A Walk in the Woods

Part of my life in northern Vermont is my almost-daily walk through woods near my home. Although this landscape is not my garden, the quotidian observation is similar to that I experience with flowers, fruit and vegetables. There are two walks that I take, one that has a small, intimate trail and another that is a longer trek, on a logging trail through the woods. Seeing the same land day after day is never boring; there's always something new to see, or feel. Yesterday was the only sunny day in quite a while; with the yellow leaves reflecting raking golden light up towards tree trunks, there was a brilliant passing effect, one that Monet might have been interested in capturing.




A few days ago, a mass of dark mushrooms popped up in the middle of the trail; from a distance it looked like a large rock had rolled and settled there. This image prompted me to carry my camera yesterday, but when I got to the spot, the mushrooms were gone, having been completely eaten by a woodland creature, likely a deer. But there were other things I saw that I wanted to photograph, such as the dead tree with its broken branches scratching the sky, an aggressively expressive sight. As I've photographed over the past couple of months, I've become almost addicted to the process of framing an object, with its light, and re-presenting it on this blog. The way I see the world through my painting, which is primarily in close-up, has influenced the way I shoot pictures. But photograhing is very different from making a painting, and yet again different from working on a design for a hooked rug. Each medium, each way of seeing, influences and enriches the other. The woods walk is full of images, which will change through seasons, so calls for a continuing series.