Curve balls do come at you in life. At the point when things are comfortable, settled, like a well worn pair of shoes, something happens to trip you up and turn you over. Small or great, ‘something’ provokes, challenges or downright wears you to the bone.
Nobody is born with a repair manual. As we move forward through time, we have to write our own largely unedited version. We can navigate back to a better path home, by luck or hard graft, but often only with the right help.
One of our richest assets, as humammals, is to articulate thought, feelings and sensibilities and to share them with others, to learn from one another.
I have always had a passion for nature, the wilder things. Explorations by gentle stick prodding, observation, walking, reading, science, visual art, architecture, poetry and increasingly in studying philosophy and ethics. These are new adventures in affirming my own relationship with nature, to all of Earth’s biota. To life itself.
After a particularly striking curveball in 2008, the suicide of someone most dear to me, I picked up my camera, returned from a photo desert and began to see the world just a little differently. From dark to light. Clicking the buttons, inching forward, regaining confidence, sharing my discoveries in nature with others in small corners of the web that are Flickr, Twitter. Over the past three years, opening up a little more, 140 characters at a time, even selling some images.
Much learned and hope of more to come.
Now this, 1st January 2014, to explore a little more of that nature connection through prose. It ought to be said, this will be neither my life manual nor something complete (as we are never complete). Simply one foot in front of the other….