Marcoclicks

It’s an elegant crack and it opens a world usually unseen. I don’t know what might have caused this to happen, to know if what we see is a result of an accident or the healing from an accident. Given the surrounding bark, I’d say there’s been a lot going on in the life of this weeping Canadian hemlock.

While there’s much of interest, my attention is drawn to the dark interior. What’s in there? Can it give me access to parts of the tree’s life that are usually inaccessible? That’s what I’m drawn to: seeing into what is usually unseen. And while there’s not much to go on here, where vision is limited, imagination can romp!

There’s a grace here that captures me. While this shot may portray a wound, something that will ultimately harm this tree, I see a dance, an invitation to go inside, go deeper. Probably that’s just what I bring to this and I’m fine with that. Dancing, going deeper? Sounds like a good discipline!

It’s rare that we get a chance to see the working network of tree roots, the system that does all the hard work that allows these entities to grow and flourish. Usually we can see them only after some catastrophe has occurred. That’s the case here - one of the recent wind storms toppled an alarming number of trees in the Arboretum, uprooted them savagely.

It was with an element of reverence that I walked among the remains of the downed trees. I’ve walked there several times since the storm. At first it resembled a disaster area, a place where a great calamity occured. Now, after much clean-up, it reminds me of a cemetery. Root bundles, often with butt logs attached, in quiet, mown spaces.

I wanted to memorialize these spaces. I tried several approaches and settled on shooting the roots, seen here from below, a novel perspective. As I look at the image, I can’t tell what is disruption caused by the tree’s upheaval and what is simply the way the roots worked in real life. In either case, it serves as an intimate, if ambiguous portrait. What seems like chaos supported a vibrant living entity now lost to us.

Roots are a mystery to me - not what they do or mostly where they grow but rather why they grow the way they do. I’m inclined to attribute some significant intelligence to their blind burrowing underground and their circuitous paths above ground. There’s much that happens on the surface that seems to be random and slightly mysterious.

As I looked at this assemblage of roots, it wasn’t even clear to me that they all emanated from the same tree - such different textures and sizes, all busily going about seemingly different tasks. The way they wrapped around each other was, I felt, surprisingly expressive. Yet, I’ve learned that it’s risky to presume human thought processes to non-human, even non-animal entities. I do it a lot, mostly as a daydream and I suppose that’s fine.

So what am I left with? An interesting composition that likely says more about what appeals to my eye that any inherent, advanced vegetable intelligence. I’ll just have to be satisfied with the fantasies that spring to life in my daydreams.

I came to this image with the thought that since it was of a part of the same tree as the prior image (the huge broken White Pine) that I would somehow figure out a way to tell the same story – in a different and interesting way of course. But I assumed that this post would also be about trees living and dying, the general subject of the other one.

That’s what I love about this practice – shooting carefully and then looking openly. Fraught with uncertainty, no idea where your eyes will land next, what you will see, what it will evoke. I’ve learned, most of the time, not to push and pull images to fit my conception but to listen, to attempt a conversation. I’m getting better at it.

When I started this post, I thought I would go on about what I see here but now I think it would be more fun to just react. There’s a lot going on. I try to look both knowing it’s a severed limb of an old tree and then letting go of that, looking with not-knowing eyes. Some things may change.

It was a giant Eastern White Pine with several main trunks, one of which must have come crashing down, perhaps in a recent wind storm. It measured something in excess of 18 inches in diameter and was clearly weakened by internal rot, not that you would have seen anything before the massive limb fell.

It’s about appearances. A tree or a house or a person can, on the outside, look solid and strong and healthy. Yet when facing extraordinary stresses, unseen weaknesses may become apparent. They were there all along, just not visible externally.

This image highlights one aspect of the disease this old pine was living with. We can see the rot and, if we work at it, we can see something that transcends the rot, something I call beauty or balance or equanimity. The connection sometimes seems tenuous to me. Can I see the disease and decide there’s beauty there as well? It’s not easy. But highlighting my kinship with this broken tree, broken but still living, is an attempt at celebrating a less visible blessing of being alive

This coming Saturday - the day before Mom's Day - we'll be doing another Popup Art Show in front of the First Baptist Church from 11AM to 5PM. Come say hello to a dozen or so wonderful artists!!

When I saw the devastation along the Conifer Path after last month’s wind and rain, the reality of loss was strong and clear. It’s something I’ve felt for people, even animals, but rarely so deeply for trees. That has shifted the more time I spend among them. I’m as grateful for this taste of the depth of feeling that’s possible for other life-forms as I am bereft by the magnitude of the loss.

