Waves

I went out this week to take pictures at Mansion Beach. The wind was blowing the wave crests back to make streams of spray called “horses' manes”.

This is the same wave as the one above, taken a second later.  Just a lucky moment with a bird flying by.  If you compare the two pictures you will see that there is a boulder in the second picture, down in the left corner.  I took it out of the first picture with Photoshop.

Given my years on the island and my well-documented tendency to take many pictures of any moving object, I would wildly guess that I’ve taken 30,000 pictures of waves. 

At one point, I changed from a telephoto to a wide-angle lens and this presented a problem.  With a telephoto I could choose my picture, but with a wide-angle I got everything, especially Wilson and Molly, who could see we were on a mission and wanted to lead the way.  I developed the technique of walking in the opposite direction until Wilson and Molly inevitably put themselves in front of me.  Then I would suddenly whip around and take my pictures.  That’s one thing I like about Block Island.   There’s room to be a little odd.   

I got the idea that it would be fun to get down low... use the qualities of a wide angle lens to get that feeling of big space, with the waves coming directly toward me.

Wilson on patrol.

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Because this lens takes a wider view than is normal for a person, the mind adjusts, and close things look like they’re far away.  I reminded myself of this interesting fact as I lay on my stomach with my camera and my chin on the sand.  But then I was busy and you probably see this coming.  I got hit by a wave. 

Now it wasn’t very big.  That’s the one, there in the picture.  It’s about six inches from my face and I’m realizing what will happen and I’ve started to get up.

There are billions of waves in every ocean at this very moment.  There are bigger, more beautiful waves, but you might like to know that in January in New England,  no matter how many wave pictures you have taken, when a wave hits you, it is the only one.

So I took my pictures and then I took them home.  I looked at them over and over.  And then I didn’t remember how many pictures I’ve taken.  I didn’t compare them to things I’ve seen before.  I saw this one particular picture and this one and this one - this pattern of light and energy - this motion changing from one picture to the next - this spray blowing back and freezing.   

I saw metallic reflections of clouds in wet sand.  I saw light in the Biblical clouds and the place where the sun was hitting the water when the land was still in shadow.   I saw clean, green water and the sun flying up like diamonds.   Water and light spoke directly to my body.  For a moment, I had tears in my eyes because my heart was filled with these pictures.

I looked at them all day and dragged myself away to make dinner and then looked at them again.  I had to make myself go to bed. And then in the morning, I didn't do anything else until I had looked at my waves, just for a minute. 

These are the wind sculptured trees on the way back to the parking lot at Mansion Beach.  That wind, it's always doing something.  And for those of you who like to go swimming at Mansion Beach....you will note that at this time of year there is plenty of parking.

PS:  I’m fine, and my camera is fine.  It’s a photographer’s instinct to save the camera first.

In a Small World

It was ten degrees Fahrenheit this morning, which was warm compared to the mainland, and it was up from zero yesterday.  My intrepid friend Lisa has just come indoors.  She's been outside skiing for hours.

I thought I would go out today and similarly impress you but we just came back to the island yesterday.  We had a snowy, slippery drive from upstate New York - plus, we still have colds.  So I decided to work from my warm house instead.

I took this picture of a milkweed seed pod at the Fish Hatchery in Central Village, Connecticut, and it was in the blog, back in the hard-to-remember-warmth of November.   I have wanted to look at it more closely for some time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been zooming in.  It has been a revealing process.  I've looked closer and closer...and with time,  a different world has impressed itself upon me.

First, I cropped the picture one way and then I cropped it another and couldn't make up my mind, and then I cropped it a little bit more and it seemed like a whole new picture.  I told myself (and this is the only way I could get myself to commit), that I could keep all the versions and show you as many as I wanted. 

 

 

 

 

It became a game of balance.  I noticed what was interesting and what I didn't see before.  I wondered what the "truth" of this seedpod might be.  How could I demonstrate the significance of its particular life?  Would the best information be in the whole thing altogether or in the intimacy of one small part?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I kept looking... and I actually started to worry a little bit.  I liked this little plant, and it started to bother me that it is out there right now where it's so terribly cold. 

Then I thought about the seeds... I was there when they opened and went everywhere.  So it was easy for me to picture them tucked in each space between the grasses, blanketed in snow. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the Fish Hatchery the way it is now.  All the plants and grasses are done with everything, stripped of everything, down to their winter forms.  I like it that the seeds are waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is picture at the Fish Hatchery after the blizzard last year.  The milkweed pods are mingled in with the grasses at the left of the picture and there are more in the fields beyond the trees in the distance.  I did stomp around in the cold and in three feet of snow to get this picture.  The frozen fog was clearing, and light and color were coming back to the sky and to the land. 

(This is actually a panorama... It's a lot of pictures stitched together.  So I could print this picture very large... the size of a wall.  I can't make it big enough on this page for you to really see it, but if you click on it, it will show up in its own box and it will be a little bit bigger.)

By the way, you might like to know that the first thing I did when I got home was fill the bird feeders, and because we have no squirrels on the island, scatter the food on the snow. 

It has been so cold... so ridiculously, bitterly cold... so many storms one after another... so much wind.  Only two birds came last night and I called my friend Edie who is an expert on birds.  I said, "Do you think they're all dead?"  She said, "No, they're just discouraged by the fact you haven't been feeding them while you were away.  They'll be back tomorrow."  And she was right.  They were here today, in force. Healthy and quick.  Hungry and busy.   I really can't imagine how they stay alive out there but I like to think that when I got closer to my picture today I got closer to the way they see the world.

Wilson and Molly and the Wind

I went out to the southwest corner of the island, looking for open space.  I had an ideal in mind...  wind and only wind, a sense of isolation, desolation even... no person and no creature... nothing but emptiness... all the way to Antarctica. 

I didn't get that.  I got Wilson and Molly, out and about for the first time after the blizzard.  Like cats on a keyboard, they wanted to be exactly where I was putting my attention.  They stayed in front of the camera, inserted themselves everywhere. 

I walked up the hill toward the stone wall... got beyond the dogs and their infernal footprints... got a cleaner shot... more like the ones I had planned.  

Wind and Snow.  I love it that the wind makes patterns in the snow just like it does on the ocean.  You know how the Polynesians can read the waves...find islands from thousands miles away?  Well look at the little grasses and the "wind shadows" they made.. 

