Tag Archives: travel

If you’re too sick to go to the doctor …

you probably have the flu.  It is that time of year.  Actually, it’s a little early, meaning that the season will be in full swing by the time everyone starts traveling to visit with family and friends during Christmas.  There will be many who will have a fever and feel as though they have been beaten nearly to death with a hammer, but will travel anyway because, hey, Great Aunt Ethel will be disappointed if she doesn’t get the pair of socks they spent two minutes picking out.  They will hack and cough, sneeze and sniffle, wipe their eyes and forget, at times, to cover their mouth, touch everything and leave their germs behind for dozens of others; kind of like paying it forward, but in a bad way.  Unless they are walking around in a bubble, they are going to give it to many unsuspecting people, who will in turn, give it to many other unsuspecting people.

Imagine yourself on a plane, closed in with a few hundred others, a third of whom may have or have been exposed to, the flu.  Breathing the air, touching the surfaces.  There isn’t enough soap or hand sanitizer in the world to protect you.  Now imagine yourself on the subway platform with all the same scenes.  Now imagine yourself on the train, or at the rest area, or in a restaurant, or at the mall … I could go on for pages, but first, multiply the  above by a hundred thousand or so.  If you or someone you know hasn’t yet tested positive, just give it a little more time.

The flu virus can live outside the body anywhere from a few seconds to 48 hours and on your hands for about an hour.  The vaccinated have a better chance of avoiding the flu than the un-vaccinated, but there are no certainties either way.  It is important to wash your hands or use sanitizer between every contact with every surface.  Will it make you feel like the skin on your hands is going to fall of?  Of course.  What can you do about it? Use lotion.  That will make  you even more susceptible, but at least your nails will look good.

Jesus is the reason for the season, but flu is the reason for the sneezin’.  Try to stay well everyone …

I’m not the envious type …

never have been, thankfully.  I’ve always been the type of person that was so very happy for anyone doing what it was that I wanted to do; experiencing the things that are on the list of things to do before I die … important moments that I can only hope to be a part of. That is no different now.  Although being in New York City and seeing the tree at Rockefeller Center on my birthday is on the top five things to do before I die, I could not be more happy for my sister.  She is there.  She and my brother (my sister’s husband), walking the streets, looking in the windows, stopping to listen to the saxophone player and then putting a bill in his case because he is just damn good.

And though I don’t see her walking into the seedier part of town just to get to a little hole-in-the-wall Italian joint, (I do, however, remember this place in China Town with a secret door and weaponized thugs where she tried to have me killed over a purse), a place that treats a tourist like a tourist and a local like a local; a place that I would do my very best to make friendly so that, even though I was a tourist, they would treat me like a local.  I’d have my camera out, hoping they, whoever they at that particular moment would be, would grace me with a few moments of their life in my lens.  I have so many lives in my lens.  I look back at the photographs sometimes and simply sob with gratitude that I was allowed to be a part of a life moment, at some time, in some place.

Yes, I hope she is having the time of her life, she and her husband, as they enjoy the beauty of New York with the drab streets and bare trees.  I hope she takes a photograph of the “virtual billboard” in Times’ Square, not really because she wants to but because she knows I would.  I hope she enjoys the subway and takes in the sounds and sights as she flies through the tunnels.  I hope the late Autumn, Christmas ready New York is everything she hoped it would be.  I hope, beyond all rational thought, that she has the best time of her life.  We may not always see eye to eye, but when it comes to the sticking point, I know who to call.

another of my many mottoes ~ Wherever you are, whatever you do, do it for yourself; otherwise your life will always be lived vicariously and the real experience will never be your own.  Dreaming is dreaming, irregardless of the dream.

