The Pace of Nature
After yesterday’s slow scroll of gray rain clouds and an all-day soaking, when the long arms of tall trees wrestled with whirling winds, the new season officially arrives, only minutes before an unwrapping at sunrise. The dispersal of a fresh wash bringing brightening light pries the night away. No ordinary day today: an accumulation of protracted daylight replaces more of the darkness, and summer shoulders aside spring in the yearly cycle as solstice arrives in the blink of an eye. Like that, in the way a calendar sheet is flipped, nature’s page quickly takes its annual tumble from spring to summer, a seasonal reprise.
* * *
Already, a warming morning sunshine slung low over the horizon sorts its way overhead, embracing fresh green leaves on backlit branches flaring like feathered wings, converting the character of the landscape. Blessed by absorption of that soft illumination, the entire earth appears changed. All features in view have been inundated with its subtle translucence like artworks highlighted under adjusted spotlights, dimmed a bit from the height of their intensity yet subtly directed from a gallery ceiling.
* * *
In mid-morning, I drive a winding route, closed to thru traffic and almost enclosed by thick woods extending alongside, their overhanging branches sometimes encroaching upon the road. Following this narrow two-lane with gray pavement, my car moves slowly over the darker arc of a short span across the Little Calumet River to access a section of Indiana Dunes National Park. As one portion of the year morphs into another, I find myself straddling opposing opinions of preference from one moment to another, contradictory comprehensions of conditions: the beauty of new beginnings in spring or the more mature lush growth of summer. Despite being aware of the fallacy there will be any discernible difference, I convince myself that I want to witness the transition from spring to summer. What did Whitman write? “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.”
* * *
In fact, I recognize photographic merits in each of the seasons. When asked about their favorite seasonal scenery, most landscape photographers likely acknowledge a personal preference for fall foliage, particularly in this region of the country. The three or four weeks spanning peak autumn color in nearby woods provide impressive imagery found around every turn along the forested trails. Indeed, if pressed, I would concede the end of October and start of November are marked on my calendar as the best time of year for hiking through the wooded terrain I frequently visit. Nevertheless, I must confide that I have a special fondness for pictures capturing any of those moments whenever a sense of transformation appears evident in nature.
* * *
Turning up a sloping entryway into a trailhead parking lot, just about empty during this midweek trip, a rattle of slick wet gravel grinds beneath my car’s wheels, the static of those tiny stones sounding like shattered seashells stirred by summer surf or, perhaps, wintry sleet plummeting against a toolshed’s metal roof. With my windows closed, the scraping of pebbles when the brakes are applied reminds me of a snake’s hiss heard beneath cover of fallen leaves or maybe the searing of steak on a sizzling grill during a first spring barbecue.
* * *
Pulling close to the trailhead, I park my car in a space beneath a slimmed slit of sky now nearly nudged shut by shade draped from a green dome of spread limbs already filled with foliage, and I open the door to a new season. I have stopped two spots from a camper van—a white Ford Transit, the only other vehicle visible—with a South Carolina license plate sporting its signature silhouette design of a palmetto tree in indigo. Also, I notice a couple of bumper sticker badges from other national parks on either side of the state plate. The familiar stick-figure hunched under a backpack in a “Take a Hike” decal has been stuck to a corner of the windshield on the passenger side, but no one is in sight.
* * *
This locale is a familiar site I have explored frequently in each of the seasons, and the park’s path moving from here, mostly through more developed dune woods, has become an article of anthropomorphism in my mind, something I have come to regard with affection. Upon each trip I’m tempted to speak a well-known greeting as I address the scenery with every entrance I make into the trail, echoing remembered lyrics from a favorite song: “Hello, again, my old friend.” Also, I always nod my head gently in a gesture of acknowledgment, a subtle way of saying “I’m back.”
* * *
One could characterize this as a walk through imitation wilderness, an illusion of remote isolation that I usually emphasize in images I capture with my camera. Well-known photographer Guy Tal has written: “Careful composition, deliberate inclusions and exclusions, and dramatic use of light can leave the right amount of space to be filled by a viewer’s imagination and knowledge, and so perhaps convey a sense of a wild experience even when such experience is not possible.” Some might say such framing of nature is deceptive even when described as fine art rather than documentary. However, I believe this conscious choice is a visual equivalent of the written act characterized as creative nonfiction, which blends factual elements or practical acts with more emotionally persuasive techniques in its descriptive images or figurative language.
* * *
Somewhat isolated at the national park, this trail is easy to travel, lacking in steep slopes and sheltered from the sun during summer by a canopy of trees for much of its course. Although only June, overgrowth of bushes and expanding shrubbery intruding upon the route already can represent pesky physical obstacles in this portion of the year. Somewhere unseen, a lone crow cries ahead, sounding from a lofty perch down the ragged passage of grass with tufts deadened by footsteps of prior hikers. Fading away under areas of mud nearly the color of rust and yet puddled in places with little pools of rainwater, this path fully recedes from view in the distance amid those darker shadows flowing like black robes from each tree leaning overhead.
* * *
By the time I begin my hike on this thin trail, its stagnant air still somewhat muggy along the slim river, I’m stumbling a touch under the weight of my camera backpack and carbon tripod. Although I have lessened the amount of gear I carry on such a short hike to lighten my load, the resulting bundle nevertheless sometimes feels cumbersome. As I awkwardly climb down a slight incline not far from from the roadway, I discover I am stepping below the old stone bridge I’d driven over just moments ago. Its structure, marked by age and marred by weathering, traverses the tributary like a slight scar left on the landscape as a memory from a different era.
* * *
The span’s slate-gray shade has been stained in places by remnants of raindrops from the overnight showers. Much of a cement wall beneath the bridge is blemished by oblong smudges and blotted with muddy runs of asymmetrical streaks, russet veins of condensation collected during those recent rains. Other irregular darker blotches, some almost black ovals, resemble those dramatic yet puzzlingly stark forms on Robert Motherwell’s Elegies to the Spanish Republic paintings. Upon reflection, I vividly remember first viewing haunting examples of that thematic succession of artworks at a Guggenheim Museum gallery. On an autumn afternoon in New York when I was in my late teens, I had stepped inside the building during a strong but unexpectedly sudden rainstorm merely in an effort to stay dry. Apparently, I yet associate those iconic Motherwell abstract figures with precipitation and the fickleness of nature.
* * *
Looking forward, the seduction of the scenery snares me again as nature’s colors rub against one another like the robust brushed lines in an evocative Joan Mitchell painting. Frequently, artworks serve as external objects supplying images that initiate internal reflection much the way nature's scenery often presents itself as an apt metaphor for the inner landscape of those who experience it. Some plump and stumpy trees richly clothed with their full foliage frame the way ahead. Their softly rounded crowns of deep green leaves are fitful in even the easiest breeze. Dusted by early gold light, they caress a contrasting blue bowl of newly clearing sky that rests above them and promises to truly rule the day now that the final few knots of cumulus clouds are slipping away.
* * *
Ducking under a network of low-hanging branches, I see a shimmering of prismatic liquid blisters, globules of moisture still spotting shaded limbs twisting about eye high along the waterway. Those tiniest drops seem even more delicate and look like clear seed beads used for spacing when making a string bracelet. The temperature at this trail’s lower level of land, its pathway lengthening and disappearing into the distance like an unspooled ribbon near the unhurried river’s run stippled with sunlight, already feels a few degrees cooler. A spring chill is still here, as though there has been some hesitation by isolated elements of nature about enthusiastically committing to stepping through that imaginary portal promising an access from one season to another, and instead exhibiting a reluctance to enter into summer.