Then I walked further and found the shapes the wind had made when it blew against and through the wall. 

Windbreak

 

I love this shot.  I love the barely perceptible patterns in the snow, the delicate colors at the beginning of sunset.

Wilson and Molly were right behind me...snuffelling their noses into the snow, grabbing each others' collars, rolling on their backs, wiggling their legs in the air.  So I'm not saying this image isn't true... it's just that it's not all there was in the landscape.

Some people say that there should always be a "heartbeat" in a picture.  Some animal or person... a way to relate the picture to another living thing.  But there is always a heartbeat - whether it is explicitly in the picture or not.  There is always the person behind the camera, and then, later on, there is someone looking at the picture, hopefully feeling that she or he can be part of it as well. 

I like to show the one thing I loved the most at the time I was taking the picture.  I like tokeep the extra things out of the way.  I find, after many years of living with my pictures, that I do better with the pictures that only say one thing.  A story telling picture..."Here's the church and here's the steeple... open the doors and see all the people." gets used up.  I think I know the story already and so I stop looking.  A picture that gives one thing... some light, some power, some feeling... I can live with that for a long time. 

That said, there is also a danger in reaching too far....getting all self-conscious and making everything too controlled and planned and precious, as if reality isn't good enough. 

Another view with colors from the setting sun.

More of the story.

It's so close to the Winter Solstice, the sun is setting almost as far to the south as it can at this latitude.  Montauk Point on Long Island is to the west.  It's there on the horizon.  And to the south, there is nothing until Antarctica, just like I said.  Well, nothing, except for Burmuda and of course except for Wilson and Molly, and their footprints...A little less perfection...a little more completion...a little more about all of the life that was there that evening.

Looking Beyond My Agenda

This is one of my favorite birds... a Mourning Dove, also called a Rain Dove. 

I want to tell you about the equipment I borrowed through Canon Professional Services.  If I were to buy this equipment, the Canon EF 600 mm / 4.0L I.S. II USM lens would cost almost $13,000 and the Canon Digital EOS 1DX camera, would cost almost $7,000.  They were due back in Virginia this past Monday.  Canon is not kidding about this deadline because they often have other people waiting. 

The problem was we were having a blizzard.  The boats were cancelled for most of Thursday and Friday and there was no FedEx service on the weekend.  I called and was graciously given a two-day extension. On Monday, I woke in the wee hours, listening to the unexpected wind.  I was sure the boat would cancel again.  At that point, I would have done an over-night shipment, to the tune of $500, or I would have gotten in the car as soon as the boats were running, and driven to Virginia myself.  

Mercifully, the wind was from the south, which gave some shelter in the lee of the island, and the boat was able to run.   I tell you this so that you will know that having this equipment was both wondrous and terrifying. 

The camera and lens were due today.  I have been tracking them all morning.  They were delivered five minutes ago.  Phew.

Just a little fellow, pecking for seeds.  Note the narrow depth of field.  That's because this is such a huge telephoto lens and I'm taking the pictures at close range.

Having gone all around the Island with Josh and Emily and having gotten many seal pictures, I was ready for phase two.  I set up a bird blind in my kitchen, opened the window, shielded it with pillows and black plastic and set myself to the task of taking pictures of songbirds.

 

I especially wanted to catch birds in flight but they move very fast and very unexpectedly.  A bigger bird like an egret or a heron will think about it.  You’ll see a subtle motion.  They’ll stretch or fidget, make a start, and then fly.   Not these little creatures.  They are here and if you blink, they’re gone.   

 

I took scores of pictures, waiting for this cardinal to fly.

I took scores of pictures, waiting for this cardinal to fly.

So I picked a bird and starting shooting continuously, hoping to already be in process of taking a picture when he made his move.  I sat there for two days like an addict at a slot machine, feeding in quarters, or in this case hitting the shutter button, hoping for a lucky strike.

I took two thousand pictures. That is a testament to the endless opportunity afforded in a digital environment, to the obstinate side of my personality, and also to the fact that I knew I would not have the chance to use this equipment again, any time soon. 

 

 

 

 

And he did!

Here is a series on a female cardinal, leaping before she opens her wings.

My friend Marybeth Jarrosak came over yesterday.  I showed her my pictures.  She said, “What would happen if you zoomed in on your pictures… looked a little closer?”  We did, and this is what we saw.

Just when you think you know what to expect with photography, something new can come.  It's fine to have an agenda but it's also good to look beyond it.  In this case, I was so committed to birds in flight that I didn’t see the thing right under my nose - the capacity the big lens afforded to get in close and record the details on these birds. 


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It was a good thing I had Marybeth to keep me from locking in too soon.  If she had not come over yesterday, I might have gone to my grave with the pictures already in front of me, but never looking as closely, never knowing how cool it is to see the detail and color on a female cardinal's chest, or the small grey ferns under her beak, or her very nice hairdo, or her tiny tongue. 

(I want you to see Marybeth’s websites. She has an affinity and care for every living thing.   I have seen bees and dogs and gardens relax and flourish the minute she comes into their neighborhood.  She is a wonderful photographer.  You can see her images here (at http://marybethjarrosak.wordpress.com) and can see and read more about her gardens and many other things here (at http://hammerandhoe.wordpress.com)).

Photography has enabled me to look in a lot of places and see in a lot of ways.  It has enabled me to look in a sense, at how the world is constructed. 

There has never been a single thing where I've said, "God, that's surprisingly ugly."  It has always been the other way around.  Most things have been more beautiful than I could have imagined.  There have also been things that were difficult to see, but they have had their beauty also.  I mean, because they mattered.  That's how I feel. 

In Close

My stepdaughter and her friend came to the island for the holidays.  We went out as often as we could to take pictures.  I made arrangements to borrow a special lens for a few days… a 600 mm lens that could be used with an extender, making our effective reach 1200 mm.  That’s powerful enough to make out the houses on the mainland, 13 miles away.  It allowed us to take pictures of wildlife in a resolution that I have rarely had a chance to experience.

Emily took this picture from very far away.  (By the way, when photographers hang out together, they refer to camera lenses as "glass".  As in, "What kind of glass were you using?"  If you are a member of Canon Professional Services, you can, amazingly, borrow this lens.  Then you can casually say, "Oh, it was just the Canon EF 600 mm f/4L IS II lens."  You can be humble about it.  It's like if you said, "I was just putting my groceries into my Jaguar.  You know, the back seat is so small."

