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Life Among the Ashes
22 October 2020
Just before dinner the other night, we took a moment to exhale at length and take stock of things. We didn't want to scare ourselves this close to Halloween but we had to admit, whatever you look at these days, it's hard to be encouraged.
Life Among the Ashes. Captured with a Nikon D200 and 18-200mm Nikkor at 80mm (120mm equivalent) and f11, 1/30 second and ISO 400. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw and quite severely cropped.
Climate, foreign relations, the state of our nation, healthcare, the economy, our schools ... oh we could go on and on listing things that rattle our nerves at the moment. Did we mention wild fires?
And, at the same time, we seem to have acquired our own growing list of personal issues we could add to that. We don't seem to be able to solve any of those problems either. Even if we wake up in the middle of the night to try to catch them off guard.
Let the ashes fall where they may.
But we were, as we said, exhaling at length the other night.
We remembered passing this hedge of ash-covered leaves in brilliant green and red on the overcast day we shot the SkyStar Wheel.
We were just going to shoot the SkyStar wheel (which, by the way, got its gondolas installed and is spinning around now), nothing else. But the hedge stopped us cold on the way back to the car.
The colors of the leaves in that light was what first attracted us. But on closer inspection, we saw they were muted by a layer of ash from the wild fires.
Too bad, we thought, giving up the thought of composing a shot. But then we noticed a little star-shaped flower poking out into the light like some Pollyanna.
We had to admire its spunk.
Just what we need in these dark days, we thought. Courage and determination. Both. So we hoisted the camera up to our eye and caught the cheer poking out of the gloom.
It serves as a reminder.
Let the ashes fall where they may. Despite them, we will keep waking up in the morning, blinking our eyes and focusing on what good we can still do.