| Wednesday, December 30, 2020 | | So Long, 2020 | As I type this, I am hearing Sound of Music in my head: So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye… But honestly, I don’t “hate to go and leave this (not-so) pretty sight.” (Even though today is, in a word, gorgeous, we have sloppier weather coming for the next few days.) And really, wasn't 2020 SO LONG?? We are all ready to see 2020 in the rear view mirror. I don’t think I have experienced such a challenging year personally and professionally since 2011, and I am—as the rest of you reading this are—expecting and hoping for better days ahead in 2021.
“Hope” is my Keyword for this coming year. As I pondered my 2021 word-of-the-year, I recalled the “Love Chapter” verse that says, “Faith, hope and love remain, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” I've used Love as a Keyword before, ditto Joy and Peace. My word for this year was Vision. I am still working through all the implications of Vision for my life.
Hope has an air of expectancy; more than wishing, hope braids itself with faith and love. I find hope empowering; it is hope that gets me up in the dark for a seaside sunrise, or finds me waiting at a spot I’ve felt led to go without knowing exactly why.
Speaking of sunrises, I got up in the dark a couple mornings ago; I needed an oil change and some minor maintenance on the Explorer. (I can apply that sentence to me, too, now that I think about it!) The winds of earlier days had calmed to a south-southeast breeze at dawn. A local waterman once told me the best sunrises he sees are on a southeast wind. His observation proved true as you will see below; this sunrise was the most vibrant I have photographed since January 2017, nearly four years ago. I watched the gulls and a few pelicans and photographed the changing light as the sun arose. Driving out, I distinctly got the message I should change lenses from my widest (which was what I had planned to use) to a zoom that had more reach, “so you are ready for dolphin.” Sure enough, one small pod cruised quickly by! One click of the shutter shows a young dolphin’s head above the wavelets, a joyous morning hello. I walked the beach, found a nice large clear piece of sea glass and a tiny green shard, and spotted hearts galore, two of which are below. And I gave thanks for all the blessings that still remain in my life despite this year’s obstacles, and pledged myself once again to live a life founded and grounded in love.
I have had a particular fall image in mind for several years, and the high winds of Christmas Eve right out my front door gave me my chance! Leaves flew off the trees and swirled around in all directions. Most swept upward before gravity finally pulled them to the ground. I like that visual idea for releasing, for letting go, and I finally made the photograph my heart sought.
December’s soundside sunsets ranged from slick calm to gale-force winds. Even after nearly 45 years here, I am still amazed at how quickly the Sound (and ocean) can swing from one extreme to the other.
Last night, with brisk north winds, I photographed the Cold Moon minutes after it made its climb out of the ocean by Kitty Hawk Pier. Earlier in December, I watched as a speeding jet seemed to fly right through the moon’s bright quarter only to reappear on the other side. Such simple pleasures, bringing so much joy and wonder. That feeling, that more wonders are in store, that is what I want to carry into 2021—hence, Hope. Of course my biggest hopes morph into Big Ticket prayers, like peace, and health and safety, and justice, and mercy for our beleaguered world.
How about you? What are your hopes for 2021? Are there any silver linings from 2020 you will carry into the New Year? Here are some of mine below. Happy New Year!
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click for larger image | The dolphin shared the morning with me for less than a minute--but what a minute it was! |
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click for larger image | Now we come to the moon! This jet's contrail looks like the plane sliced right through the moon's disk. |
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click for larger image | The Cold Moon of December lived up to its name last night. It was COLD in that north wind. |
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posted by eturek at 8:13 PM |
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| Friday, December 25, 2020 | | The Christmas Star | As I am sure you know, or have read, those of us on the Outer Banks missed the closest pass of the Great Conjunction Monday evening, as we had fully overcast skies. I drove north just before sunset as our skies were clearing but noticed clouds were heavier there, so I turned around and tried to outrun the clouds by going south. I went all the way to Pea Island, but never found clear skies. The moon overhead made brief appearances lasting a second or two as clouds raced by and then it too was completely engulfed. To say I was disappointed is understatement at its worst. As did everyone else, I really wanted to see and photograph the moment of their apparent closeness, merging into one celestial body, and right on the winter solstice, which is of course our longest period of darkness in the northern hemisphere. Next morning, I penned my petulant frustration and disappointment in my journal, asking why I wasn't meant to witness such a grand event?
I admit I was startled by the sudden answer, which seemed to suggest my gift would be greater than it would have been the night before, and reminding me how I appreciate moments and encounters that are unique. Yes, but...is what I was thinking. Greater than a once-in-hundreds of years event? Really?
