sexta-feira, 27 de maio de 2016

THE WORLD THROUGH THE LENS




Sociologists say we now only see the world through the lens...


Skippers became part of my world when I bought a camera with a slightly better zoom, under the US$200 limit I thought reasonable in our world, for a camera.
I may have seen them before, they may have landed, but I was not ever sure they existed.






I just registered their flickering shadows at the edges of my vision, imagining moths, perhaps moths taken by flame.





Now I stand here, at the edge of the woods, inside the fields, wishing mosquitoes and ticks away, so that my hand and the camera may not move.




Wishing time stand still... hoping to be their witness.
I want to capture them, as a photographer would.

No longer believing, like my mother did in the old days, that trays decorated with butterfly wings are cool.



I want to name them, define them.
Clearly establish my knowledge.
 



I know
now they are
the manifest
tiny I seek.



As if these creatures could save me,

grant me grace

in this ephemeral infinity.







". . . why name them [rock formations]? . . . Vanity, vanity, nothing but vanity: the itch for naming things is almost as bad as the itch for possessing things. Let them and leave them alone--they'll survive for a few more thousand years, more or less, without any glorification from us. . . . Through naming comes knowing . . . . And thus through language create a whole world, corresponding to the other world out there. Or we trust that it corresponds. Or perhaps, like a German poet, we cease to care, becoming more concerned with the naming than with the things named; the former becomes more real than the latter. And so in the end the world is lost again. No, the world remains . . . and it is we who are lost."  Edward Abbey in “Desert Solitaire”.





Sachem or Atalopedes campestris, the first one I photographed and named, with the help of the great folks at Butterfly and Moths of North America



 



 


sábado, 21 de maio de 2016

INDIGO BLUES



Someday
I will learn to dye
and use it
for my indigo color


Wild blue and false indigo, also name Baptisia Australis

terça-feira, 17 de maio de 2016

RE-VISITING THE PLANTS

A VISIT TO A PLACE I HAVE NOT SEEN


IN SEVEN YEARS...


Gall in oak, as change in physical structure


Oak in gall



Blue steel heron as protector


Trail companion Jeff Zablow, at Adkins Arboretum

Thanks Jeff,  for your company at the Arboretum trails. Searching for butterflies, finding almost none. Endless explorations in botany and wonders.




Orchids



The decomposers


Rattle snake weed


A "planted" tulip poplar flower





South Tuckahoe Valley Trail

Deep tree knees on rock and sand

A red admiral in the North meadow - the only one

and the many orchids...