Needing Nature

So, realizing that there are 24 shopping days left to Christmas, I got an early jump on work so that I could escape for an hour or so to get some holiday shopping completed. Everything was falling into place for my outing...............except the weather: 51 degrees and sunny. Forecast for tomorrow: Snow/rain mix and endless string of temps in the 30's. Who knows when we might see 50 again? Hmmmm.....What's a girl to do? So off I went and I drove out to the main road. Turning left goes towards the mall and turning right leads me to the country. I truly had intended to be a good kid and get to the mall.......BUT.........forces beyond my control made me turn right. There are advantages to living on the fringe of suburbia, where a 10-15 minute drive leads me far from strip malls and into the countryside. This was taken on the way to my destination. I drive by it often on my "Therapy Drives" as I call these and it sort of transports me back in time. Warm enou...

There are places and times where we all become photographers, where we all have an overpowering need to capture the moment, place, and time and preserve it. Some places are just so beautiful that we all are able to be photographers and take beautiful pictures. But it's frustrating when the end result doesn't show the vastness of what we're trying to shoot. So when looking at pictures of places I've never been, I'm always trying to imagine all that I cannot see in the photo, the story behind the story. What went on where the picture ended? What was the temperature, was there a breeze, what did the air smell like, and what was being felt when this was taken? You hear people say over and over that their pictures did not do the location justice. It's true. And when I look at my own pictures, I see so much more, and they tell a story of my memories of that frozen moment in time that only I know. I feel the cool breeze that I felt when I was taking it, breathing...

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau