How Quickly Things Change

One of the reasons I love making photographs is the connection that I feel with nature and the seasons. Even when I’m not fond of a season (like winter) I find beauty in it anyway. Tuesday, on an 80 degree late October day I was marveling at the warmth and beauty all around me. Yesterday I took a walk in the park next to our house photographing the ordinary beauty of the late season colors. Today I’m watching the beauty of a snow covered landscape and marveling at

in nature and in life.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

— Mary Oliver

I met a photographer friend for tea this morning, driving to the place where we met, in falling rain with a few pieces of sleet mixed in. A little more than an hour later I drove home in an increasingly white world. I was hoping to photograph fog over Medicine Lake this afternoon. But the arrival of the snow changed my plans. Though I had heard the weather forecast of snow for today I was (as I often am) hopeful that the forecast was wrong.

So instead I began editing photographs that I had made in the past two days. As I worked in my office the birds mobbed the bird feeders outside my office window. I finally stopped my work for awhile to photograph them vying for a spot at the feeders. I’m filled with joy watching them flutter and fly and feed.

And just now as I looked out the window again I saw that piles of wet snow on the tops of the squirrel proof feeders had created enough weight to keep the birds from getting to the food in the feeders. So I went outside and got the feeders back open for them. By the time I got back inside to my office all the perches were once again filled with birds.

The falling snow is lessening and starting to melt already. It’s a reminder to stay present in each moment. Everything changes all the time.

There are many ways to describe the unexpected people, discoveries and experiences of wonder and beauty that brighten my world — miracles, serendipity, glories, marvels, surprises —

I’ll Take Grace —

the grace of a swan’s outstretched wings or the arcing sweep of a blade of grass. And the grace of snow covered tree limbs bending to the earth. Even the grace of a hawk capturing and eating a rabbit in our backyard. Everything is a part of the whole, everything makes a contribution and everything is a miracle.

it is a serious thing /just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.

— Mary Oliver

Wishing you a grace-filled day.

May you walk in beauty.

Note: Photos from yesterday in the park near our house and today through the windows of the house looking out at the snow all around. Yesterday’s photos made with my phone, today’s with my Canon camera.