I've decided to take a lesson from all the law of attraction hubub and start my own type of "gratitude journal". Since i am a visual person, I'm going to do it with images. I have always taken snapshots in my mind of beautiful things I want to remember. I have some from when I was very young. My favorite is from a camping trip for my brother's birthday we went on to Roosevelt lake outside of Phoenix, I was probably 7 or 8.. Since these pictures are all in my head, let me try and paint it with words...
We were driving way too fast again on the Apache trail, a dirt road clinging to cliffs, once a horse trail used by the Apache's. We come to a hairpin turn inside a steep canyon with a bridge and a cave off to the side of the road we had explored before. But this time the spot was even more magical, we just had to pull off to the side and get out of the car. A huge monsoon had just passed through and the canyon was streaming with waterfalls coming down the cliffs on three sides into a roaring river under the bridge. The canyon was reververating with the sound of rushing water, and smelled like fresh rain in the desert (my favorite smell). It was one of those moments when you feel small under Earth's beauty and power, and soblessed to witness something as rare as waterfalls in the desert.
We pulled over and stood on the bridge, along with everyone else on the road who could not resist, and I took this mental picture and vowed to remember it forever. And i do! So many years later, my cells are completely renewed, yet this picture is fresh in my mind, I can go right back there. I can feel the rough concrete bridge under my fingers. The tangible photographs I take have never stacked up to the mental ones, I guess they are just reminders, tabs in the files.
I'm sure this is why i became a photographer early on, to capture all these beautifull things for others to see. And I've gotten away from it lately, so I'm going to start a picture of the day of something awesome and post it here..... here is the first one..
Some purple basil and chives from the garden for tonight's dinner, my favorite raku bowl i made this year, and Trigger my gorgeous cat sniffing chives.
Today gets 3 images since I went way up into the mountains by my house and did some star trails while camping. I love doing these because it's the only way I've even been able to comprehend the Earth's rotation. Of course there's the sun's movement, but something about setting a camera on the Earth next to you and then seeing how far the stars have moved is so tangible.