I walked among the up-ended trees last week as a sort of pilgrimage, an opportunity to notice the ruin, even as the living green world continued to thrive. There’s always injury and death among the living. It was just easier to notice both in this place, such a mix of living and dying and everything in between.

I brought my camera, thinking to memorialize the loss. But I found little that appealed to me to shoot. The best of what I found was this raw, recently exposed root-landscape. It’s not composed; it’s just what was – colors and textures from an intimate environment we rarely see. Here it is, exposed for us. Perhaps we can learn to love the hidden and find its beauty, alongside the familiar trees and leaves.

Perhaps it's just a reflection of this moment, but I'm really glad I'm alive. I don’t think about it very often but now that I am, it has my attention. It's worth noting. And celebrating. Especially now when our world seems surrounded by confusion, illness, death, violence.

I love being alive, even when I'm not walking among green beings or listening to birds or brooks. And I can sometimes remember to love being alive when I'm having a bad day as well. That comes in handy. There's something about breathing in and out, slowly or quickly, and especially with attention, that can focus me on the present, on the blessings of life. This doesn't come easily - it's a posture I must constantly practice.

It's the contrast that brings this up for me. These limbs with morning sun-lit blossoms, only look dead – in April we know the leaves will come. Still, it reminds me that to celebrate the beauty and joy of life, I need to notice and honor the dying - people, relationships, trees. Same work; different context.

Trees live and die differently than humans do. Often their lives are longer than ours, assuming they are left alone by people and are lucky with natural disasters. It's also true that they die more slowly than humans.

Something caused this trunk to crack and decay. The tree has been working for some time to heal that injury. The normal growth of the tree has been interrupted by the need to address this slow-moving emergency.

My guess is the wound will ultimately kill this tree, but before that it may have years of life. As we learn more about the lives of trees, that complex interdependent system may become clearer.

And what about people? On one level, we start dying the day we're born. And, like a tree, I can work on healing myself – physically, spiritually, emotionally - even in the face of an inevitable demise.

Along with everyone in the vicinity, I took a walk in the Arb during the eclipse. While my morning walks are designed to cultivate solitude, yesterday afternoon was filled with people in a delightful way. It reminded me of Lilac Sunday although not as crowded as that.

I’ve been feeling that my time of shooting tree bark is coming to a close, at least as the sole focus of my attention. I have the images I need for my show in the Hunneman Building (opening November 2) and I’m focused on producing those 25 images. So I’m looking elsewhere for things to shoot. My attention moved a bit, but not far, just slightly lower.

I’m looking at roots. This venerable beech tree has an impressive array of roots that support quite a large trunk and many branches. The roots remind me of claws clutching the ground. Given how many trees have been lost to high wind and wet ground, it’s an apt metaphor.

I felt the tenacious connection of this beech to this particular place. Trees don’t have the option to pick up and move elsewhere as we humans do. The same place for a really long time, a human lifetime and longer. Imagine what we would see and learn were we to choose to root ourselves to a place for a long time. Worth thinking about…

I haven’t been shooting that much lately, focusing more on finishing a book of my words and pictures and also getting ready for an exhibition at the Arb opening on November 2. And, truth be told, while I love what I see in these bark pictures, it’s pretty much all I’ve shot in the past year and I need something new. Not at all sure what that will be, so the adventure is in front of me…

So, to fill the gap, here’s something very much not new - it’s from an earlier series of mine called “At the Edge of the Pond” (look on my website, www.marcoclicks.com ) that I completed during Covid. I find a different kind of ambiguity from what I discovered in tree bark. When I focused on reflections I found enigma and visual confusion - just enough to cause me to look more closely which is always a good direction.

Looking down to see clouds is not the common experience. And yet it is so clear once you decode what you’re looking at. Being pushed - invited - to puzzle out what we’re looking at, that’s one of the gifts of art for which I am grateful.

I focus here on the dark center, the place where a branch was somehow long ago removed. I imagine I can see saw marks but perhaps the limb was felled by some other means, perhaps it was injured or broken by a strong wind. I can see – or imagine I see – the new growth that slowly impinges and attempts to heal over the scar.

I don’t know exactly what is happening here, where things stand in the process of healing. That’s really the pressing question. But I’m somewhere to the side of that, not an uncommon place for me. I’m attracted to the difference in textures and colors, the way in which the dark and wizened stump of a limb is surrounded by subtle, quiet growth of bark and tree flesh.

That’s the story for me: two of the many distinct and different ways that life manifests itself: sometimes rough and cut off, sometimes fluid and effortless, all part of an on-going mystery. It’s a chapter, maybe just a paragraph, in a story older and more complex than we are. I’m grateful to see part of it.