Josh and Emily and I were taking turns using the camera.  I don't know which of us took the picture.

Josh and Emily and I were taking turns using the camera.  I don't know which of us took the picture.

I have said that every lens is like a language.  It is also like seeing with new eyes.  This is one of the things I love the most about photography.  It's great enough to have vision, but I am used to that.  Seeing through different lenses allows me to see things as if for the first time.  Maybe, in that sense, it brings me closer to seeing with the eyes of a child.  With this lens, we could get in closer, especially with wildlife, see their natural behavior without affecting them with our presence.  A high powered lens like this takes practice.  It was quite a trick to see something so far away and locate it in the viewfinder, as Emily did for the deer.  

The seals are still arriving.  We counted eight or nine near Old Harbor Point on the 31st of December and twenty-five on New Year’s Day.  They’ve come from Maine and Nova Scotia to the relative warmth, here in balmy southern Rhode Island.  I debated about using this picture of the seal with the injured face.  It's not pretty but it's true to the reality of their lives.  I remember when this first happened, years ago.  I'm glad to see this seal's resilience... it keeps coming back.  I wait for it.  They say adult seals are solitary creatures.  When I look at them fanning out like a basketball team, evenly spaced to control their territory, or resting together like this, I'm not so sure.

It's good to see them back again, to see them lounging after their travels.  I hope their smiles mean the same thing on their faces as they do on ours.  I think we'd have to have a biologist weigh in here, but I'll just say I've seen them angry and I've seen them alarmed, and their faces seem to match those emotions in a way that I can understand.  I've also seen them blissed out and napping on these cozy rocks.  They look pretty happy to me. 

 Here is a little one, able and independent after just a short time.

We went to North Light and the Coast Guard Station and Cormorant Cove and Rodman's Hollow, and to Southwest Point and Old Harbor Point.  We took pictures of deer and seals, and chickens and peacocks and turkeys.  We saw them in close because of our super cool equipment.  We did this together. 

How did I ever get so lucky?

Resolution

Namibian Desert.  The dry river bed of the Tsauchab River shows as blue and white.  The bright white areas are salt.

I found a website published by the European Space Agency.   Among many excellent things, it has a gallery of images of earth, taken from space.   (All of the images  in this post are downloaded from that site with their permission.)  Links are provided toward the end of this post. 

I love the patterns in these pictures.  They show me that nature builds patterns upon patterns in the biggest and smallest ways.  It seems…well… kind of perfect.

Uluru (Ayers Rock), Central Australia. 

You know how Steve Jobs told Apple to make circuit boards that were beautiful, even if no one was looking inside the computers?  Well, nature is like that also.  I love it that such beauty has been out there for billions of years when no one could even see it.  I love it that the beauty we now can see from way up there has the same patterns as the beauty we have always been able to see down here. 

Before there was life, there was beauty.  I have this fantasy that beauty called to consciousness…”I’m here.  Come see me.”  That’s a creation story for you.  At least it was like this:  When the first breath was taken, beauty was already here to call to our senses.  Just like the wind made seed pods and wings… it helped to make us who we are.

 

Flander's Range, Australia

Great Britain and Ireland

I know I said this in an earlier post but there is a book called “Deep Survival”.   It studies the question of why some people survive when others do not.  Let’s say someone gets caught in a rock slide.  He amputates his leg with his pocketknife and hops 15 miles down a glacier at 10 degrees below zero to safety.  How is this person different from someone who has ample water, and food and fuel, and who has survival training, and two good legs, and help nearby, who decides to sit down and die?  Here’s one difference.  According to the book, every survivor says the same thing.  “I saw moments of incredible beauty.”

Iceland

That same book said that a child under the age of seven is more likely to survive alone in the woods than an older child.  Because of instinct.  Little ones feel what they feel…. hungry…scared…cold… but they don’t abstract from there to the concepts that arise in an older person.  So when they take action, it’s directed to the fact of the matter and not to an idea about it.  They don’t over-think and complicate.  They don’t waffle. They don’t waste precious energy or time or motion.  When they are tired they sleep.  When they are cold, they crawl into a hollow spot.

North American Snowstorm.  (You can see Block Island in this picture.  Look to the east of the tip of Long Island for a tiny dot shaped like a pork chop.  It's south and slightly west of the break in the Rhode Island coast that is Narraganset Bay.  Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket are to the north and east of Block Island. This picture was taken in January, 2011.  Look very carefully for a woman with two golden retrievers.  I was probably out there taking pictures after the storm!)

I think beauty is a call to instinct…to the things we all know without knowing why.  It helps in a deep and wordless way.  It is one of the ways to nourish our souls, to give us hope and energy, to guide our direction, to keep us from giving up.  It moves us out of our heads and into the complete and integrated equipment that we all receive when we get a body… and that equipment is very fine… our minds, eyes, hearts, senses, guts, breath… all honed through millennia, all in one body… all in one life.  I would say we are perfect, also.

It's almost the New Year, and time for resolutions.  A resolution means a lot of things:  a decree, a promise, a resolve, a solution, or the power with which something can be seen.

Southern Central Romania

I’ve been thinking that this will be my resolution.  I’ll practice seeing in all the ways that humans are able to see… like for hunting, shopping, working, loving, resting, drinking in.  Seeing with my whole body.  Seeing for a short moment.  Seeing and breathing together.  Seeing right now.

Sometimes I’ll see beauty.

Algerian Sahara

I know there is more beauty in the height and depth of the universe than I will ever see, and everything large and small is made with beauty.  I trust all the things working together to make beauty without my even knowing about it. 

I can spend some time each day, let the sand blow without interference… just observe and let things happen…let nature work her patterns in my life.

 

The Palouse Region, Washington State

Golden Curves, North Central Iran's Salt Desert, Dasht-e Kavir

Kagerdlugssuaq Glacier, Greenland

Tibesti Mountains, Chad

Siberia

Nejd, Central Saudi Arabia on the Arabian Peninsula

Iceberg Alley, Labrador

The European Space Agency is generous to allow use of many of their images for noncommercial purposes.   All of the images in this post came from their site.

To go to their "Earth from Space" gallery, go to:  http://spaceinimages.esa.int/content/search?SearchText=IOW&img=1 or click here.

To go to their home page, go to:  http://www.esa.int/ESA, or click here.

