Monday, April 23, 2007

Springing Away


I haven't forgotten. I've just been busy. Spring always happens so fast, and this year is no exception. The leaves are unfolding, but I guess there's still more to come. Sans camera I visited the Potomac by Anglers' put-in, and the May Apples were leafing, but no blossoms. The Virginia Bluebells were just opening, and I saw Phlox, Spring Beauty, and Squirrel Corn. Those rascally buttercups were still out too.


I guess my heart just isn't into it right now. The temporal world beckons.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Pictures I Never Took



Last night I took a walk. This wasn't quite in the plan for this thing of ours, but what can I say. This spring has been so cold lately, and I've got some cool pictures of the snow we had just before Easter. So, rather than long hours in the sunny woods, I took a brief stroll through the chilly, dark spring streets of Arlington. A small forest with an asphalt river, light by streetlights like the woods in Narnia just outside the wardrobe.


On Washington Blvd, the road narrows, and the trees close over the road, and I saw something beautiful. If I had brought my camera I would have tried to take a picture, but I think my poor little camera would have tried a flash, and missed the point. Maple trees are funny. I never realized they bear their fruit in the spring until I moved to Arlington. Until then I had just overlooked those winged seeds they shed in spring. There was always so much else to see, but in Arlington I couldn't overlook what was covering the sidewalk and clogging my gutters--and sprouting there! Of course! They're seeds!


Last night, hanging over the road, lit from beneath by the streetlight, a maple dangled its vaugely red seeds. In the cold, they just hung there. Not quite red, but richly something rosy beyond green. There was such texture. I wondered if the morning sun would show them so beautifully. They already looked touched by the rising or setting sun.


In the fall I was in Connecticut, on an open ridge I like, overlooking pasture, fields, and a wooded valley beyond, and I saw a tree on the other side of a field. It's fall colors were highlighted by the sun, and it was genetly moving far away in the wind. I didn't take a picture. I can still see it, sort of, in my mind. But I know I'm not seeing it for everything it was. I know I can't quite recall the feeling I had as I watched those distant undulating reds, yellows, and browns against the rest of the forest.


On a good day in the woods, things just keep coming at you, sights, sounds, and smells, and you can't capture many if any of them. You have to step back to change the experience if it's about recording it. You can't have everything--how do you consume beauty? Live beauty, consume it, or share it