* * *
The center of this serene stream, measured by following the motion of a few slowly floating leaves or drifting twigs, glints a bit as it slips midway between the river’s shores under an emergence of uncontested sunlight skipping along the surface. At the end of autumn, teeming leaves swarmed these narrow waters, swept downstream in a quicker current. Today, a few shoots of weeds extend through the sleeve of an easily flowing surface at its shallower depths, some slender stalks with their elegant necks bending tenderly, now and then bowing down almost imperceptibly, nodding tentatively as if confidentially agreeing with an intimate secret statement discretely whispered in an ear. Each yellow-green reed reaches out about a meter above the flat finish of the river, itself maybe a grayish green glaze in those shaded places of water bordering both banks.
* * *
In wretched winter winds these slim reeds become somewhat beige and shiver slightly—movement limited as they extend from a solid lane of ice exhibiting little web-like designs in exposed sections, elsewhere whitened by recurring bouts of heavy snowfall from stalled storms. Their narrow shadows darken and lengthen under the sharpening angle of a southern sun hovering low over the tree line. At times, I would stop a while to watch artistic impressions left by new snow gathering in drifts around me as well as to capture with my camera the season’s splay of weak slanting light skidding across the frozen river’s crystalline finish polished by gusts and the sloping banks also smoothed as if hand-sanded. However, now standing by the river’s fringe, the water flows forward unfalteringly, even where the current curls ahead, turning slowly in a curve around three fallen trees as it approaches a bend. Pausing to photograph this twist in the river before going forward, I listen to a distant high-pitched whistle: a late-morning freight train breaks the silence while making its way through the Upper Midwest and advancing in a steady progression along fine lines of silver tracks that gleam under a summer sun on this initial day of the season.
* * *
About three strides each at their widest, the less vegetated edges of soil abutting the water—with a footpath on one side worn bare, a legacy left by other wanderers—stretch far ahead toward a gentle bend where a file of vibrant wildflowers seem to preen on each bank. They are aligned like arrows pointing to that lightening sky cradled by a brightening tree line sunshine-silhouetted in the distance. Close by, a clarity of fresh prints tracking beside this untroubled stretch of river and disappearing into a rift of tangled scrub brush indicates deer have trod nearby not too long ago. In the past, I’ve sometimes seen small herds from a distance as they dip their heads near here among river reflections to sip from the water, and when I walked toward them, they would slip through narrow openings between tree trunks. For a while, despite the deer disappearing, I could still hear rustling among the thick undergrowth, alerting me to their presence.
* * *
Deeply relieved by the temporary freedom from the busyness and social interaction inherent in city living, even in the smaller community where I live, I never tire of looking at this vista, which fortifies my shaky faith and persuades me more surely that nature and its sacred landscapes are gifts. Nevertheless, I hesitate before continuing my walk, delaying as if uncertain of my way ahead. After awaiting a stillness between weak breezes to eliminate any focus blur with my camera due to movement in the leaves, I take a handheld test photo of the scenery to measure the guesswork in my settings.
* * *
Under summer’s sanction, the sovereign sun—that yolk earlier this morning rising higher above the horizon—sometimes seems to be a simple lemon disk. Its round and vivid figure is isolated amid the current plain backdrop of brilliant blue as if placed upon the canvas of a minimalist artwork, perhaps a stark square painting containing colorful concentric circles by Kenneth Noland. Always aware of the sun’s location, I’m conscious that for better exposure when taking a photograph, the best practice is usually to face away from its flash. In fact, a background mix of subtle cloud cover is most desired. Nonetheless, in the image on the digital preview screen at the back of my camera, the southeastern sky brightens like the golden gleam radiating from an old-fashioned gas lamp late at night. Reflected rays of sunshine now shimmer, rebound off the water's sparkling slab of surface to initiate a soft cast of indirect light. Bounced like a muted studio glow, the light faintly penetrates the cooler pools of shade beneath those interlacing bottom boughs, a few still shiny where wet. A mesh of the lowest bare branches, some no more than thin shoots or brittle twigs long dead from weather damage, extends and bows like unfolded umbrella ribs forcefully opened, becoming bent or broken, hovering just above a few smoothed stones along the waterlogged riverbank.
