Walking composition
Love and lines
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This is sunrise over a range of the Rocky Mountains that marks the western edge of Glacier National Park and runs into Canada, which is ten miles from where this photo was taken. But on Election Day, standing far from internet or cell phone service and watching the light come up and hit the snow-covered peaks one by one, I wasn’t able to think of it that way geographically. I’ve found myself erasing those kinds of lines over the past few years. I’m not sure if it’s the effect of trying to immerse myself more in pre-Columbus history where it’s available, or other stories in North America from non-white settler perspectives, or something else. I love this land so much. Sometimes I think it’s the love itself that’s erasing the lines.
Wouldn’t that be something, if enough love could erase boundaries and banish imaginary political lines and erode barriers?
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I just finished reading Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk, and it was one of the most mind-bending books I’ve ever read. I was only partway into it when I knew I would be rereading it again soon. It was an aligning book and like so many things these days I’m saying that without knowing what I mean by it. But it was. He said many things that I’ll probably walk with forever, at least I hope so, and one he kept coming back to is the question so many of us ask: Why are we here? To paraphrase his answer: Silly question. We’re here to be custodians of Earth, land, place, life. (It was more than that, but that’s the tweet version.)
He wrote about songlines (Yunkaporta is of the Apalech Clan in Australia) and, knowing how little he is probably allowed to say about them yet how much energy came through that little bit, I wonder what else I’m missing. What many of us are missing.
How much life are we missing? Is attention life? Do we breathe life into that which we attend to?
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An extra photo, just because, because when I stand in these places the love seems to come from my feet and my gut, not centered in my heart, and I don’t have any idea what that means either but damn it fills me up and topples out everything else. Photos can never do it justice, but it’s what I have to share. With love, and no borders.
Thanks for that book recommendation - on my Amazon list now, and love your eye/composition here.
We are missing too much, Nia. At least I am and I am trying to rectify that. But oh, do I recognize that sense of love just seeming to come up out of the ground and all through me. I have felt it many times; on the riverbank, in a grove of cedars I regularly visit, in wide open spaces ... yes. Thank you for this.