Lately I’ve been confronted with the reality and permanence of death. It’s always there but usually it’s easier to look away or at least put a good face on it. That said, there’s nothing I love better than being alive. And, for me, that means being forthright at looking at and acknowledging death. You really can’t have one without the other.

Which brings me to this shot of a black cherry tree. The trunk branches off pretty low to the ground and clearly one of its limbs has met a sorry end. Yet this mostly dead limb is situated right next to the living trunk. This tree is facing some life-and-death challenges, and yet, there it is: both there, both living together, side-by-side.

Trees live - and die - differently from people. Their lives are longer and slower than ours. And so are their deaths. Death seems to come in stages and in such a way that the dying doesn’t overshadow the living, simply coexists with it.

I’m not sure I can muster the grace of trees but I’d like to live my life in a similar way.

Every year I get an amaryllis from my daughter; every year it blooms, always glorious, sometimes beautiful beyond my words. That was the way it was this year. It started with a large, white bloom, quite spectacular. And then, when I thought the display was over, two new shoots emerged, ultimately bearing four magnificent flowers. The plant had been on the way to the basement but I brought it back to its place on my table. I’ve been watching it ever since, as those shoots grew and the blossoms formed and opened and faded, all with grace.

We celebrate the vibrant energy of young growing things and well we should. At the same time, I treasure the decline. There is unspeakable beauty in the textures and folds of flowers past their prime. I sense a quiet but relentless yearning to keep going, keep growing even though the outcome is foreordained. Yet it is as quiet as it is relentless - not a competition, just a recognition that, in this season, this is what life - and death - look like.

Can it be so for we humans?

May we live in safety; may we have happiness; may we have health; may we be fully at ease.

This tree has been through a lot and not all of it good. This image doesn’t show the extensive wound on the trunk and the work the tree has been doing to heal. Yet this beech tree has a comfortable feel to it as it cradles last season’s leaves for whatever the next step of their journey may be.

I’m attracted to the play of colors against the beech’s stolid, if textured grey. The leaves and whatever is causing the lighter green area in the upper right work to set off the grey. They help to highlight the bark’s lumpy texture, which reminds me of older folks with a bit too much skin. Happens to trees too, I guess…

And because I’m in the mood, I’ll take my anthropomorphism one step further. I imagine the leaves and other detritus being warmly welcomed into the life of this European Beech. I sense that there’s a sort of welcome here, not something I exactly understand but it comforts me.

I’ll take it!

I wouldn’t usually think of the word “supple” to describe a tree’s trunk or its bark. Those elements are slow growing and pretty static. And yet I see characteristics that portray a supple, if not sinuous, growth in the upper right quadrant of this image. Of course, what is more supple than a slender birch, giving way in the wind. But here, this yew tree, with its many trunks, some of quite a significant diameter, is not supple in that way, at least not at its base.

The suppleness I see is more mysterious, at least to me. It appears to have developed slowly, in response to something in its environment, something that caused it to be advantageous to change the direction of growth over the course of time, perhaps years.

Now I would reach for an analogy to humans but nothing comes to me. Perhaps it’s sufficient to just notice this growth pattern and observe that there are various ways to define flexibility and suppleness. And that if we can think flexibly about whatever forms or textures we see or imagine in the bark of a tree, it may provide us some insight, either about the tree or about ourselves.

When you enter through the Walter Street Gate, on your right are a series of yew trees and they are worth some exploration. Lots of them throughout the Arb but these are easily accessible. I recommend getting as close to them as you can. The limbs are sinuous, graceful as they meander their way to sunlight. The way these branches collide and seeming tributaries become the main event - it follows some logic, I’m sure, well beyond my understanding.

Life is often like that. What are the changes that shift a secondary path to a primary one? Do we ever really know how a bit more sunshine or water or warmth in a given area might have made a sapling’s life entirely different?

This old tree is living with the choices and chances of being alive in a particular place and time. It is a blessing we humans share with perhaps more mobility and at least the illusion of more control. And the aggregation of life’s lessons show on our bodies, just as on the trees.

I take some comfort in that.

Would I ever guess this was a branch of a yew tree? Well, truth be told, after doing these shots of tree bark for almost two years, I’ve gotten used to seeing pretty much any color or texture or shape in virtually any tree. When I look closely, when I’m paying attention - usually with the aid of a lens - there’s just all sorts of surprises in store. That, to me, is what makes it rewarding.

This image won’t remind viewers of topographic maps or landscapes. It doesn’t resolve into those forms. Yet it has a quality of mystery, as in “what exactly am I looking at?” And that question lingers longer than I would expect.