Here are more pictures.  Excuse me for getting carried away.  There are so many good ones, I couldn't choose.

Rainforest and River, Brazil

Dasht-e Lut Salt Desert, Iran

Russian Far East

Merry Christmas

I put a bird feeder by our kitchen and I sit with the window open, trying to catch them in flight.  It's tricky because those little buggers fly by at 50 miles an hour.  Sometimes I can get them as they are flying toward me...that gives me an extra second.  And sometimes, as in this case, I get lucky when a bird decides to fly after I've already started to take the shot.

They make the softest, fluttering sound.  I love this.  It's right up there with an infant's breath when I hold him against my shoulder, and of course it's up with the sound of snow falling, or the sound of the ocean at flat calm.  That sounds like nothing or sometimes it sounds like shhhhh or zzzzz as the water moves with the current, folding down, zipping itself along the shore.  Here on the island, especially in winter, you can hear the smallest things.

There are eleven birds in this picture, I think.  I was hoping for a twelfth bird of Christmas, but as far as I can tell, it's eleven.  And here is a closer shot of just one bird.  He looks small enough, and I can tell you from experience, if you held him, he would seem smaller still.  Him with his hollow bones, so strong and light and graceful for flight, and his pat-of-butter sized body, and the downy fluff that triples his size and weighs about as much as the air.  He is outlandishly red (and he's more skittish than chicadees on account of it) and when the wind blows you can see he's grey underneath.  He has a wildly beating molecule for a heart.  He's such a small, so easily freezable person but he flies out there, sleeps out there, stays out there.  That gets me.   Week after week, through the whole winter, he matches his tiny body to our vast, unstoppable, cold ocean wind, and lives.

May you have a Merry Christmas in the company of loved ones, and I hope you stay out of the wind.  And I hope you have a moment to hear the smallest sounds of the great wild winter and may you easily return to the warmth of your sheltering home.

A sturdy fellow.

A sturdy fellow.

Heart Photography

A beautiful wave on Block Island.

 

Before I lived on Block Island, I visited for a week or two every year.  I remember the feeling of release from my home obligations and the beauty that astonished me at every turn.  But when I moved to the island, I took those obligations with me.  I found it was possible for the beauty of the island to recede into the background.  When that happened, I lost the point of being here… without the beauty, Block Island is just a place where you can’t buy gasoline after 2 in the afternoon.

The same thing happened with photography… what was utterly beautiful, surprising and new to me the first year became “same old same old” five years later.  So I began to see the different ways I could go out to take my pictures.  I could go out as a hunter, as the language used in photography suggests.  I could "shoot" or "capture" or "take" my pictures.  I could go out as a shopper, with my recipes and my list, and gather them for a specific purpose.  I could go out open, ready to discover, ready to be surprised by something new.   All these ways were available to me and all created a different experience, a different way of seeing, a different focus, and even with the same subject matter, a different picture. 

A closer view.

There is a saying, "Keep your mind where your body is."    And taking pictures from a place of being in a relationship with the landscape helps me do that.   It helps me to come out of my head and out of my agenda and into my heart.  And then, to use the old language from the poem, "The Love of Tristan and Isolde", instead of using my eyes to capture or shoot a picture, my eyes can "go reconnoitering" for my heart.  When I see in this way, I can see the same things again and again, and they're always new and I am always part of it.  The island has become more beautiful to me, more intimate, and more nourishing.  I can find my place in the landscape, not as its owner or master, but perhaps as its guest, or in a certain way, as its child.  Then I feel that I belong on the earth. 

 

 

The Love of Tristan and Isolde

 

"So through the eyes love attains the heart:

For the eyes are scouts of the heart,

And the eyes go reconnoitering

For what it would please the heart to possess.

And when they are in full accord

And firm, all three, in the one resolve,

At that time, perfect love is born

From what the eyes have made welcome to the heart.

For as all true lovers

Know, love is perfect kindness,

Which is born – there is no doubt – from the heart and the eyes."

Guiraut de Bornelh (ca. 1138 – 1215); (From Joseph Campbell, “The Power of Myth”)

 

 

 

 

Coming Home

Rough Ride

I have become accustomed to the journey between the mainland and Block Island.  And it’s a real journey - you don’t just pick up and go.  You check the weather and the ferry schedules and those are limited in winter.  You make a boat reservation if you are bringing a car or you go down and load a pallet with your belongings if you are walking on.

In any case, there are stages.  You drive and wait, you get a ticket, you load up, go on the boat and then ride, unload, reload and then drive again and unload again.  It takes the whole day and usually requires an overnight stay.  So you bunch everything together… visits and work and groceries and sometimes a Christmas tree or some cord wood or a piece of furniture so you don't just travel, you deploy.   And then you can always do something stupid, like let’s say, realize the moment the boat leaves the dock that you have forgotten your keys and you have to take a cab with everything and your two dogs and find a hotel for the night so that keys can be sent over in the morning.

Because the island is out in open ocean, if the wind is high enough the boats do not run, and in winter that happens about once a week, usually for one day, but sometimes for two or on rare occasions, for more.   So it is not in your control.  I actually like that… being back in a relationship with nature that is more like what people have lived in forever… but ask me how I like it if I am teaching on the mainland and have to leave four days early to be sure I get there.  Also ask me how I liked it the day the boat almost cancelled and the weather was bad but I really wanted to get home and I decided to go anyway.  Old seafaring salt that I am, I stayed in the car to keep the dogs from being afraid.  We had 6-8 foot seas but the bow reaches up and out beyond the waves, and that is where I was so it was more than that.  I can't even say.  We were rising and falling 10 feet?  12 feet?  It was too late to get out, as I could not have navigated the deck in those conditions.  So I was stuck, with nothing to do but pray for death as the bow lurched up, held and swung for a moment, and then fell and slammed into the water, hitting hard.  Cars bounced on their tires, straining against their emergency brakes.  Spray and green water came over the bow.  The steel hull boomed like a drum. 

You can imagine under those conditions what coming to a safe harbor feels like.  The boat turns and in bad weather that turn is something.  There is the last high swell and you ride it down and sometimes it feels like you’ve got to hit bottom and then you pass the breakwater.  The sea calms.  The boat stops slamming. 

