Our relationship with nature, even when we intentionally seek it, is usually superficial. Unless the scope is wide and the scenery grand, we tend to tune out. We demand grandeur. If we are not perched on the rim of the Grand Canyon or standing beneath the immense monolith of El Capitan, we often don’t take notice. It’s a pity, for we miss so much.
Few people are more guilty of this than I am. I tend to discount the landscape around my home as ordinary and unremarkable. It just doesn’t stir my juices. And of course, I would be the first to preach the exact opposite-that all landscapes have their own special beauty.
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But when I open up to it, photography allows me to witness the extraordinary in places I might otherwise dismiss as ordinary. The nature of beauty I find in “ordinary” places is not vast and grand, but baby grand. The wide angle lens generally stays in the bag and is replaced by a normal or telephoto lens. Morsels of stunning beauty are often at my feet, but it doesn’t come easily to me. I have to leave the house determined to look – really look, and then see. The irony in all this is that the photographs I enjoy most are those intimate portraits of a ho-hum subject, that when abstracted from a cluttered landscape, is simply lovely.
No doubt, I will continue to long for my favorite natural settings and overlook the little wonders near home that I pass without notice. But I will work to remember; to still the internal noise, walk more slowly, look carefully, and see the baby grand scenery all around.
I recently wrote a post about adventure; the notion that the urge for it is a greater motivator than we recognize. I suggested that 49ers came to California as much for the adventure as for the prospect of striking it rich. As evidence, I offered the testimony of many who went to a later gold rush: the Klondike in 1898-9. As with the California Gold Rush, virtually everyone returned empty-handed, but most who were interviewed by author Pierre Berton looked back on that time with fondness and satisfaction.
We often buttress our case to do something new and exciting with “reasons,” but more and more, I think the real reason we want to do it is because it is new and exciting; aka an adventure.
I’m not supposed to say that. It’s not PC. “Digger” is a condescending term that was used by early Eurpoean settlers to characterize some of the Native Americans in the Great Basin and in California who dug in the soil for roots and bulbs. One of our native pines inhereted that moniker as its common name, but the modern day arbiters of politeness say no, it must be changed. So, the digger pine has become the gray pine, or the ghost pine, or the foothill pine. I like digger pine. It is a good reminder of just how mean and insensitive we can be.
I am never quite sure what the exact recipe is for a great spring wildflower display. While I enjoy botanizing in California’s Coast Range and in the Sierra, I know just enough to be dangerous. I’m likely to concoct some groundless theory and assert it as fact. But based on the significant rainfall we have had thus far, I wonder if this spring could be a memorable one.
Naturally, rain is a must, but there have been many so-so spring blooms after a wet winter; other factors certainly play a part. It makes sense that during the recent drought years viable wildflower seeds have not received enough water to sprout. Perhaps through the sparse blooms of recent springs that seeds have been accumulating waiting for a winter like we are having now. With an average amount of rainfall during the rest of the California winter, maybe we will see a spring bloom like 1997.
Do you buy it? I may be way off base, but it sounds good.