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| Cataract Creek, Mt. Tamalpais |
I lived next to my neighbor, Jake, for a couple of decades before I found out he's been writing Nature News all this time. Sometimes we relate as superficially to people as we do to a photograph, even though it's possible to have a deeper experience of either one. What I allude to in my Photographer's Statement is that an image can be a link to the deeper experience of being in the presence of nature itself. But only if you let it. And only if you have previously had a deeper experience to relate it to.
An article about "plant blindness" that Jake mentioned in a recent newsletter put me on a tangent regarding other things we are blind to. The most important of these in my own life was being thrust out of the blindness of taking things for granted, of accepting superficial, received knowledge as being a true and adequate guide to the unfathomable intricacies of life. Sometimes all it takes to blow our minds is a little scratch beneath the surface of what we think we know.
Over the years I've found that Nature is always ready to blow my mind. By directing my attention to the unfathomable intricacy of the natural world, and of life itself, in this present moment, the illusion of a hum-drum world of ordinariness vanishes and is replaced by an experience that some call ultimate reality and others call God.
It's probably the best antidepressant of all. Check out this article from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, called Experiences of "Ultimate Reality" or "God" Confer Lasting Benefits to Mental Health: "About 75 percent of respondents in both the non-drug and psychedelics groups rated their 'God encounter' experience as among the most meaningful and spiritually significant in their lifetime, and both groups attributed to it positive changes in life satisfaction, purpose and meaning."
I was surprised to see the subject brought up in a recent article in, of all places, the staid New York Times, where David Brooks writes: "At least for me, these experiences didn't answer questions or settle anything; on the contrary, they opened up vaster mysteries. They revealed wider dimensions of existence than I had ever imagined and aroused a desire to be opened up still further. Wonder and awe are the emotions we feel when we are in the presence of a vast something just beyond the rim of our understanding."
Continuing, he writes, "In his book My Bright Abyss, the poet Christian Wiman writes, 'Religion is not made of these moments; religion is the means of making these moments part of your life rather than merely radical intrusions so foreign and perhaps even fearsome that you can't even acknowledge their existence afterward.'"
If religion is a framework for developing the means of making these moments part of my life, then I guess I'm religious. As I prepare for 2025 and beyond I will religiously cultivate a deeper and more resilient sense of gratitude for the power and the intricacy, the beauty and the mystery, of being immersed in this awesome world.
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| Upper Cataract Falls |
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| Sulfur Tufts |
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| Flows Over The Serpentine |
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| Deer Mushrooms |
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| Swirl & Splash |
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| Banana Sluggo |
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| Cataract Canyon |
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| Water & Stone |
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| Mossy Boulders |
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| Polypody |
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| Base of Upper Cataract Falls |
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| Toyon Berries |
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| Christmasberry Tree |
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| Lichen on Manzanita Branch |
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| Pileated Woodpecker |
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| Pileated Woodpecker Looking Sneaky, With Bay Leaves |
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| Mistletoe & Berries On Sargent Cypress |
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| Wrentit in the Chaparral |
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| Witch's Butter & Stereum Fungus |
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| I was pleasantly surprised to actually find this slime mold fruiting. I returned to an area of the mountain where I photographed it a year ago, and sure enough it was here again. |
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| Ascomycete Fungus (Peziza repanda) |
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| Bolinas Ridge |
Brief clip of the pileated woodpecker.
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