I was looking through photographs I made during 2022 and happened upon a photo I had not paid attention to at the time I made it. But today it stood out as a kind of poem created by nature.
Nature as Poet
The grace and beauty of small scenes in nature always captivates me and surprises me. (I can’t decide if I like my black and white version or color version of the photograph better.)
These poems created by nature are what I look for when I go out with my camera. I am less interested in “capturing” and more interested in communing with nature, soaking in its grace and beauty.
When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains — beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.
— John Muir
Along with the poems that nature creates and I discover with my camera, spending time in nature continually reminds me that life is a circle filled with abundance in which nothing is wasted.
One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature — inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.
— John Muir
On this cold November day (in Minnesota), can you see the poetry that nature creates and the abundance and beauty of it all?
May you walk in beauty.
Note: photos today are a mix of a few hidden poems, small and large, that I found in the photos I’ve made during 2022.
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