06/13/2025
For the last year or so I've been pretty mired in, what I can only describe as, an existential, mid-life crisis.
Though it's not the stereotypical "get a fast car and a 25 year old girlfriend" type of mid-life crisis. But rather an examination, sometimes meditation, sometimes SCREAM into the void type of crisis where I'm trying to understand all of it, and somehow affect it, and create, as Luthen Rael would say, "a sunrise that I know I’ll never see".
All this stress to do better than I did, be better than I was, and to get others to be better than they were and do better than they did. And maybe all of it will mean nothing. Maybe I'll change one mind. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it's never enough.
And then I take a break from another long day of edits in a line a of long days of edits to step outside, camera in hand, to grab a quick smoke and see what, if any, of my little woodland friends are up to. Maybe to see if they'll visit, grab a snack, and hang for a bit.
Sometimes it's nobody. And sometimes it's this. Where I get to see the gentler side of nature, instead of the cruel and indifferent side of nature. The side that shows that ANYTHING is capable of love, of care, of nurturing, of providing security.
Nature CAN be cruel. It can be heartless. It can be a hustle and a constant fight for survival. It can also be beautiful. It can be warm. It can provide moments of grace and stillness and be an absolute marvel of a thing.
And maybe I did something worthwhile by cultivating a place, amongst the tiny boxes on the hillside, amongst the paved roads and sidewalks that have encroached into the natural wooded space, that is regarded as safe and secure by the animals that wish to enter it. Sometimes, it's the only thing that grounds me, that keeps me in the present, keeps me grateful, keeps me sane.
I'll be honest, I shed a tear or two while I shot this. Sometimes the beauty of a thing is too overwhelming for the meat suit to contain.
Lucky me, to be so fortunate to capture these moments so that I can remember that I bore witness to something beautiful and untainted by the strife of the manmade world that exists around it.
Lucky me.