That is, in a sense, the blessing of the image. It allows me to feel that visual confusion which means I’m looking hard at something. And it matters less what it resolves into than that I’ve spent the time and attention to look closely. Yes, blessing…

This tree looked whole and healthy as I walked past it, heading up toward the top of Peters Hill. It succumbed to the recent wind storm that caused such damage among the conifers. As far as I could see, this was the major casualty on the Peters Hill side.

What I couldn’t see, what I didn’t know, was that this majestic oak was dying, slowly as trees do. If you walk around to the other side of the fifteen foot stump, you can see the damage, the rot.

Maybe people work that way as well. All sorts of things going wrong with us on the inside while the outside looks generally OK. Until, one day, it doesn’t. Of course the tree had its weaknesses exposed for all to see and generally people can avoid that indignity.

But slow or fast, visible or not, all living things end. It’s not something we notice very often although there is a benefit to not having it take you by surprise!

If I had known that morning that winter was only making a quick visit, I would have been more diligent. Instead, I caught a few images pre-sunrise on my iPhone, assuming that I would grab my “real” camera and get some more later. But by the time I was ready, the snow was gone. I know we’ll get more (in fact we did yesterday) but the first time is especially magic.

Just a bit of snow can shift a landscape. Would I have noticed the shape of these trees were they not highlighted with white? I’m not sure. There’s a monochromatic feeling in this image, as though it were printed using some early darkroom technique. But, no, it’s just the light - or the lack thereof.

In the pre-dawn hour, there’s mystery surrounding objects and an opportunity for ambiguity: that’s the allure for me. Shapes become clear only with some effort of the eyes. There’s the possibility of seeing things that escaped us in daylight and even imagining things that aren’t there. Anything that helps me to look more closely, indeed forces me, is an aid in my seeing deeply, which for me is the name of the game!

If you’ve walked in to the Arb through the Walter Street or Bussey Street gates, you may have noticed that the Conifer Path was closed off. For good reason - that storm with high wind and rain some time back wrecked havoc on many strong, mature conifers. I’ve heard that 17 were lost. Some of them were diseased but many were just undone by the high winds and water-soaked ground.

On the Peters Hill side, with which I am considerably more familiar, one of the large oaks broke about 10-12 feet up. It was clearly not in the best of health. The roots and the base of the tree are still there and the broken-off bulk of the tree lay in state for a few days before Arb crews got to its dismemberment.

I’m going to work not to take these complex and alien lifeforms for granted. Most days they look like they can weather anything, any storm or depredation by humans. But like all life, they have their limits. And those were exceeded and we see the result.

With all these losses, there are still conifers aplenty to appreciate. I’m grateful for all the trees still standing.

At the base of this yew tree, there are ginkgo leaves, spruce needles, berries, rotting wood. It’s a mess. And yet, the more I look at it, the more it refines itself into a canvas, a portrait, something worth lingering over both visually and intellectually. Colors, textures, shapes seem to work together to create something intriguing to look at and think about.

That’s an approach I want to cultivate every day. It’s all ordinary until I focus my attention and then it might reach toward extraordinary. It’s an aspiration, of course. It might be hard to live that on your way to work or with a hungry, unhappy child. Still, the effort is worthwhile.

For now, I’ll settle for reminding myself that beauty and balance are present in unexpected places and at inconvenient times. Somehow keeping that in mind makes it a bit more likely that I will notice when it shows up, amidst the rhythms and cadences of our days.

Another solstice is upon us...

On this shortest, darkest day,
we seek warmth and light.

We are surrounded by wonders
even in the dark,
even as we must work to see.

Let us celebrate hopefulness
and bless our warmth
and remember joy even in the tumult.

May our lives and hearts grow big
and may we find strength to encounter
this changed world, working for peace and compassion.

I walked around Peters Hill early on the morning of wind and rain, before the strongest part of it was overhead. Even before dawn, I could see - almost feel - the high limbs waving wildly, wind becoming visible. Audible as well - loud, throaty roars through trees not ready to bow much less break in surrender. That came later.

The next morning, I was shocked to see a huge red oak fallen. Somehow i had assumed that all was well because it was so when I walked by early the day before. That’s not how it works.

I could see this tree has been ailing for a while. That doesn’t change my feelings of loss. So many trees were broken, uprooted, damaged and yet this was one I knew. I remember when a major limb was cut off some time back, a sign that all was not well.

This is a loss - seeing that even grain, smelling the tannin, it is clear that, for this tree, it’s over. I’ll miss walking by it. I don’t know what happens to people after death much less trees. Maybe it’s simpler for trees: maybe its remains will be put to good use. I sure hope so!