Power and Beauty …

a potent combination.  Today, when I came home from work after wishing for hours that I could be outside enjoying this incredibly beautiful October day, I stopped by the mailbox.  I’m a slacker in the worst way when it comes to the day-to-day things that people do on a regular basis, like checking mail.  I’m sure that the mail carrier truly believes that nobody actually lives at the address where they leave mail but that somebody just comes by every week or so to pick it up.  Not the case the last few days, though, because I have been looking for something specific.  And today, my waiting was rewarded.

It is no secret that I love music, nearly every kind, especially wordless song that can take me nowhere and everywhere all at the same time.  A few weeks ago, I was introduced to a composer that rocked my world.  Before then, I had somehow never heard of Gustav Mahler and were his name mentioned, I would simply assume that he was some dead scientist or something.  He is dead, by the way, but he wasn’t a scientist, he was a composer and even more than that, he was a genius.  I listened to one symphony and I was irrevocably hooked on the beauty, power and purity of his compositions.  I couldn’t stop listening.  Day and night, night and day, I listened to everything I could find that he had written.  It was emotionally draining and I found myself completely and wonderfully exhausted.  I heard his music played by many different orchestras, led by different conductors on different continents.  None of that was important as it was all about the sheer ability of the music to move me in ways that I never imagined.  Lots of music moves me  emotionally, but until now, I have never been moved in such a way that I felt physically weak and uninhibited.  My search for a place to hear his music played by a live orchestra became nearly an obsession.  I looked at every venue I could find within a 400 mile radius.  My motto became “have ears: will travel”.  I can’t remember the last time I was so focused on one particular composer and I was mesmerized by this latest discovery.  There are many composers that I love to listen to; after all, who doesn’t love Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Brahms?  OK, so maybe many people  have not only not heard of them and certainly don’t love them as I do, but I digress;  I was no more than a quivering puddle of longing after the first movement.  I found myself openly crying during some of the pieces and realized that I would likely go insane if I couldn’t hear the soaring and intoxicating notes somewhere besides the cut-rate speakers on my computer, on my phone or in my car.

After much searching, I found that one my two favorite symphonies was being performed by the  Cleveland Orchestra in Ohio.  I could not believe my good fortune.  Not only was I finally going to hear it for real, as an added bonus, I could visit my cousins, whom I love dearly, at the same time.  I thought it over for about two seconds and then ordered the tickets. I have checked the mail every day since that time and practically jumped out of my skin when I found them in the mailbox today.

It will be a titillating four and a half months as I wait for the moment when I will travel to Ohio, but each time I find myself discouraged or disheartened, I will remember what, if the Lord is willing, I will get to hear when the time comes.  I wish I could adequately express the magnitude of being turned on to what I consider one of the greatest discoveries of my life.  The sound of life, love, beauty, praise, worship and a cacophony of other emotions that actually leave me speechless and feeling as though  I need a cigarette once it’s over is literally mesmerizing.  I don’t expect the people I know and love to understand this obsession.  I can see them, my family and friends, in my mind’s eye, shaking their head and wondering what in the world I could possibly be thinking.  I have never proclaimed to be a part of the pack and I suppose this proves it, but I don’t care.  Life has looked different since this music touched my life …  different in a wonderful kind of way.  So I will wait, patiently when I can and inexplicably juiced when I can’t, to  listen, with tears, joy and hope, to that which has made me feel whole in a way I never expected..  No, the people I love won’t understand this anymore than the hundred other things they don’t understand about me, but for some odd reason, they like me anyway.  I am blessed, so richly blessed by my Heavenly Father who loves me, and will not take a moment of it for granted.  I will sing.  I will dance.  I will rejoice … for His grace (and His song) is sufficient for me.


Psalms 95:1 ~ O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.

If you listen …

you can can  hear the songs the leaves sing.  I suppose it comes as no big surprise that my blog posts this time of year pretty much revolve around Autumn, specifically  October, which brings with it the beauty of leaves that so many people, both photographers and just onlookers, seek out.  It is easy to find places to look at and enjoy the leaves on the trees that are turning colors of fiery red, brilliant orange and intense, glistening gold.  It is also easy to find trails to walk, especially around Southwest Virginia, that will take you beneath that brilliant canopy.

