Fragrance

Images are primarily from 30 years of traveling off trail in the remote High Sierra of Kings Canyon, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, the John Muir and Ansel Adams Wilderness areas.  Journals form the basis for the writings.  From these journeys a larger vision was born. 


“The feeling goes down to my toes, stretches into the morning like a dancer that marvels at the machine he inhabits.  It’s a freeing of worry from time and place, an admiration of the frailty and soaring spirit of a body that hums. A vessel, a life substantial endowed with purpose and scenery, joy and an overarching calm of an understanding tempered with faith and hope.  Like water poured into a vessel, like air formed into a room to stay awhile the door not quite closed to expression, circulation and motion.  Like diving into a pool and holding one’s breath, a marvelous dream, a search for a light in the dark, a breaking of day from night.  Like gripping a hand inside a glove, an electric current inside a battery, breathing in order to keep from flying off into space. The fragility and beauty of touch, the sensation of love and caring and kindness. I am endowed with the ether of my creator, of an ancient spirit that wanders from life to life expressing wonder at creation and beauty and seeking to capture divinity in the unfolding of a flower on a journey of expression.  The changing of the seasons, a slow walk down a quiet road, admiring and marvel at the creatures at their work and play, wings and feet, fur and feathers, sounds and songs of life in this world of bones and death and passing. The gathering of family and the joys of love bring the generations to celebrate the coming and going of the travelers that we embody.  I can be sad that soon enough I will no longer inhabit this world, and I can be overjoyed that I have found the strength to let go and unravel the meaning that has swirled inside the impossibly spacious confines of this improbably wondrous temple, the worship of beauty and light through walls and ceilings of sight and sound and sensuous music that is here and gone in the turning of time. Dance with me today, and look up and in, feel the sense of waking and marvel that captures moments like jewels of adornment, like notes of song in an endless play that follows the spring into fall and winter into sleep.  We will rise like the sphinx, and tread the mountains and valleys with wings of a spirit taking form, to know and enjoy itself in the author of all that is…”