until my mind took me out of that harmony and I felt that deep longing for home.

It reminded me of a story a teacher once told. He said he walked along the sea and saw millions of fish swimming, crying out in desperate need,  Water, water, water, water!!! Sometimes we mourn separateness while the only thing separating us are our thoughts. It’s here, in front of us, within us, all the time. Can we recognize it? Can we feel it? Can we take it in?

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To dive deeper into Nature and the path it offers to wholeness, I invite you to pre-order my new book, Book of Nature. I opened myself for Nature to speak through my photographs and words as It guides us into deeper relationship with Spirit, ourselves, and all life. If you pre-order you’ll get free shipping and a matted 5 x 7 photograph from the book. Send money to a friend ($18 each) to my PayPal email: [email protected].

My two editors….