But those aren’t the only leaves that call to me.  One of my favorite experiences is walking along a mountain trail and have a gust of wind come up; one that blows a hard puff and send leaves spiraling out of the trees, floating and swirling as they fall gracefully to the ground.  There they make a carpet that can only be found once a year; a colorful carpet that transforms an otherwise brown and dying earth with a brilliance that cannot be rivaled.   In that carpet, it is not unusual to find mushrooms, acorns, walnuts and a myriad of other things that add their own beauty to that which is already there.

In the silence of a trail shoot when there is only me and what surrounds me, I listen to the sound.  What a symphony.  As the wind blows through the leaves, they rustle, talking back and forth, singing because, after all, this is their time.  Their moment to shine and take the spotlight.  And they sing because they know that even on the ground, they are spectacular.

They find happiness in falling and flying, giving way to freedom and pure unbridled joy.  At least it seems to me to be a joyful experience.  They look to be having so much fun that it makes me wish I could float from the trees, singing a song of thankfulness just to be a brilliantly colored leaf in October.  I find it exhilarating to speed around the bends of curves of leaf-covered mountain roads where leaves have pooled as though waiting for me to come along.

They laugh as I speed past, blowing them up and swirling them above the road and then back again.  Sometimes they find their way through the open convertible top and into my car.  They make me want to laugh just as, at times, the magnificence that I am allowed to be a part of makes me cry.  Not sad tears, but tears of happiness that I am alive and able to become, even for a short time, a part of Autumn.  I love being a photographer, especially in October.

 

Ecclesiastes  3:11 ~ He has made every thing beautiful in his time: also he has set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God makes from the beginning to the end

Today, I feel …

strong.  accomplished. motivated. tired. empowered.  It was a long day consisting of a long, difficult hike, mostly uphill, to be able to stand a bit closer to the sky and look out upon the beauty that lay below.  My trail shoots are usually five miles and under and while they are often to high places, with climbs and some measure of danger, today took the cake.  For eight hours, myself, my sister, niece and cousin trekked ten miles, mostly uphill, at a fairly steep incline.  At times, the steepness was such that holding onto trees or putting our hands on the ground was essential if we wanted to live to see another day.  It is, to date, the most difficult hike I have taken.  Had we decided to come in after visiting the White Rocks overlook, it would have likely been pretty much par for the course.  But no.  It wasn’t enough.  We went on to the Sand Cave.  I blame myself for it as I wanted so badly to see it and while we were there, we decided to bite the bullet and add an extra three miles to our adventure.  Knowing now what I didn’t know this morning when we started, I realize that in the future, I will go to one or the other, not both.  Actually, after having visited the Sand Cave, I can’t think of a good reason to go back.  Don’t misunderstand, it was beautiful, but it wasn’t what I had pictured in my mind.  The sand was deep and nearly impossible to walk in with shoes on.  I’m not a fan of sand in the first place, especially with shoes on, and this didn’t do anything to make me more of a fan.  The sand had the consistency of baby powder and didn’t stick to anything; a couple of stomps on a rock and all the sand feel off my shoes.  It was unusual and the ceiling and walls of the cave were spectacular, but still …  not a place I would purposely go to again.  The hike down to the cave was steep and, at times, treacherous, but the hike out was dangerous in the beginning and just plain exhausting by the end.  Already being tired and hungry (since as usual, I only had a pack of Toast-Chee crackers) made the climb out from the cave unusually strenuous.  The entire trail was rocky and rough, making it even more arduous.  The trail is listed as moderate, but don’t believe it for a minute.  It is, in places,  somewhat moderate but mostly difficult and not a trail I would recommend for amateurs.

Next weekend, I will go back to my beloved falls to see the foliage change and sit on the rocks for a while, enjoying the sound of rushing water and the complete solitude that I have found nearly every time I have gone there.  After today, it will feel no more strenuous than walking to the mailbox.

