Tag: landscape

Daydreaming of Summer

Color Photography

I can’t believe it’s still Winter. Well, more to the point, I don’t want to believe it’s still Winter. I’ve had enough of gray skies, muddy roads, cold and damp. I want to see green grass, blue skies and life everywhere I look. I miss the butterflies and honeybees that fill my yard. Warm weather brings songbirds to my mountain. I know each one of them by their voices. Some of them have returned every year to live in the brambles in the edge of my yard.

The Ironweed in the photo is a late summer flower. It emerges during the warmest part of the year.

Today I’m hiding from ice and snow but in my heart it’s still Summer.

We Are A Reflection Of Others

Color Photography, Thoughts and Musing

As humans, we tend to be a reflection of our friends and family. We absorb into ourselves the perspectives of those around us. I’m not certain where the quote came from but I’ve heard it said that, Just as water conforms to the vessel which holds it so does a man conform to his peers.” This why it’s important to surround yourself with people who have the right outlook on life.

If you surround yourself with people that constantly negative then you will eventually become negative yourself. But, if you can find those people who rise to the challenge then you yourself will began to rise. Subconsciously you will reshape yourself to fit the group.

I’ve been blessed with the best peers that life can offer. And I appreciate each and every one of you and I hope that I reflect you well!

Tonight’s image is on the Kanawha River. Looking out over Kanawha Falls in Glen Farris West Virginia.

Be Still

Color Photography, Thoughts and Musing

If you haven’t guessed by now my dear readers, I really crave quite places and time to think and reflect.

Our modern world is full of artificial concerns, pressures and deadlines . Sometimes we just want to collapse and think about nothing. The word amusement literally means to stop thinking. However, I believe it’s more fulfilling in these quiet times and places to push back those modern world concerns and contemplate deeper levels of thought. It’s not that our world suffers from too much thinking, we suffer from the lack of free thoughts.

It’s more than just learning the structured teachings of learned masters. It’s more than equations and mathematical prowess.

cogito, ergo sum ( I think, therefore I am) – René Descartes

The popular phrase was one that we learned at a very young age. I have forgotten if it was in history class or literature class. But it wasn’t until recently that I began to realize the full implications of what seems to be a simple concept.

If my thoughts are what makes me then what happens if my thoughts are not my own? What if I allowed my thoughts to be influenced by distraction from the media, or peer pressure, or any number of competing ideas? Like a virus, some ideas can come in from a outside source and replicate themselves in our hearts and minds. If our thoughts are no longer our own then we are no longer ourselves. We become a copy of whatever ideas are planted.

“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.” – Proverbs 23:7

This is why it’s so important to be able to take time and contemplate the ideas we are exposed to. Our minds have a natural filter that must be cleaned and refreshed on a regular basis. If bad ideas are allowed to linger for too long without active examination they can be absorbed by the subconscious and work their way into our hearts.

Take charge of your quiet time and don’t get so busy that you forget to check your filters.

Sunrise on Summerville Lake

Color Photography, Summerville, West Virginia

As a youth I spent a large piece of my life on and around Summerville Lake.

Wikipedia has all the statistics (click here) and there’s a funny story about how the government almost named it Gad Dam Lake after the ghost town on the bottom. (Read about Gad) . For me, the lake was a place to escape. There were boats that belonged to friends and eventually my dad got his own boat. Summers were spent fishing and swimming and trying to impress the ladies without falling overboard.

There are stories of catfish in the lake large enough to swallow you whole! Every fisherman in Summerville has a story about how they were almost the one who landed a monster. Some will even have broken poles and fish hooks that have been pulled straight as evidence.

Scuba diving is allowed on the lake however I was never certified.

I have swam from one side of the lake to the other. The lake is three hundred and twenty seven feet deep deep ( just under 100 meters). Young boys would see who could stay underwater for the longest time. This was a game that I was very good at winning. Now as an adult, a person has a fair amount of freedom, but if I could choose I’d be a kid on the lake for at least one last endless summer.