Enchanted World

 

Road Through High Plains

 

Without a Camera

Sometimes I "take" pictures without a camera, not having it in hand, even not wanting the burden of carrying it. “Look at this,” I tell myself. “Remember this.” And so --

Along Eagle highway: brightly painted hay wagons at one of my favorite farms, neatly lined up in the sun after freshly cut and baled hay was put away in the barn.

Same road: broad alternating strips of shade and light where rising sun casts first light through a cherry orchard onto the grassy roadside. 

A quiet back road, walking: among stands of late summer goldenrod, a single stalk of June primrose, with its lighter, clearer yellow, blooms out of season.

This morning, early: a glowing full moon, luminous in the southwest, setting over the orchard, lighting the sky (clear after a night of rain) brighter than false dawn in the east.

Sailboat in the Fog

The photo I didn't know I took

I've shot this view many times. Many Leelanau County painters have painted it. Only when I was reviewing photos on my camera did I see what I had missed when looking through the viewfinder. Resolution stinks, but I was excited to see this little fellow crossing the road right where my dog and I had walked moments before.

Winter Walk with a Friend: Priceless!

Facebook contacts are better than no social contacts at all, and it’s wonderful to be connected with old friends in far-flung places. I love the ability to be in conversation with an old friend in Nova Scotia and one in Seattle and another in Detroit, all at once. The value is undeniable. I don’t deny it. And yet, how much more thrilled I would be to have my friends in the same room with me! Or — outdoors!

Cold weather all over the country did not frighten one friend away from our plan to take a morning walk in the snow on Wednesday. Since I lack her experience with snowshoes, and also because I kept stopping to pull my camera out of its sheltered spot under my jacket, I lagged behind much of the way. 

When she reached the spot requiring a big step up, however, my friend waited for me to sure I could negotiate the rise.

Below, chairs overlooking a summer pond, so inviting on a July evening, look out now on ice from under thick blankets of snow... 

...while farther down the snow-buried path, wind-driven snow plastered on trunks of trees also makes summer a memory difficult to retrieve.

But doesn’t my friend look cute in her winter cap, her colorful clothing enlivening the almost monochromatic landscape? It’s good to be outdoors with a friend!

Returning from our walk, I looked back to see the path we had made through previously unbroken white landscape, a path my friend assured me would be drifted over again by the next day. Yes, I’m sure it will be. Our driveway is plowed every day and drifted closed again and again as the wind moves snow through the air like the grains of ever-shifting sand dunes. The days are cold, and it’s important to have warm clothing and the warmth of friends in a Michigan winter.

Organization

The younger of my two younger sisters says wryly that if she ever has a tombstone it should read: “She was organized to a fault.” Mine, should I ever have one, could not live up to that inscription. I’m not the least but certainly far from the most organized person I know.

Still, the other day a friend and I were talking about beauty and what it is in a landscape that makes us recognize it as beautiful, that is, as something to be captured somehow by art (he thought it required a clearing), and I remarked that my husband has a couple Leelanau County views he loves but says neither allows itself to be organized into a painting. Some kind of organization, I said, seems to be necessary. (What this has to say about Jackson Pollock, I leave for others to decide.) Responding to our friend’s thought about clearings, I agree that I do love fields, whether in crops or wild, and I particularly them when bordered by dark trees and interrupted by a curving road.

This morning as Sarah and I were out taking our morning exercise and fresh air, it occurred to me that one of the reason paintings of flowers are so generally satisfying is that nature has already organized each flower. A horizon line very clearly organizes the world of a painting or photograph. The image below is a very ordinary morning scene -- rien de spécial -- but the line separating Lake Michigan from the sky tells you where you are. We are creatures who seek meaning, who make meaning, and for that it is important that we organize our world view.

Paintings by my husband, David Grath, are now on exhibit through September 9 at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City. David is well known for his interpretations of beautiful landscape, and admission is free this week during the Traverse City Film Festival.

Just plain grass is beautiful to me.

Skies West to East Along the Road

Always, the Big, Beautiful Sky!

Color in the Winter Landscape

Don't see it? Hard to spot from a vehicle. 

You have to look more closely....

Larger colorful objects are easier to spot

but also worth a closer look.