Let all creation sing a song
So that I may sing along.

Living for the Weekend …

isn’t really wishing your life away.  During the five long days between Sunday and Saturday, while I wish for the weekend to be here, I’m living.  Every day, every minute, I am going about the daily grind that is a big part of my life.  I wish for 5:00 on Friday starting first thing Monday morning.  I know that once Saturday comes, I will be up and out before the sun, doing, living, moving and embracing a beauty that otherwise lives in my head.

Occasionally something comes along that distracts me even from wishing for days off.  When that happens, there is little to do but hang on for dear life and ride the wave until it either drowns me or dumps me out somewhere; broken, blessed and sometimes disheartened.  Each failure and triumph is a lesson and my purpose is to learn them.  I have no illusions, however, that there are not others who feel this way.  Some  call us weekend warriors, some call us wannabe’s, some call us weird and unsatisfied and others just call us nuts. I don’t consider myself a warrior on the weekends, nor a wannabe, nor unsatisfied or nuts; I am just somebody who wants to see and do and see some more for the vastness of creation can never been fully experienced in a single lifetime.  I have difficulty staying in one place when I know there is somewhere else to go … and there is always and forever, as long as time lasts, somewhere else to go.

Some days I wish could go on for weeks and others cannot possibly end soon enough.  But inevitably, I know that if I can hang on for  a few days, (because once I’m set free I will be rewarded by one amazing thing after another) I will be set free as a bird from a cage.  I don’t mind working, not overmuch anyway, but there are many other things I would rather be doing.  A disheartening thing  for me is looking out the window and seeing the light change and knowing that, for the most part, I am missing it; as a photographer, watching the light change without me becomes, at times, physically painful.  At times like that, I wish even harder for time to pass.  I don’t feel bad about it and have no intention of not wishing for weekends.  The drum I march to may not be the same rhythm as others’, but it suits me just right and, at some point, they meet up anyway.

I’m not much of a joiner.  Where I am, for the most part, I am there alone.  I, unlike many, however, don’t mind being alone.  It would be a fallacy to say there was never a time I didn’t wish for company, for someone special to share the beauty that embraces me, in the recesses of my mind, like a lover …  but there is something so serene and renewing about being in the middle of a beautiful place in nature with nothing but the sound of the earth mingling with the music in my head to keep me company.  If anyone has ever stood on the top of a mountain, feeling the wind, lifting their arms and face to enjoy the sheer freedom of it … or  lying down in a field of blooming flowers, letting the sun warm their body even as the fragrance overtakes them … or standing close enough to a waterfall to feel the mist as it moistens their hair and skin as it plummets to a clear pool below, or feeling an intimacy that moves the soul and spirit in ways that were never expected or imagined; they understand.  They know what words can never describe.

These days, my time off is spent hiking in and around Southwest Virginia, not just because it’s where I live, but because it is a spectacular sight to see.  I pack my gear, put in my earphones and listen to the beauty of music while I immerse myself in the beauty of nature; a Pentax around my neck and my eyes always searching for what I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t been looking.  That is part of being a photographer at the core of my heart.  Everything is beautiful, everything is alluring, everything is a photograph and nothing is too small to stop and admire.  During every moment, every adventure, every triumph and every disappointment, I know that I have been blessed beyond imagination by a loving God who knows what moves my heart and soul.  There are lessons to be learned and joys to be experienced.  It’s too late for me to change now, being as I’m getting old and set in my ways, so I’ll just go with it.  So far, it seems to suit me just fine … but eventually, the need to photograph will overtake everything else.  I feel, as I have for years, that this is God’s will for me.  He has encouraged me when I became discouraged and opened new doors into photography.  I am humbled that He would use me to encourage His people by doing what I love.  I am truly and excitingly and reverently and beautifully and gratefully blessed.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

~Robert Frost

Once a dreamer …

always a dreamer … Being a nurse for the past twenty-five years has been an experience in and of itself.  It would take a hundred blogs running every day to review the exploits that happen just in my little world.  But this isn’t about nursing, not specifically, anyway, but about a path not taken.  I have enjoyed nursing, for the most part, and would not want to trade the experience and knowledge I’ve gained over the last two and a half decades.  It just wasn’t what I wanted to do.

