travel

lens artists: summer daze

After we moved into town I roamed through a backyard that extended south to the Yampa River, north over the creek and up the hill behind our home, and to the eastern and western edges of town.

During that summer the only concerns she expressed were to be home before dark and to wait an hour after eating as I [joined] a group of friends on the dirt path to the Yampa river with worn, faded, and tattered bath towels draped over our shoulders. Black inner tubes of various sizes dragged behind us filling the air with the pungent scent of faded rough rubber. The sounds of splashing water and laughter would fill the air as we gathered along the river bank and swam to the sandbar. No parents…no supervision. Freedom.

My mother gifted me freedom. (cited: My Mother Came to Visit, b c kofford)

A Summer Daze

… the repeating tic-tic-tic swoosh of the water sprinkler’s voice with its tiny fingers of ice cold water drops … tickling and awakening goose bumps.

… the freedom of bare feet — bare feet freed from school shoes and rubber boots … running across fields with their dandelions, clover, and tall wild grasses; bees, butterflies, and dragonflies; as well as, unknown caves filled with magic carpets, hidden treasures of gold and diamonds, and invisible sailing ships. Coming into the house and instantly hearing my mother’s voice, “Go wash those feet! Who knows what dirt and germs you have picked up!”

(Translation: You are home … a home filled with a mother’s love and care)

… weekend trips to the library … books lined upon shelves … filled with the richness of words … brought home to bring to life stories slumbering within pages and creating imagined adventures out of treasure boxes filled with rummy-sale clothes and trinkets.

“No! You may not build a raft to float down the river, NO!”

… an aging self looking back for long ago summers … an aging self, locked into a present, fatigued by the absence of summer’s afternoon showers and drained by summer’s drying heat … missing, wishing, for those Sunday drives to Never Summer*

*Designated in 1980, the Never Summer Wilderness area is located mostly within the Arapahoe National Forest. Situated to the west of Rocky Mountain National Park, the Never Summer Wilderness area, including the Never Summer Mountain Range, provides a beautiful backdrop for the famous mountain vistas from Trail Ridge Road.



lens-artists … everyone should see this

This week’s lens-artists challenge is hosted by Joanne. She writes that “Often times we see something that inspires us” and wish others could see what we see. She invites lens-artist to share some inspiriting photographs of things/people/places.

At this time of my life my travels are through books. As I wander through pages of someone’s thoughts and imaginations, it is often that I think of someone to share inspiring passages.

The Practice of Contemplative Photography Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes” by Andy Karr and Michael Wood is one such book. To be introduced to their Two Ways of Seeing opens me to a new way of being…being present during photo walks. The images below were created during pond walks.

“To see clearly you need to untangle perception from conception. To distinguish them you need to take out your (metaphoric) microscope and look closely at each one.

“Visual images appear when consciousness connects with the eye. Mental images appear when consciousness connects with the conceptional mind. …

What appears to conceptual mind is only an abstract, general image that encompasses all the views and pictures of a thing that you have ever seen. It is a very different kind of object from the specific ones that appear to the non-conceptual senses.

“The visual object that appears to the eye appears clearly, in great detail. You see–all at once–color, shape, texture, and the rest.

“The usual sequence of perception is that in the first moment, there is direct sensory experience. In the second moment, a concept and label arise, superimposed on the direct perception. …These moments of perception and conception are extremely brief. The sequence happens very quickly, so quickly that you don’t notice that a whole process is unfolding.”

Thank you Joanne for inviting me to continue my contemplation of how life is in a perception state of change and what I simply see within a moment transforms into an ideal/story/memory of a thing. What is difficult to embrace is possibility that no one actually sees what we see…