Category Archives: photography

How lovely are thy branches…

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“There’s nothing more beautiful than a tree,” Alain Le Goff liked to say…

“Look how they’re working …They’re linking the earth to the tree and sunsetsky. That’s very difficult, son. The sky is so lightweight that it’s always at the point of taking off. If there were no trees, it would bid us farewell …You can see that the trunk of a tree is a thick rope. Sometimes there are knots inside. The strands of the rope work themselves loose at each end so that they can fasten onto the sky and the earth. At the top they’re called branches, and at the bottom, roots. But it comes to the same thing.”– Pierre-Jakez Helias, Horse of Pride

I love trees. They give us shade, shelter, and oxygen. They hold the soil to the hillside, fruit on their branches, and our tire swings above the ground.

When I was a little girl I walked home from school by a property that had a line  of little fir trees which were left, unplanted and drying up, next to dusty holes that someone had dug for them. The trees seemed to have been forgotten and abandoned. My heart went out to them. I plucked one of the little firs up and brought it home to Mom. Mom tried to explain that those trees belonged to someone, but it did not compute – it was obvious to me that those trees deserved a better care-giver than the person who had left them, with their little roots drying up in the open air. Mom must have realized that if that tree was going to survive it needed to be planted post haste – so she found me a planter big enough to accommodate a tree’s roots, and provided a home for “Treesa” (the name I gave her). When we moved several years later, we brought Treesa with us and planted her on our new property, where she lived, grew, and prospered. (Treesa’s sister trees – the other little firs that had been waiting with her to be planted the day I walked past them – never did get planted, and didn’t make it.)

Every year a little fir tree on the path along Bellingham Bay slowly begins accumulating Christmas decorations on its branches. Why this particular tree was picked to be the path’s annual Christmas tree, I do not know. But she’s a very jaunty little tree, and it brings me great joy to contribute to her Christmas finery, and to see her all gussied-up for Christmas.

Christmas tree 2

“For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” – Isaiah 55: 12

“And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.” – Psalms 1: 3

green Padden         winter trees in upstate NY 600 year-old tree in Deception Pass, WA      Adirondack winter trees (2) autumn trees            Bellingham tree autumn trees            Padden trees    boy in tree

 

all photos by Karen Molenaar Terrell

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Celebrating Earth!

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“EARTH.  A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end…To material sense, earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea.” – Mary Baker Eddy

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” – Genesis 1: 31

“For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” – Isaiah 55: 12

***

Today I celebrate all of my Father-Mother God’s beautiful creation – all the glories of forest and meadow, mountain and sea, desert and valley and dale. I celebrate the infinite expression of God, Good – the beauty, harmony, and life that are evidence and proof of Good.  Today I recognize and appreciate The Artist’s work, I rejoice in it, take note of it, and re-commit myself to protecting it.

***

“Nature voices natural, spiritual law and divine Love,  but human belief misinterprets nature. Arctic regions, sunny tropics, giant hills, winged winds,  mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers,  and glorious heavens, – all point to Mind, the spiritual intelligence they reflect. The floral apostles are hieroglyphs of Deity. Suns and planets teach grand lessons.  The stars make night beautiful, and the leaflet turns naturally towards the light.” – Mary Baker Eddy

“Presence is needed to become aware of the beauty, the majesty, the sacredness of nature…You have to put down for a moment your personal baggage of problems, of past and future, as well as your knowledge; otherwise, you will see but not see, hear but not hear.  Your total presence is required.” – from The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

With The Eyes of a Tourist…

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“Having eyes, see ye not?” – Mark 8: 18

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It feels like there’s something reawakening inside of me –  something that had been  asleep for a long time.  I find myself looking at the world around me in the same way I did as a child – like everything I see is new to me, and the world is full of new things to explore and discover.  I like it.

Several years ago I made a new friend through the internet – how I met her and how we became friends is a whole book in itself – and maybe someday I’ll write it.  But what I want to talk about today is how that new friendship affected the way I see things.

My friend, Kathi, lives on the other side of the continent in Nova Scotia.  For reasons I don’t need to explain here, early in our friendship I realized that Kathi would probably never be able to visit me in my part of the world, and I had an overwhelming desire to share the beauty of what I see here with her somehow.  And because Kathi is an artist, I felt a special desire to present her with images an artist would be able to appreciate.

Ever since childhood I’d enjoyed taking photos, but, in my late twenties, I married a gifted professional photographer, and, humbled by his talent, I began limiting my own photography to mostly snapshots of family and friends – capturing birthday parties and anniversaries and family outings for the family photo album.

Now, because of my friendship with Kathi, I started taking a different kind of photo.  I wanted to show off the scenes – the flora and fauna, the mountains and beaches – of the Pacific Northwest to her.  And I wanted to try to present her with photos of images in the way she might see them herself if she were here – as an artist would see them, and as a tourist from Nova Scotia would see them.

This opened up a whole new world for me, and I think this is when my “reawakening” began.  I began noticing line, patterns, textures, small details, colors – all the magic in the world around me – in a way I hadn’t for years.

***

Yesterday was an amazing day. I stepped outside my house for an afternoon “photo walk” and entered an awe-inspiring world. Trumpeter swans flew in the sky to the south of me, and a pair of bald eagles swooped around in the sky to the north of me, and I was just blown away by the magnificence of it.  Totally oblivious to everything but those eagles and those trumpeters, I stood in the middle of the street, mouth open in wonder, focused on capturing what I was seeing in my camera.

I didn’t realize that a car had stopped for me, and the driver was watching me in sort of amused fascination, until I finally took my eyes off the sky. Kind of embarrassed, but still full of the wonder of my world, I laughed and apologized for making him stop. The driver grinned back at me. He said I looked like I was really concentrating. Waving my arm towards the heavens, I said, “We live in a beautiful part of the world! – eagles and swans filling the sky!”

He smiled and kind of shrugged and said, “Nothing new.”

I smiled back at him and said, “It’s all new! I’m looking at the world with new eyes. I’m a tourist here.”

He chuckled. I think he thought I was a little daft. And perhaps I am. But I’m sure enjoying it.