I had three goals when I was a kid and they were to sing, play the piano and photograph the world.  All three of those things took guts and I didn’t have any.  I had no nerve, little faith and plenty of fear.  So I took the easy road, leaving my dreams to wither and fade into the dust of my past.

It only took a few months to realize that I had made a dire mistake, but I still had no nerve, little faith and plenty of fear; I just let it ride.  As years passed, the dreams I left behind refused to be still.  It became apparent to me that a dream that really did fade into the past, forgotten, wasn’t a dream worth chasing anyway; my dream was banging at my head and my heart.  At every opportunity, I found myself with a camera in my hand.   Nature and created things began to be a central focus in my life and weekends were spent jaunting around looking for “pictures to take”.  I went to work every day and spent the evenings fiddling with the camera, playing with settings, learning, without really realizing, to do what I had always wanted to do; be a photographer.  I never learned to play the piano and I sing only at church, but those are but ripples in the pool.  It is the light and shadow that I love and am thankful that even though I was foolish and fearful once, God saw fit to bless me with what I wanted most.

I find comfort in the images He shows me.  I will continue to work as a nurse but on weekends, I’ll be in the mountains or wherever life might take me, photographing the beauty that is before me.  It brings me inexplicable joy to be immersed in the feel and smell of creation knowing that I serve the one who created it.    I don’t believe in coincidences so I can come only to the conclusion that this path is one that God chose for me and continues to bless every single day of my life;  I may not have had the guts  back then, but I have them now, along with the faith and nerve to do it and do it well.

If just one is encouraged by this post to put fear behind them and follow their dreams, then it has served its purpose.

I had the ability to fly all along, it was courage to spread my wings that I lacked.

this sounds like a Suzuki ad .. but truth is truth

Everything I know about Suziki, I have learned from this little red ATV.  I’ve always been a bit skittish with ATV’s because they can be, in direct link with the experience of the operator, unpredictable.  It can be said that it was with trepidation that I first drove this unpredictable vehicle.  I was pleasantly surprised that it went where I told it to go, didn’t spin, didn’t get stuck and didn’t make me feel like I was going to fall off.  The only thing I like better is the Ranger, but that is only for the windshield … I feel in control and feeling in control when I’m in a vehicle of any kind is important to me.  It makes me less afraid and that is priceless.   I’d still rather hike, but that isn’t always possible.  As a photographer, nature being a big part of the canvas,  this little number has been a handy tool when time was of the essence.  Thanks, Suzuki, for a sweet ride, for peace of mind and for letting me be in control.  As I said … Priceless.

To Paris (with a little help from my friends) via a Greeting Card

In the late spring, early summer of 2012, my daughter, a member of the UVA-Wise Highland Cavalier Marching Band, is going to Paris.  I am blown away by this and plan to give her all the financial help I can so that she will be able to go.  On my own, I cannot afford to pay for us both to go.  While I have a passport and have had the wanderlust for so long I can no longer remember when it started, I am struggling with the notion that I might not get to go.  It isn’t jealousy or envy, for I couldn’t be more happy that our Tay gets to go on such an amazingly incredible adventure.  No, it is the photographer in me that wants to see.  That needs to see.  That longs to see.  One of my most constant prayers has been to ask that my photography enable me to travel.  That greeting cards would allow me to go places that I’ve only dreamed of and to visit each place, across the globe, where my cards have sold.  When I pray, what I see is being able to just jump in my car or on a plane and go wherever, whenever, with only a few changes of clothes, my camera, my phone, my laptop and my tripod … just any old time and for as long as I want.  While I believe in my heart that such will happen eventually, as it was God who set me on the path of photography in the first place, and so I feel very strongly that it is He who has put this wanderlust in my heart, I have no doubt that photography will take me where I am meant to go.  I am hoping that it will take me to Paris.  I have a specific destination, besides Ardmore in County Waterford, Ireland, to pray about.  So I am praying specifically this time.  I am praying that the money I make on my greeting cards in the last quarter of the year, September through December will take me to Paris.  While I wish that hundreds of thousands of people would share this and would talk up Through the Eyes of the Spirit, I leave it to the Father, who already knows how it will end.

