Chasing Light

turns out, darkness is the best time for it

Thanks for connecting here at Nature Moments, where we are making the world a better place, one nature connection at a time :) Be curious. Be amazed. And then do it again!

Thank you for your support! 💕

We interrupt this week’s programming to bring you - light!

For real, though, from that first sinking feeling the morning after Election Day, through the long slog of processing just all that this means in all the different ways for this country, for my family, for the whole wide world, my mental color palette was running a little shadowy.

And so as I sat down to ponder what nature moments I wanted to reflect on this week, I realized that I just wanted to go chasing light.

As a photographer, I’m kind of always chasing light. But also as a wife, as a mom, as a person, I’m kind of always chasing light, too. I mean, I think it’s important to be really clear-eyed about the truth in all of life’s many situations, all the white and black and color and every shade of gray. But the nature of truth is also that every dark cloud has a silver lining. Every darkest night is followed by a rising dawn. What’s that bright side, again?

Go chasing light in nature and you will never be bored, never be done, and never be disappointed. The world is made to hold light in the most variously delightful ways, and no matter which one you choose to notice, it will be rich in its reward.

Old Orchard Beach, by my daughter

Never miss the opportunity to watch light dance across the water. Better yet if there is a reflection of the sky. Best of all if there are golden sand ripples. The study of the interplay of light with water, sky, and earth, all in one place, in constant motion, is substance enough to occupy our tiny minds through all eternity. Three simple ingredients, unchanging in their nature, ever-changing in their manifestation. It’s no coincidence that what comes to mind is that, now, these three remain: faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love.

This young Eastern White Pine has suffered a trauma. Some needle-blight pathogen, probably a White Pine Needle Disease fungus, has attacked it, forcing it to shed all of its past-year needles. Only tiny tufts of new growth remain at the tip of each spindly branch. It is now a pom-pom-pine, absolutely undaunted and cute-as-a-button, shimmering in the dewy sparkle of late autumn sunshine, having been knocked down, but already rising to the challenge of one more year reaching for the light.

campfire, by my daughter

When you have a campfire in the Maine woods on an autumn night, by far the largest presence all around you is darkness. The night sky swallows up the night forest and the whole world is one blanket of velvet black. And yet, once you fix your eyes on that one bright spot, it’s the light, and not the darkness, that completely fills your sight.

I can’t pretend to even begin to sort through all the different ways in which all the things that are devastatingly hard will be softened or counterbalanced or made bearable by rays of light and drops of sunshine in the coming years. All I can do is remember, in times that feel dark, to spend one long moment after another chasing after the light.

This, of course, is not the only time Nature Moments has been light-themed! Here are a few more light-essays from the archives :)

And I am far from the only writer/photographer around here chasing light across the landscape. Every week at Flow, Michela Griffith explores all the lovely points of intersection between light and life - check her out!

New Lines on the Land: Nature's Veins

Thanks so much for your support!