When I came home last week the weather was snotty.  There were waves but nothing like that other time.  I unloaded the car, put the groceries away, cooked, and settled in.   My life is different here than it has ever been anywhere else.  I go out and take pictures with many open spaces, trails and fields and beaches open to everyone.  I feel safe out walking (after accounting for hunters) day or night, wherever I go. 

The sea changes quickly... waves one day and calm the next.  I took this picture the evening after coming home.  I worried about those ducks resting on the water at feeding time, wondered about the big fish looking up at all those tasty feet, but I told myself that like all things in nature, those ducks must know what they are doing.

It’s strange how I forget when I go away.  It’s like the mainland is different from here, and it’s changed in the fourteen years I’ve been on the island.  So I really do feel like I’m in another country.  So many cars, so many people.  (Sometimes I wave by mistake at the people in the other cars, like we do on the island.)  Stores are open all the time and filled with everything.   There is amazing fresh produce, amazing choices.   I go into a mall and it sparkles and my mouth hangs open.   I have to switch channels and the island and my life here disappears.  And then I have to switch channels to come back so it has taken a few days but my life has reassembled and it feels very good. 

I was out taking photos with a friend the other night, and we both took a series of long exposure pictures.  This is a 30 second exposure taken in the "early" dark, the waves blurring into smoke.

Home is a place of course, but there is also a way to come home to yourself, to define and protect your life like the ocean defines the boundaries of this island, and maybe deciding you can do that and then learning how is a most important journey.  And guess what?  I’m leaving again on Monday.  Bill is arriving after four weeks working in Southeast Asia and we’re going to see our children.   So I’ll be changing channels again, but I’ll be taking my cameras with me.  I’m hoping to go with my family to take some pictures of fine old trees and Bill will be with me and we’ll all be together and that will be home also.

I took this picture the same night I took all those sitting ducks. 

What the Wind Has Made

A Flurry of Geese, Quinebaug Valley Trout Hatchery, Central Village, CT.  November, 2013.
 

I’m at my family home in Moosup for the holiday and Wilson and Molly and I went to the Trout Hatchery on the Quinebaug River in Central Village.  This hatchery grows a half a million pounds of trout each year for restocking the ponds and rivers in Connecticut.  It attracts ducks and geese and blue heron and sea gulls and hawks and in the last year or so, bald eagles.   I went early and stayed long, hoping to get some good bird pictures.

The picture above happened unexpectedly when I was trying to creep up on some heron.  A flock of geese burst upward and I heard the flurry of wings behind me.  I turned, reflexively taking a wild and lucky shot. The only other opportunity came later when four heron flew straight over my head, proud, well-illuminated, calling to each other, close and beautiful.  And what was I doing at that moment?  Changing lenses.  Welcome to bird photography.

Hunters came to the woods and the birds went into hiding.  I took to the fields to see the milkweed seedpods I’ve particularly loved since childhood.  It was easy to imagine a world… fairies in orderly choirs, riding their seed parachutes, living in pod houses. 

Now they evoke in me a tender sadness… about the last moments where the life that used to be summer is offered to the wind.  The seedpods wait, one sliver open, so fragile I could change everything by brushing by, but they hold their place and time happens and they open a little more, and more threads and more waiting and more wind and more opening and more endurance in these delicate things.  And finally, what’s left is a grey and golden shell and the seeds have gone everywhere. 

I was thinking about it… about the wings and seeds, and it occurred to me that they were created by the wind.  I mean, without the wind to hold them up and carry them they never would have been the way they are.  They are perfect together.. the wings and the wind; the seeds and the wind.  I like this.  It makes me think there is a way to live easily with the earth.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah, everyone.

 

 

Listen to What I Tell You

Stony Beach, Port Maitland, Nova Scotia

I called Register.com yesterday. I picked this registrar for a reason.  They have an office in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, not far from my family’s house.  My family has had a tiny house in Port Maitland on the Bay of Fundy for almost 30 years. 

You really need to go to Nova Scotia.  This is why.

  1. Nova Scotia is very beautiful.
  2. The people there want you to come and will be extremely nice to you.
  3. The ferry out of Portland, Maine, which hasn’t run for several years, is going to start up again in the spring.  It will go directly to Yarmouth.  Happiness.
  4. You will have peace and quiet.
  5. The air is clean.  The water is clean.
  6. You will be able to eat Rappie Pie.  Just kidding.  Rappie Pie is terrible.  It is made out of potatoes that have been grated and squeezed in cheesecloth and cooked with chicken broth and turned into a pie filling.  Let me just say that if you like poi or boiled okra you will like Rappie Pie.  What you really need to eat are the best scallops in the world.  We get ours in Saulnierville, at the fish market.

 And, you should take up photography.  And, this is why.

  1. When you call Register.com and talk to a wonderful person named Julie, you will be able to say so much more than “have a nice day”.  You will be able to send her a photograph of Port Maitland Beach and promise her that your next blog post will be about Nova Scotia.  It will make both of you a little bit happier.  (As an aside, please read the comment posted by this same Julie - Julie Saulnier-Spurr to be exact.  She is a proud Acadian and she loves Rappie Pie.)

Up on top is a picture of the stone beach near our house in Port Maitland.  Off in the distance is our land.  My 84 year-old mother and I got ourselves out to where I took this picture by thinking that it would be so much easier to keep walking and cut across the neighbor’s yard than it would be to turn back, which did not turn out to be the case.  It was pretty far.  Those are very tippy rocks.  My retired air force colonel brother and his wife and their son staged a rescue but we didn’t need it.  We were almost to the neighbor’s by the time my brother came bounding along.  We were fine.

This is a picture of the tea colored marsh that feeds into the north end of Port Maitland Beach.

Foggy Morning, Port Maitland, Nova Scotia, August 2013.  When I went back to this picture, I remembered that morning all over again.  I like to look at my pictures many times.  I need to.  I don't necessarily get things right away.  I like to know a place the way I know a person...  in a relationship…  over a period of time. 

I think Nova Scotia is where my parents spent the best years of their lives…  They were retired and we were grown.  For the first time…they had time.   Dad fished.  They did projects in the house.  The children and their spouses and friends and grandchildren came and we did our signature things… walked and explored the land, mowed the lawn, making it bigger and bigger, drove around, slept like cordwood where ever we possibly could, ate scallops, usually every night, painted rocks with little scenes… It was a big event if someone drove down my parents’ road.  They would run to the window to see who it was.  Their bedroom was not much bigger than their bed, but it has French doors and the wind from the ocean is always blowing.  You can always hear it.  My mom still sleeps in that bedroom, preferring it greatly to the much bigger new bedroom downstairs.

