I once participated in a summer workshop in Snowmass, Colorado.
It was an interesting time and I enjoyed the learning experience.
But as a card-carrying introvert, by the third day
I had come to my saturation
point.
“Too many words!” I said to myself.
“Too much unrelenting interaction! Too little alone
time!”
So following an afternoon break
when the rest of the group
re-assembled indoors,
I assembled myself a mile down the road in a growth of aspen.
The photographer in me is always a sucker
for the look of white bark
against deep green undergrowth.
so I enjoyed playing with compositions like this one in my
viewfinder.
I moved slowly through that forest a few steps at a time.
As so often happens, something more was at work
than placing white and green
and lavender on photographic film.
Those same colors were being placed on me too, inside me.
The quietness of the trees was depositing quietness in my
soul.
I spent only an hour there, but it wasn’t only
an hour—
it was every little bit
of an hour.
Once I returned to the group,
I quietly exhaled white and
green and lavender the rest of the afternoon.
I don’t know if they noticed, but I did.
