“There is only one way to protect nature–by realizing that we are a part of nature.”
Often when friends return from a far away trip, they enthusiastically endorse their experience by telling me that I will have a lot of photo opportunities there. This is true—when I come back from my travels, I bring back thousands of images that take me days to sort through, delete, and select only a few to share with you.
But why do we need to go far to take snap shots with our cellphones (or cameras), to possibly, never look at those images again? Why are we compelled to share them with friends and on social media sites? After all, we are not “human seeings”, but rather human beings. Perhaps sometimes we need to practice the art and the skill of just being.
I thought about this while visiting the top of the hill in Mount Davidson Park, recently.
I left my house at 8am on a Sunday morning. It was foggy; everything at that time was grey, and I knew that there was not going to be a beautiful sunrise to capture—but did it matter? This time I decided to take another route through the neighborhood to reach the more barren side of the mountain. When I came to the foot of the mountain, I noticed an opened garage door in one of the houses with a little girl calling out—“chirp, chirp, chirp”! I thought perhaps she was calling for her dog, named Chirp who had run out. When I asked her about whom she was calling to, her mom stepped out from the garage and told me that the girl was talking to an owl, and then pointed up to the wooden likeness attached to the balcony of the house across the street.
“No!”, the girl interrupted. “I am talking with the real birds.”
I looked around. There were none in sight, but there was chirping coming from the near-by tree.
While continuing my journey up the hill, I enjoyed the view of the trees barely seen through the fog. Old tree stumps with the wrinkled surfaces, a dead moth with the intricate stripes on the wings laying on the ground. I noticed people walking their dogs, wildflowers blooming, and the rooftops of the houses below. When I reached the bench I always sit on, beneath a dead tree, the bug that I wrote about before was not around. I just sat down and listened. I heard an airplane flying above, noise from the traffic from the busy street below, a motorcycle rumbling somewhere on the other side, then suddenly bells chiming from a nearby church announcing the 9am hour, and then the steps of someone walking on the gravel on the other side of the hill, a hooting sound, that sounded like a real owl, and constant chirping of the invisible birds in the bushes. I was there as a part of nature—present, not interfering. Simply observing what was happening around me. Noticing the drops of fog on my camera, slight movement of the grass in front of me. There was a small plant which grew under the dead branch, a silhouette of a person in the fog, and brown gravel under my feet. Later on, the fog will disappear and everything which exists and pulsates underneath the hill will become visible again. Life never stops, even when we are not around or do not notice it. But can we become like children again and chirp with real birds?
I went back down the hill though the forest. The water dripped from the trees. It was cold, damp, and incredibly beautiful.
P.S.
Hope you will enjoy some of the images I brought down with me. One of the advantages of photography is that we can bring souvenirs from our trips without the extra weight in our suitcases. Enjoy!
Do Not Keep Me As A Secret!
Smile And Please SHARE It With A Friend!