At this time of year, I start and end my walks in the dark. It’s especially dark when there’s a new moon (as in, no moon) or when it’s overcast. This image is from an overcast morning last week, when the air was still and the mist hung in the almost-morning air. There’s something peaceful about the quiet when the world is still and the air is thick, something about solitude, urban solitude.

I remember walking to my little house in the back woods of New Hampshire on well-trodden paths I’d made footfall by footfall over years. On dark nights I would walk with my eyes closed the better to sense the contours of the path. Closed eyes heightened my awareness and encouraged me to pay attention. And, in truth, I knew that route well.

Is there some larger message here? Something about seeing better when your eyes are closed? Heightening other senses by limiting one? Or is it the benefit of walking the same paths over and again at different times and seasons? Is it not needing newness, simply looking more intently at what seemed to be familiar? Something of that rings true to me.

I shot this image of a clump of river birch trees at Forest Hills Cemetery the other day. I was looking down into the center where several branches came together. None of them were particularly healthy and some of them are well past their prime.

Because I was looking down into this core, the image had an ambiguous orientation and it showed up in Lightroom, my post-processing software, as a portrait image. Hum, OK, sure, I’ll work with that, I’ll look at it that way. But it was not what I expected to see.

I’m not sure when I stopped taking portrait orientation images (except for portraits of people). I could probably count less than a couple of hundred out of thousands of shots and very few of them are stand-out images. The only reason I can think of for this is force of habit – I don’t shoot portrait because I haven’t shot portrait. Not a great reason…

I like this image and it invites me to rethink how I use my camera to see the world. It’s almost like finding an entirely new and different perspective. This may change how I shoot, and that’s OK - it’s an adventure!

I find it hard not to be captivated by the Japanese Stuartia. Given its vibrant colors, it seems so easy to make images that are brilliant in many ways. This one is a bit different - it seems to de-emphasize that glorious yellow-orange color that is so dominating. Instead, this one highlights what might be a relatively somber green-gray element that is saved by its texture.

In some ways, there’s more going on than in the image from the previous post. But it has a bit of the feeling of two different visions being merged with moderate success into a single image. I suppose I might have stirred things around a bit but I tend to avoid that if I can. Now, several weeks after making the image, I’m glad I left it as I saw it.

In truth, I don’t mind intervening to strengthen an image. In this case, I’m not sure that moving some elements would have made the image stronger; it would just have made it more intentional, more self-conscious. So I guess my initial impulse to leave it be was correct - or at least I still agree with myself, always a good thing!

Bark, leaves, limbs - they all reside in this image of a blessed Japanese Stewartia that lives near the Centre Street Gate. The peeling bark and falling leaves, detritus of autumn, are evocative of this season of darkness and loss. Or maybe those words reflect my take on the current state of our world. The natural world seems to cope, to absorb whatever maddening limitation humanity places on it. Yet it is not without consequences just because those are sometimes hard to see.

And as those consequences become more obvious, may we show the wisdom to listen more carefully and work to repair what we have so deeply damaged. Perhaps with diligence we can start to reverse centuries of karma.

My exhibition at the Arboretum’s Visitors Center is now, finally, less than a year away, so I’m starting to think a bit more seriously about what to include. As part of that effort, I culled about 7,000 shots down to 65 (and I’ll end up showing 20-25). There were some trees that were poorly represented so I went on a very intentional shooting expedition.

There were a few trees that I wanted to get images of and I planned the walk with those in mind. It was actually fun, even though it was so different from my usual amble, which is more like slow down, wander, follow my eyes, see what I see and shoot what I find.

There’s a lovely Paperbark Maple near the Centre Street Gate and the Sycamores/London Plane trees and I circled that, camera to eye toward the end of my trek. I was moving faster than usual and it’s interesting to note what I missed. Whatever this gracefully green critter is, I didn’t see it clearly until I was processing the images in the studio. I did see a blur of green when I shot and thought that would be interesting. Little did I know that I’d find a collaborator!

This tree’s roots seem to be growing on top of each other. I imagine there is a body of knowledge about why tree roots grow the way they do and were I a different person, I’d probably have more curiosity about that. As it is, I can’t seem to get over the complexity of these structures – the “what” of them.

My assumption is that there was a reason why this tree grew the way it did even though that reason is not at all clear to me. It's not the first time the world’s marvels stop me in my tracks, make it hard for me to move along to the next question, the “why.” And I’m OK with that. It sometimes feels like the “why” of something just erases the magic. I’m glad someone is focused there, just not me.

So, I practice sitting with uncertainty (a key skill in these times) and looking for the beauty.