Nonetheless, I made sure I had all the gear I wanted when I went to work on Tuesday. I'd already scoped out the two planets in a clear sky from the Colington clubhouse parking lot Saturday night, so I could know my ideal settings in advance, even though they were further apart. On Saturday, the two appeared atop one another. I kept noticing Saturn did not look round, as did Jupiter, and realized later that while my lens could not discern the actual rings of Saturn as a telescope could, it nonetheless picked up the elliptical shape of the planet with its rings. I also caught several of Jupiter's moons! Pretty neat. But...But it wasn't THE evening, when the planets appeared to merge.
Fast forward to Tuesday. The moment of closest proximity past, I still wanted to see the two planets after they had changed places, and hopefully a wee bit closer than they were Saturday. I still had the words from my morning journal in mind: something greater. What could something greater be?
The skies stayed clear, and once we closed at 4 pm, I carried gear up from the car to the boardwalk outside the shop and waited. And waited. Well before full dark, I could see the two faintly in the slightly-south-of-due-west sky. There they are! I said to fellow watchers on the boardwalk. Canada Geese habitually fly in to our little cove at dusk and lines of them began to fly from wherever they spent their day down the sound. Almost all of those flew in low, right over the water, but one early group of swan flew in high way across the sound, right after sunset—and then one more came, high enough to be in the same frame as the planets! Indeed, a something greater than just the planets hanging in the sky alone.
The evening darkened and my boardwalk companions left. I made similar images to those from Saturday, only now the planetary positions had changed, with Jupiter higher and slightly to the right of Saturn. There was no context, no story. I decided to go to Duck Church, but the steeple was too high and in the wrong spot to photograph the planets and steeple in one image. The church also has a cross beside the boardwalk, so I went to check out that angle and it was perfect. Better yet, a fellow local photographer, Jackie, had a somewhat different photographic idea and was already there. I asked her if she minded my setting up also and we spent a pleasant half hour many feet apart but sharing the back parking lot. When I arrived, the warm red sunset glow still shone low on the horizon, undergirding the dark sky above. Then I spotted the church's birdhouse! The little white wooden church, which has housed many generations of purple martins or sparrows, I am sure, was the perfect height! I moved over to the parking lot edge and began photographing there. Once upon a time before its expansion, Duck Church looked much like that birdhouse, like so many small white country churches/chapels all across our nation. Pete and I were married in Colington Church which looked the same before it, too, needed to grow. Had I been able to photograph the evening before, while the planets seemed in closer alignment, they would have been higher in the sky at sunset, and likely not visible when the geese flew in. The angle would not have been as ideal for images behind Duck Church. And Pea Island, while a favorite daylight venue, would have not yielded a full dark story. My disappointment proved the gateway to a greater experience.
As far as photographing on winter's second day, the message here is that the light is already subtly and slowly increasing. The longest night is behind us. Now, every day until the first day of summer, the light grows, both in length of day and eventually in the height of the sun's skyward circuit. Instead of an image on our darkest night, I received images on the night the seesaw tips ever so slightly toward light, toward hope, toward the promise of brighter days to come. And isn’t that exactly the message of the first Christmas Star: Love, Hope, Joy, Peace born into our world, companioned by young, surely frightened and overwhelmed parents far from home, huddled with barnyard animals. There is no record saying Mary or Joseph heard angels singing that night. Those choruses were reserved for the shepherds, who came into the scene a little later. Those young parents must have thought, now what? Now where? And how?
This Christmas I have been pondering how that same Love, Hope, Joy and Peace can be born fresh and new in my heart, through my life. I too have been asking now what? Now where? And how? I am receiving “tidings of comfort and joy” in the thought that just as Joseph received guidance right when he needed it, just as the Wise Men were led, so can we all be. Indeed, the true Christmas Star still shines. Merry Christmas.
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click for larger image | Here is the closest my longest lens could focus on Saturday, two nights before the Great Conjunction. Those tiny dots are Jupiter's moons! |
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click for larger image | I had a few seconds to prepare and change my focal length and settings to get the swan and planets in one click. Whew! |
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click for larger image | So much of my life's story of faith centers around a little white church, just like this birdhouse depicts. |
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posted by eturek at 2:08 PM |
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| Monday, December 7, 2020 | | Go in Peace | I’ve been thinking about a blog post I wrote this time last year, hooking up the words “Adventure” and “Advent.” More than ever this beautiful place where I live has made my nightly gratitude list. Even in summer, but more so as winter approaches, I can be out in nature, partaking of all its benefits, while still socially distancing from other humans. In fact, much of the time I can be outside without seeing another person at all.
My last post shared some recent images from Frisco, NC, south of the coastline’s bend at Cape Hatteras. I have been to the Cape one more time since that day, and some images from adventure #2 are below. In addition, I drove over to Alligator River refuge the other afternoon after learning how many swan were in the flooded farm fields there. And just yesterday, I drove the long way around to get to Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge, in Currituck’s northern corner, for their annual Open Roads weekend, as the refuge is closed to traffic the rest of the year.