* * *
Lately the region has been treated to a season of wetter weather. The past weeks’ series of showers seemed so insistent, a persistent parade of rainstorms trooping through the area since late May. Their downpours flooded unreceptive ground already saturated for a while due to melt from winter’s heavy snows and a deluge from other recent torrents during last month’s thunderstorms, but those final lingering black clouds gradually dispersed overnight. Yesterday’s vague haze stayed until sunset under the dull light of an ominous overcast, gracing the landscape with light rain. Continuing into the early night in the form of flimsy wisps of drizzle drifting onshore from an opaque Lake Michigan, these rain clouds finally blotted any possible glimpse at moonlight and obscured the stars. Now, this mist also has since slipped away. Rainfall subsided, and the still chilly pre-dawn opened. A thinning mix of billowing clouds accompanied by opening cracks of clearing sparsely filled with fading petals of stars eventually relinquished the sky to an abundance of unfazed sun and the white wings of ring-billed gulls effortlessly gliding by the shoreline.
* * *
Always aware of the solar glare, I anticipate a day of harsh illumination flaring overhead with the distraction of sharp contrasting shadows interrupting much of the scenery in my images. I’d like my photos to reveal these intimate details still hidden beneath pockets of shade locked under hardwood trees. In bright sunshine like this, I have learned how shadows can conceal significant aspects of the setting. On another day, when the sky is again papered with gray cloud cover filtering the jarring sunlight, softening the surroundings with diminishing contrast, I will return to take those shadowless panorama photographs. Landscape photography has taught me the importance of persistence—repeatedly repositioning myself, attempting to achieve an apt angle, or even revisiting the same location multiple times. Appreciating the way nature’s state continuously changes, I have also adopted a greater degree of patience, perhaps anticipating a finer white balance or hesitating until the right light is visible in my electronic viewfinder. The latter ability to restrain my eagerness while awaiting changes in conditions, as well as to tolerate delay, represents a characteristic I confess I otherwise might have chronically lacked during the past in my everyday living.
* * *
Over time, I have adapted to the necessity involved in observing the development of a sundown sometimes for more than an hour, and then lingering a bit longer for the possibility of an afterglow mingled among the clouds even as the sun has disappeared beyond the horizon. Similarly, I am willing to accept occasions when the stunning sunset never materializes, despite my time spent passively attending to the setting before me, constantly thumbing my focus ring for precision and getting ready to press my forefinger on the button of my delayed shutter release. Part of the irony in landscape photography arises with a contrast between the speed of the blade closing the aperture, maybe calculated in hundredths of a second, and the prolonged period—perhaps as much as an hour or more— that might lapse while engaged in preparation and anticipation. One must balance the temptation for rapid action with the necessity of rumination and reflection. Therefore, I embrace the habitual use of a tripod, which slows the procedure. This protracted period of time permits a photographer greater opportunity for contemplation of the image that will be displayed within the camera frame. Consequently, I am continually waiting beside my tripod for the precise light or carefully considering my arrangement of the environs visible in my digital display to capture the correct composition.
* * *
Although I am sometimes told my public persona appears laid back, I must acknowledge that I am not inherently a patient person. Despite the fact that I project a reserved and socially easygoing personality, my upbringing in New York City placed me in an environment that tended toward expectations for a quicker pace and instant results. However, I have found the photographic process, particularly when I’m engaged in landscape photography, exists as one aspect that has contributed to my apparent assumption of a more imperturbable behavior. Nature has taught me the benefit from a calm acceptance of careful hesitation for deliberation. Capturing images in natural settings requires contemplation, preparation, and pausing in place until the preferred conditions present themselves. For instance, as I stand beside my tripod and watch a measured movement of drifting clouds and the slightly shifting inclination of sunlight, or when I halt as a pair of passersby amble past my field of vision to clear the otherwise empty beach I am photographing, I am reminded of the advice once offered by Ralph Waldo Emerson: “…adopt the pace of Nature. Her secret is patience.”