I could have picked so many pictures to show you about Nova Scotia.  There are quaint little cottages, colorful fishing boats sitting high and dry on account of the enormous tides, but I wanted to show you what is most important to me…. the quiet and the coolness and the simplicity and the space (outdoors) for everyone.  What a relief.

Seeing More

Tiny berries in the woods at my sister and brother-in-law's (Amy and Stan's) farm last week.

In November, the bushes in the forest behind my sister and brother-in-law's farm turn a wonderful color.  I don't want to say they are pink.... they are deeper than pink, I feel, but softer than red.  In any case, I go back every year to take their pictures, and try to do them justice.  Here on the left are leaves from one of those bushes and up top are its berries.  The berries were so tiny I almost didn't see them.  I took their picture with a macro (close up, magnifying) lens.

And here is a bit of the forest.  It's my ongoing quest to take pictures that make "sense" of the tangles in nature.  They don't after all, cooperate in arranging  themselves for a photo.  I crawled over a wall and around a few obstructions until I could find an open space to stand. Then I could show the chaos and complexity I love, let the colored leaves and the silver twigs weave through, and still have the trunks of the trees for a little sense of balance.

Here is a rich orange leaf. 

I think before I started with photography I still would have loved this forest.  I would have exclaimed at the colored bushes and that would have been the end of it.  I wouldn't have seen all the different worlds... not the just the worlds in these four pictures but more I didn't even show you.  The worlds in tree bark, mosses, a carpet of leaves, the stones, the roots of trees.  Looking through a camera has trained my sight.  It has taught me how to notice - see the colors, spend some time, look in many directions.  It has helped me see each little thing as something in itself, and then see everything together.  It's helped me especially, to look for light.  These have become my habits of seeing whether I have a camera with me or not.  Sometimes it's not so much that I'm looking for something as much as it comes to me.   I can't walk with anyone without interrupting our conversation many times:  Look at that... no look at that! 

 

 

 

Take Pictures of the Things You Love

This is an egret on Great Salt Pond this past September.  I used "paint daubs" and "spherize" in Photoshop to alter this image.

My step-daughter keeps telling me that a blog can evolve and that's good to know, because I want to write for a while about taking and working with photographs. 

The main thing is - go out and take some pictures.  Don't think too much about it.  Just notice what you are drawn to.  Photography is interesting in this way.  You think you are taking pictures of the world, and you are.  But there is so much to choose and you're the one who is choosing.  So it's also about you.  You catch yourself in the act of seeing the world.  It's your perception that meets the world as only you can see it.   I think I could take the best picture that was ever taken, the most famous picture, and still, one day it won't matter.  But I think the fact that I was outside taking pictures - that I met the world and it met me - or that anyone is out there also -  I think that will always matter. 

So what is important to you?  What do you find beautiful or interesting?  What do you love? 

Assuming you're using a digital camera, take as many pictures as possible.  That's how you find out about the generosity of this process.   Do you want to take 100 pictures over here and then go over and take another 100 over there?  You can.  Do you think you've made a mistake with a photo?  Take another.  How many chances do you want?  100? 1,000?  More?  Go ahead.  How much beauty and light do you want in your life?  You can have it.

Then go home and look at your pictures right away.  This is what my father and I used to do.  We'd go out and take pictures, or I would take pictures, and he would come with me and stay in the car.  I'd park where he had a view of the water, and I'd set him up with his radio, his snack, his paper, his water, his walker, and his binoculars.  At night, we'd look at the pictures.  In that way, I could bring him to all the places I had been.  I'd have hundreds of pictures and we'd scroll through them quickly.  He'd say, "nothing" "nothing"  "nothing",  giving his verdict with a regal flick of his hand.  Then finally, he'd say "Oooooh!".  In every case, it would be a picture of a wave, a bird or a deer.  It could have been the worst picture -  blurry,  bad light,  the ass end of something - but those were the things he loved.  We'd crop them this way and that way... look at them again and again.

It was important to look at the pictures right away.  It caused me, very naturally and intuitively, to connect my results with the act of taking pictures.  It taught me more about what I wanted, made me pay closer attention.  It also showed me when I needed to learn a specific technical skill, but in a way that was always directly useful, relevant to what I wanted to do.  This is the way I learned how to do photography.

There were a few human instincts at play.  One was the instinct for sight, and another for hunting, and another for seeking light, and another for knowing beauty.  There was also the instinct for learning.  I love this about photography:  It works with what humans do best, with what we've been doing for 200,000 years.  Photography affirms all of us in what is to be human, and it affirms each of us, specifically, as individuals.  We each have our own way of finding beauty.  It is about what is inside of us as much as what is outside.  We do have something to show to others. 

So I practice my skills (and those become mostly automatic after a while), but I always lead with what I love in taking pictures.  I tell myself the moment is more important than the picture.  I try to relax.  I follow what I'm drawn to and what I love.

 

 

 

At the End of the Day

Taken on Great Salt Pond, November 4, 2013. 

 

On Block Island in the off-season, the gas station closes at three and sometimes two in the afternoon.  I was there at five of the hour.  I waited.  The attendant came out on the dot and said the pumps were closed.  I said, “I have been waiting.”  He said, “I didn’t see you.”  That was Cliff, Jr.  I was so mad I came back the next day and ordered one dollar of gas, just to be annoying.  He said, “I won’t sell you one dollar of gas.”  I said, “Then alright, two.”  He said, “That won’t get you very far.”  Which was technically correct because his is the only gas station on the island.  I got my gas, and when I had gone the distance that less than half of a gallon will take you I had no choice but to ask my patient husband to go and get some more.  Eventually, I had to go back, hoping Cliff wouldn’t remember, which was unrealistic, given the size of our island, but he never said anything and I didn’t either.

He was watching the Red Sox game last week.  People in his house said they could hear him shouting at all the big moments.  His wife went to bed and he stayed up to watch the replays.  In the morning she found him dead in his chair.  He was 50 years old.  He has left two young children. 

