Monday Meditation on Photographs

In our Instagramable era, maybe you’ve heard the expression: “pics or it didn’t happen!”

Meaning: if you didn’t capture and share the photo, of what use is the experience?

But ... sometimes there are moments you cannot capture.

—The mama grizzly and cub standing on their hind legs looking up the trail, watching the biker that just zoomed by. And then looking back at me.

—The herd of pronghorn that crossed the road and vanished into the sage almost before you could register seeing them.

—The faces of hundreds of cows as they stare at you riding by, as if they have never seen a bike before (they have!).

—The bald eagle gliding overhead, the osprey chirping from its nest, the enormous beaver swimming below a bridge.

 

—Flowers and grasses buffeted by the wind, the perspective view of a broad mountain valley, the grasshoppers springing before my bike and crash landing, the butterfly who weaves in and out of my path to settle on my water bottle for a drop of moisture on an arid day.

I caught sight of a seed casing detaching from its host plant and being carried off on the wind. Impossible to photograph but readily imaginable.  It reminded me of two other somewhat comparable detachments.

First, a candle at the close of a church service when the flame is extinguished, the dying ember in the wick seeming to strive to stay lit and alive. Finally, there is the detachment of the wispy tendril of smoke from the wick and the service is ended.

 

Second: that moment when an autumn leaf falls from a tree, sometimes following high winds when the leaf was not ready to fall and hung on through the storm.  At some point (known only to the leaf and its tree) the single leaf, among many experiencing the same phenomenon, arrives at its moment to fall and return to earth and give its life over to the soil.

 

But of these three—the seed casing, the candle, the leaf—one is not like the others. The feathery seed carried by its cottony sail is taking leave to sprout elsewhere and form new life. 

In each case, the point of detachment is better visualized in its moment than captured in a photo.  It is the motion, the movement upwards or downwards that can’t be photographed and is best left to experience in real time.

 

Sometimes there are pics, sometimes there are no pics, and yet …