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Big Woods Wonder

Last week I visited one of my favorite places. The colors were popping, the weather was fine, and walking under the tall trees that grow there filled me with Big Woods Wonder. I’ve shared photos of these woods often, usually from springtime when the canopy is just beginning to fill in or from autumn when the leaves are turning shades of red, orange, and gold. These woods are one of my favorite places to spend time in the spring and fall. (Summer brings too many mosquitoes to spend much time there.) Today I am simply sharing some of my favorite Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

Autumn Dream

Oh, these beautiful golden days when the light creates such spectacular beauty all around us! This week I feel as if I am living in an Autumn Dream and hoping that I can stay in this reverie for just a little longer. These beautiful warm days have been such a gift, like a second summer with autumn colors. Two days ago I photographed the pond just at sunrise when the early morning light made everything glow. It lasted only a few minutes and then everything returned to its normal hues. But I got to see it and to photograph it Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

Nature’s Resilience

This native iris bloomed for the first time early last summer in the pond behind our house. We didn’t plant the iris here and didn’t really notice what it was. I think that it grew in the shallow water at the edge of the pond for at least two years. Then it bloomed and I was astonished to see it. There it was lovely, graceful, and beautiful. It was a living reminder of Nature’s Resilience. Where did it come from? How did a little seed plant itself in the shallow water of the pond and grow without my noticing it Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

Autumn’s Lessons

I have learned to both welcome and grieve the coming of autumn. And with every passing year I find that I am feeling Autumn’s Lessons more keenly. Autumn is the season of ambivalence and reconciliation, soft-carpeted training ground for the dissolution that awaits us all, low-lit chamber for hearing more intimately the syncopation of grief and gladness that scores our improbable and finite lives — each yellow burst in the canopy a reminder that everything beautiful is perishable, each falling leaf at once a requiem for our own mortality and a rhapsody for the unbidden gift of having lived at Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

The Creative Journey

I’ve been working on a new project. And it’s been a struggle. I began by creating a collection of photographs that conveyed a certain feeling to me. And then I began examining and working on them. I realized that I had a look and feel in mind for the photographs in this project, but I hadn’t yet asked myself a crucial question. What is this project about? The Creative Journey is often circular, uncertain, and frustrating. Yet I know of no better way to grow and learn as an artist than to commit to and complete a creative project and Read more…

By Marilyn, ago