I went to the funeral yesterday. I think the whole island came.  The school bus was there, having brought all the children from school.  All his buddies were there.  They said he was generous, that he'd help them when he was tired, that he never wanted any thanks for anything.  His grave is in a little valley, and all the people, they just filled that valley.  On the way out I stopped at other graves.  People can still leave things for their people in our cemetery.   There were candles and seashells and notes, and toys and other things.

I went out last night to take pictures.  It was a little cold.   It was getting dark, so I got my tripod and did longer and longer night-time exposures.  I kept thinking of Cliff.  The tide was coming in… sliding in on such a quiet night.  Every so often I would look down and see my feet were standing in water.  I used my new wide-angle lens. Every lens is like a language.  It sees things in a certain way, different from other lenses, and different from people.  The same goes for these long time exposures.  They catch the little light that we can barely see and multiply it over and over. 

It was good to give my mind a rest.  I could look through my camera, listen for birds, breathe the cool air, hear the waves from the other side of the island, watch Wilson and Molly play all around me and wait for the light to change. 

This is for Cliff, Jr.

The Important Questions

“When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child;  but when I (grew up) I put away childish things.”  1 Corinthians 13:11.

I hope to take them out again.

When I was a child the days were long… I remember knowing I had the long, delicious, fascinating day ahead of me.  I could run to the barn, sit on the stonewall counting cars with my brother, sit in the sun on the cellar door, chase the chicken, torment my sister.   That was only the morning.  I could have the best lunch.  My favorite - Lipton’s Chicken Noodle Soup.  I could play the piano and watch Captain Kangaroo on TV.  My very big brother would come home.  (I was impressed.  A man of the world who could manfully go out and manfully return from Kindergarten.)  I could play chess with my brother and fight about it, or marbles and fight about it, or play fireman, or go up in the big pile of sand that my father had dumped by the barn.  We lost a box of army men in there.  I still wonder where they are.  I was given a musical bear and couldn't understand why my father was mad when I performed surgery to find out where the sound came from.  (It was after all, my bear.)  Then my grandma, the love of my life, would come home from the sewing factory.  I could sit by the table and watch.  Flour with a little well in the center into which she dropped egg yolks.   Then came noodles.  A miracle.  Then my Dad would come home.  Hooray!  All six of us children would run to the door to be greeted and swung in the air.  I remember the day… I took the sorrow bravely…philosophically…when I was told I was older than the others and too big to pick up.

What I remember are the days of wonder.  I knew I was living in a miracle.  I remember all my senses awake.  My blanket had a satin edge.  I held it to my cheek when I was falling asleep.  This was not a little thing.  I remember discovering that soft edge and loving the feel of it…how perfect… how necessary…. so good to fall asleep with my blanket.  I remember the apple tree.  I smelled it and the blossoms were awesome.    And in play…. my brother and I went outside and came to our front door pretending to be other people.  We fooled our mother.  We really fooled her.  And one spring I heard rumbling in the sky.  Probably thunder.  My mother said it was spring rolling round.  Check.  That made sense.  Spring rolls around.

A baby was born in October, and we saw him just after he was born.  So there he was - that little guy, the beginning of a person.  His father sang a soft low song to him, a made up, simple song:  “doo, dee doo dee doo dee doo.”  He rooted toward the sound.   He was nothing really… just a little hamster… but a magnet for wonder and love.  We couldn’t stop looking at him, couldn’t stop holding him, our love pouring into him, making him human.  I watched him when he decided to cry but had forgotten how to do it.  His face turned red, he made all the crying faces and then he found his breath, his sound and then he cried and cried. 

I say this because I’m trying to know the process of creation.  I’m trying to see the things I can’t see because I’ve become immune to their wonder:  the baby made, the child made, the world made.

It’s hard for me…as an adult… to say it and return and revise it again and again… and try and try and then oh hell, I just say it and those are the best things, the most direct, the most true…as simple as they actually are.

So there is something about a deliberate return to life as a child…when it just happened to me, through me, for me… there was no distance between the impulse to life and the life that I demonstrated in my body.

The foundation of making anything is trust… even if it is the trust of taking something for granted.  I sit down to write with the beginning of an idea and an impulse… and then the thoughts form, the words come.  I don’t know where it is going but it goes.  I just start to drive.  A turn comes and I take it, and that starts to shape a direction and then I take another turn and then another and then I’ve got something I can recognize and it begins to tell me what it is. 

I talked to a friend this morning.  She said the people who create things are wonderful.  She said they have courage and energy.  That made me think perhaps the act of creation itself gives the energy, and the courage comes, exactly in step.  Each unfolding of creation is exactly the same as the edge of growing courage to be known.  Some people I know are buried in snow.  I know the life is in there.  I want to help to dig them out. I want to dig myself out.  There is always a little hunger and an impulse. We have to follow that impulse….even if we can barely feel it.   If we do, it will feed itself, it will catch fire, do wondrous, unexpected things. 

The Important Questions

How did he learn to cry?

Why do we love him when he can’t do anything, is so inconvenient, is not even funny, doesn’t know us, and won’t let anyone sleep?

What made the silly song his dad made up, made him turn his head, made his mother find his name?

What is the growing edge of anything?

The world breathes, moves, loves, comes, grows, gives and lives in the now and now.

How do I get close to that, get into that, despite the fact I’m already in deep, already breathed by it and carried inside it all day long?

I am alive.

How do I remember?

Return

Have faith

Return

Again and again to

know.

I’m already a child again. I’m not too big to feel, to be, to see, to say, to learn, to make, to wonder.

 

 

 

Simplification

2013Sep16_6614 blog 750 WM.jpg

You know how when you are in college and you have to write a thesis, the best thing is to pick a narrow topic?  Did I do that?  No I did not.  These were a few of my major papers:  "Aging Women in China - A Religious, Economic and Cultural Perspective", (All the) "Theories of Psychotherapy", "The Future of the Insurance Industry."  So I didn't exactly make things easy for myself.  And I also didn't today. 

I spent the day bashing my head against some satanic software that I needed for a project.  Here is an advanced and seldom mentioned hint from a professional photographer:  If you don't know how to do something the first time, you still won't know how after you do it the same way another 400 times.  (I would never suggest that you slow down and read the directions step by step.  That would be a waste of time).  If you're like me, sometimes it's harder to stop working on a project than it ever is to start.  I had to drag myself away and go exploring with my camera on the island...stop trying to do so much, start taking in.  And of course, solutions presented themselves the moment I stopped fighting and sighing about them.  I could simplify.  I really needed to simplify.  I complicate everything and I totally need to simplify.  Always.  Plus, I could ask for help with the things I didn't know how to do.  Plus, I talked to a friend and we love each other and that is always like medicine.  Plus, the only thing I might say that could possibly be of use to you, comes from the way I am learning to care for my life.  I know that.  So here's to stopping, going outside, talking to friends and simplification.