Each excursion offered two gifts: surprise and serenity.
I went to Cape Hatteras thinking I might have the chance for a beautiful dawn but the sun’s rising that morning did not compare with its setting while I was in Frisco. Then I looked for a repeated rainbow splash but didn’t find that either. Instead, my gifts were finding hearts within the colliding current wave breaks at the point of Cape Point, watching a fisherman bring in and then release the biggest shark I have ever seen without an aquarium glass between us, and spotting a young deer peeking through dune grasses. On my way home, I realized I had just spent hours NOT fretting—not thinking I should be doing this instead of that, or worrying about this person or that situation, or stressing over the many aspects of life over which I have no control. The contrast in attitude jarred me. I strive to maintain a positive outlook even in hard times; this year has certainly strained that resolve. Realizing how strange it felt to be at peace for so long a time made me realize I have viewed peace backwards, as primarily an absence of upset or conflict (inner or outer) rather than as the presence of something positive. After all, joy is more than merely the absence of sorrow, and love is certainly more than just the absence of hatred. Clearly I have more lessons to learn, more room to grow.
Yesterday’s visit to Mackay refuge reinforced that same lesson. With the temperature plummeting, I thought we might have swirling mist over the water at sunrise, but all was clear. There was a glorious golden glow right before the sun rose and I made my keeper scenic image of the morning shortly after I entered beyond the usually closed gate. Next, I spotted a Kingfisher that lived up to its name by diving down and nabbing a fish (so fast I missed that moment) and returned to its same perch with its prize. It stayed put for me until the next car drove up, giving me a long look at what is usually a spooky elusive bird to photograph.
At one point I was in a line of about nine cars, so I pulled over and let the others drive on by. The road there is a one-way loop road you can drive over and over, and there is a cross-dike road that bisects the middle section. I took that dike road twice and drove the entire loop once. On my second time on the dike, I realized that not only was I alone, but all the swan and other birds had become totally silent. I was sitting in Quiet, in Peace that was palpable; I could FEEL it. I actually made a short video on my phone to remind me of the richness of those moments of Silence. Last year my December blog centered on pink, being (literally) in the pink, and referred to the Advent Sunday where a pink candle is lit, for Joy. This past Sunday was the second Sunday in Advent and its theme is Peace. Coincidence? I think not.
In between these two excursions, I drove over to the Alligator River refuge, as I mentioned at the start of this post. Usually by now, swan have arrived in Currituck Sound and a good number have settled in right outside our gallery’s door in Duck. But not this year. I know they are down at Pea Island, and I experienced what my friend had seen, many swan in the farm fields off Sawyer Lake Road in the refuge. But the day’s best gift came in the form of a murmuration of starlings and blackbirds. They did their synchronized aerial ballet over and over above the swan, eventually landed right in front of the closest group, and then took off again to dance their way out of my sight. I made a short video to share their flight with Pete and clicked away as they came closer and closer.
The presence of large flocks of birds always makes me think of abundance whenever I see them. I am reminded that He Who takes note of and provides for the birds of the air will provide for me as well. One of the provisions I have been asking for is that a door would open to share both writing and photographs with a larger audience. The murmuration provided the way.
Below is a link to the blog page of Dr. Joanna Seibert, a retired Pediatric radiologist and professor at University of Arkansas, and an Episcopalian deacon and author. Through a series of happy circumstances too long to relate here, she and I have been introduced to one another, and just this morning, she published my reflection about that murmuration on her “Daily Something” blog. Another piece inspired by my trip to Cape Point will appear at a later time.
This is how I want to live. I want to live deeply in love with the natural world, in all its complexities and paradoxes. I want to honor the experiences I have there. I want at the same time to live deeply connected to God Whom I view as the loving creative source of all that is good and right and true in that world. And then finally, I want to try to bridge the two, bringing that connection right down to where I live and work and go about my daily routines in this too-often not at peace, not in love, not resounding joy, world of our making. It is these brief moments, watching starlings dance, or listening to Silence, or seeing waves exuberantly embrace, that the lines blur for me and both worlds become one world, Eden Envisioned, Paradise Found, Heaven-Come-Down.
My guest blog on Joanna Seibert’s Daily Something: https://www.joannaseibert.com/daily Make sure you choose December 7th to see my guest blog, and then check out her own postings. I signed up for her daily inspirational email just over a year ago; I highly recommend it.
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click for larger image | Another car drove up and the Kingfisher flew to another perch, silhouetted by the early morning light. |
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click for larger image | Swan flew in and out. This pair blessed me by flying right under the waning first quarter moon! |
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click for larger image | At one point, these swan called and flapped as if preparing to blast off en masse, but they settled down again. |
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click for larger image | My long lens revealed intricate rhythms of gliding and flying in the murmuration's movements. |
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posted by eturek at 6:59 PM |
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