To check out the greeting cards, click the photo below to open Through the Eyes of the Spirit in a new window.  If you feel led to do so, share the link with friends and family.  God is in control, but your support and encouragement is appreciated.  While everyone may not understand the need to go and to see, some will.  As for me, being accepted, even when I’m not understood, is priceless.

Back to Reality

After a fun-in-the-sun filled week in one of the most beautiful places on earth, I and the family are back from Madeira beach on the magnificent Gulf Coast of Florida.  Back from paradise and back to the reality of my everyday life.  The sand was white, the sunsets were brilliant, the water was blue and the weather was warm. The colors of the water and sky seemed to merge, at times, so that discerning one from the other was nearly impossible.  But, paradise isn’t something that can be harnessed or held captive and there wasn’t a way to stay any longer this time.  Once back home, it didn’t take long for true reality to show it’s face.   I had to do two things last night that I haven’t had to do in a week… first, I had to run from a spider and second, had to turn on the heated mattress pad.  As I sit here this evening looking out the window toward the road, I find it hard to be completely happy that I am not looking out upon the ocean, feeling the humid air caress my skin and knowing that, in a short while, a new light show will manifest as the sun sets behind the Gulf and the sky turns a dozen shades of red, orange and yellow.  There are tractors in my vision as opposed to sail boats and fishing trawlers, tobacco as opposed to palm trees and dirt as opposed to sand.  While I dearly long for the sea, I cannot discount the beauty of the mountains and their likeness to the coast I left behind.  The mountains and hills, much like the sea, continuously roll and change, making the scene a little different each time I look at it.  Depending on the season, the trees display their beauty in the form of waving leaves, ripening fruit or their stalwart nakedness.  The fields will turn from green to brown, then will die away until spring.  The coast, however, will in some way, remain the same from season to season even though it changes from second to second.  While that sameness could get old for some, I find the beauty of a timeless place that changes with every roll of a wave, though it often goes unnoticed, to be a source of inspiration.  No matter how much the same something seems to be, underneath the sameness is a greatness whose workings are only known by God.   I’ve been to the sea, I’ve seen the desert and I live in the mountains… each one, though vastly different, is the same in that they call to my heart in a way that I never really expected.  I don’t want to stay in one place.  I can feel the wanderlust growing inside me and there will come a time, Lord willing, when I will get in my car with a few changes of clothes, my camera, laptop, phone and tripod and hit the road.  Where that road will lead me remains to be a mystery, one that I look forward to unraveling.  I find that waiting for that moment in time to become the present is likely the hardest thing I have ever done.  I don’t want to wait, but now is not the time.  When it is time, I will knowDaylight Moon and until then, the urge to go will grow and mature inside me so that when I go, I will know what to do when I get there.   I have faith in an awesome God who answers the prayers of His people.  He knows the deepest desires of my heart and the dreams of my spirit and I have no doubt that He will show me the things that I so long to see.  Until then, I will put the ocean away and embrace the beauty of the mountains with the foggy mornings and cool evenings… and I will wait.  Photography will take me where I want to go, I’ve no hesitations about believing that, and God will bless my photography so that it will glorify His greatness.  Yes, I will wait and while I do, I will continue to serve, worship and revere Him for all the things He has already shown me and thank Him for what is to come.