Reflections

Evening, Mansfield Hollow, Connecticut, June 17, 2011.

Today I walked with a friend and I said some things I was feeling.  She said, "exactly".   And she said how she was feeling and I said it was like that for me also.  It was like we were reflecting each other.

I have heard it said that people need to be seen into existence.  I think that means we can't know who we are in secret.  We also say that we "see each other through" things.  Isn't that true...isn't that interesting, how we reserve this phrase for what we do for each other at the most difficult times in our lives? 

I wonder if the water and the sky are friends for each other, if they know themselves better by knowing each other.   I hope so.  They are both so beautiful; it would be a shame if they didn't know it.  Perhaps they say what each of them sees in the other ... that they have a place... they belong right here... that they are not alone.   A friend can help with all of that.

About Beauty

Beautiful Dancers, Great Salt Pond, Block Island. 

 

People take 83% of their information in through their eyes.  And if you and I became blind, our brains would rewire to reorganize our other perceptions through our visual processing centers.  No other creature sees the way we do... in our range of light, with our focus on day time rather than night time seeing.   Do you know we've been seeing this way for at least 200,000 years?   Did you know that beauty is so important that a defining characteristic of people who have survived catastrophic events is they were able to notice beauty? 

Why is beauty so important?  We can explain the evolutionary advantage:  "We have beauty so we can find colorful things and eat them."  Or, break it into little parts:  “It is line and form and proportion, and pattern, and perspective, and color, and light."  But that says nothing about what it really means in our lives.  

What is it in beauty that satisfies and nourishes, what calms and centers and answers my questions before I can even name them, that directs my actions before even realize what I'm doing?   I cannot say, but when I am looking for faith I find it here, in a world of superfluous beauty.  The world does not have to be this beautiful.  It could look like the inside of a machine.  I know physicists are looking for a unified theory of everything.  Whatever the theory turns out to be, I know it will be beautiful.

I don't see beauty the way I want to.  I make myself too busy.    Another sunset splashes colors through the sky...another moon throws diamonds on the ocean... and I forget to notice.  Then the beauty in the world calls out to me, reminds me like I need it to:  "It's all here and everywhere.  You are more than your activity.  Stop and look."    

Then I tell myself I’ve got nothing to do but notice, and I know I belong in the world as one of its creatures.  My old habits assert themselves:  "I should take the pictures here and run and take some more over there.  What if I’m missing something?"  So I tell myself it is enough right now.  The beauty here is as awesome as the beauty over there.  This is how I am learning, by degrees, to know the fullness and depth of seeing (as only a human being can see) the beauty in the world."

 

 

Doing Many Things

Great Old Tree, Halifax Public Gardens, Nova Scotia, August 14, 2013.

 

I don't have to tell you about the demands of life and the many, many things that have to be done and how hard it is to make space and time for anything extra.  I also don't have to tell you the many directions we are pulled in, the many pieces of our lives and how hard it is to make them feel like they belong to a single purpose.  I struggle with this, and I can tell you what is helping me the most. 

A little Photoshop magic...just the edges in this image.

I remember when I worked in a corporation with its insatiable hunger for production, and then I think about trees.  I'm glad that a tree doesn't have to build a measured number of leaves by noon today, according to specified specifications.  Instead, it nourishes its life.  It reaches in every direction.  And wind and sun, moisture and earth conspire, and the wild tree grows, not according to plan, but according to its natural habit.  And it rests in the winter,  gathering its deepest forces.  And then it is spring.  And there come more leaves than can ever be counted - more life, more food, and there is chaos and rhythm and complication, and it makes its own form and then the tree comes into the magnificent perfection of its beauty.

When I'm in the middle of what I could easily call the muddle of my life, it helps me to think about trees.  Their lives are out in the top-most swaying branches.  The light is there, the growing edge is there, the green is there, the pattern, the shaping and unfolding of the story of a life is there.  But the many, many things, the countless, uncounted, uncountable things, return and return to one trunk, to one single center. 

My trunk bears the rings of 58 seasons and the marks of many choices and it feels like I've lived many lives.  My trunk takes its shape from things that have happened and from things that can never happen and what does that come to?  I mean, what am I supposed to do with all of that?  I don't know, but I usually wake up in the morning with one more step I can take.  I know that sometimes when I take a picture or write some words, I feel like everything I've ever learned is in that moment.  Am I wise enough, old enough, strong enough, yet, to do the next thing?  I am.  Can I work back through the twigs and roots and branches?  I can.  Do I know and feel my still and singular center?  I do.

I find it works a bit better... to return to the core of things, even if only for a moment.  There is no revolution here - just a decision to feel the trunk of my body, my feet on the ground, the edge of my skin where it meets the rest of everything, the living silence from which the tree and I both come.  And something tangible to return to... a room, a notebook, a webpage, a picture, my dog's head on my knee, a chair in the sun.  It helps me to hold the edges lightly, to embrace the shape my life has taken, to let details unfold, to pull less tonnage, to let some things take care of themselves.  Enough gets done and things keep growing and energy comes after resting.

 

Carrying Water

This is a poster of a painting by Amado Pena.  It is named "Peoplescape One".   

I have a poster of an American Indian woman carrying water in the desert by Amado Pena.  He was kind enough to give me permission to show it to you.  His beautiful work can be seen at his website and you can view it here  (www.penagallery.com). 

I have loved this poster for thirty years, and for the longest time, could not have told you why.  The answer has been slowly unfolding in my life, especially as I have become a photographer.   My photographs are like the water.  I just work on the habit and craft of going out to get them.  And then I made the book, and now I am making this website...  just the ways to carry my pictures. 

There's a lot of water in the world... a lot of juice and flow and energy and beauty and movement.  Those of us living on the ocean and in the desert know that water is life.  I think it's our job and very great joy to carefully build our own containers and to stay with it until we know how to hold and carry this most precious thing, each in our own way,  to each other. 

Blue and Blue, taken in the early morning on September 26th, 2011 on Block Island off of Mansion Beach.