Take a Photo Holiday

Take time to smell the roses ... er, the yellow wildflowers?

 

Take pictures as if you were taking a holiday in your own life.

That was one of the photo prompts from the book, "One Photo a Day Keeps the Doctor Away" by Joost Joosen, which Brent and Susan gave me for Christmas last year. On the same page was this Alexandra Horowitz quote:

Together we became investigators of the everyday. ... In this way, the familiar becomes unfamiliar and the old becomes new. We do have the ability to pay attention. We just forget how to use it. 

We're all quick to share the moments from the highlight reel of our lives. Maybe it's the visit from our grandchildren. The beauty of a National Park is sure to generate dozens - if not hundreds - of photos. But there is no shortage of beauty hiding in plain sight along our normal routes.

Several times, I drove past those yellow "flowers" at the corner where I make the turn onto the Zenith Road. But on a day when the clouds were like a 3D painting on a bright blue canvas, I made the time to stop.

The same clouds and sky provided a counterpoint to the green alfalfa field and hay bales.

They also gave me a different backdrop for my sunrise tree ... even though it was the middle of the day and not sunrise.

When I took my "photo holiday," we were coming back home from a Labor Day trip to the Stafford golf course. 

I spent a lot of the time reading my book. But I also took a few photos with my favorite model, framed with some natural "decor."

It's not often that it's wet enough in August to find mushrooms on the golf course!

All the rain this summer has offered other unusual August photos. Last week, we had a total of 3 inches of rain, and Peace Creek was uncharacteristically flowing.

This was the scene at our new bridge - which is done, by the way! 

On the Zenith Road looking east

I always like looking at Peace Creek from a view on the Zenith Road, too. 

On the Zenith Road looking west

 It's certainly prettier with water than without!

August 10, 2022 - from the Zenith Road

To prove that point, here's a photo from August 2022. (For the record, the water is back down this week.)

Last sunset of August 2025

 Sunsets are always an opportunity to take a holiday in my everyday life. 

First sunset of September 2025

Storms that went north and east of us provided the drama in the sky last evening.

We only see what we look at. 

To look is an act of choice.

--John Berger 

 

 

 

***

I love the nature all around me. But the "highlight reels" of life can be fun, too. K-State football games have been part of my life since I was a little girl. 

The drone show following the home opener win was certainly worth commemorating with photos.

It may have been man (or woman) made, but the formations were certainly worthy of a "photo holiday." 
 

 

Bends and Folds

Sunset, looking south

A week ago at Sunday School, our facilitator handed each of us a white square of paper. Kristen said that the small group lessons we'd been using every week had taken an unexpected departure. While she read the Scripture for the week, along with some supporting materials, we were supposed to follow the instructions she'd copied for each of us and create an origami sea turtle. It was a pattern provided by the World Wildlife Federation.

Origami is a 6th century Japanese art form that transforms paper into shapes. The photo above shows what it was supposed to look like when we got done. Then there were three pages of detailed instructions. The first two pages are shown below:

 

There also was a third page of instructions. I didn't take the time to scan it and include it here because not a single one of us got past Step 5. 

It led to a lot of laughter and camaraderie. But it didn't lead to any marine sea turtles. It also led to me volunteering to find non-origami Sunday School lessons for as long as this particular series lasts. May 4, we were supposed to make a fish. May 11 is supposed to be origami sheep and May 18 is supposed to be an origami dolphin. You get the idea. I'm guessing our success on these creations would have been about the same as the sea turtle.

I've done some thinking about origami (and why we were all so bad at it) since the laughter died and we turned off the light in the Sunday School room for another week. I don't think I have any answers. Some in the class were convinced the instructions weren't definitive enough. Some suggested that a YouTube video with visuals to follow might have helped. Others of us were reminded of our less-than-stellar stint in high school geometry class. Those diagrams were looking just a little too much like geometry, so that self-preservation gene kicks in and you figure you might as well give up now. 

No matter the reason, there were a lot of crumpled pieces of paper on the table by the time we were done. The trash can in the Sunday School room will likely need dumped more quickly than normal after all our "sea turtles" and instructions were deposited there after class.

Springtime blooms and weather prompted more musing. One night not long ago, I went out to look at the sunset sky. While the western sky is usually the main attraction during sunset, that night, it was the south, east and north that provided more drama - more bends and folds (if we're thinking origami). 

Sunset colors looking northeast

From my vantage point, the thunderheads just made for a dramatic sky. I might have been a little envious of the rain that was likely falling under those far-away clouds. But I wasn't sorry to miss the hail that also was part of the evening drama. 

So what does this have to do with origami? I did some Googling and found a devotional by Megan Simons called "The Origami of Life." It said, in part:

Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, can be incorporated into devotional practices in several ways. One common approach is to associate origami with the concept of transformation, as a simple piece of paper is folded into a more complex and meaningful shape, mirroring the way God shapes and transforms individuals. 

The origins of origami exist within creation itself, where God has planned careful fold patterns for leaves and petals inside of buds. He has created insects whose wings precisely fold and tuck beneath their protective shells. Recently, as I have wrestled through some difficult questions, I have found great comfort in God’s precise planning and careful attention to every aspect of his creation—to the origami of each life. 

Megan Simons

Looking east

When I'm in nature, I'm often struck by how perspective skews our view. That evening of sunset, I had a different perspective than the people who were getting pummeled by hail stones ... or those being blessed with rain. 

It was all in where we were standing. Some of us were in the midst of beauty on the horizon. Others were in the midst of a storm.

We got a little of that beneficial rain last Wednesday. We weren't expecting it, but it left behind about an inch of much-needed moisture.

It will be great for this year's wheat crop and for newly-planted spring crops. 

 

There was even a glimpse of some rainbow colors peaking through the clouds.  

 

Maybe we all gave up a little soon on the origami. (Maybe not. But it's possible.) One of my friends said she was going to take it home and ponder it more to see if she could figure it out. Her husband came back with Sunday with an origami shirt fashioned from a dollar bill. (He watched a YouTube video to do it.)

Another devotional by Rich Forbes shared this prayer at the end:

Father, I am but a crumpled piece of paper in your hand, and at times the suffering I experience is almost too great to bear. Lift me Lord and, with a simple fold, move me past this tribulation; bring me closer to the shape of Christ and reveal more of Him in me each day. Lord God, let your hand hold me until at long last you can place me before you and see me as beautiful and good... made in your image. Holy Father, I realize that I will suffer and face many trials in this life, and I ask that you give me the strength to endure them, and the faith to understand that you will not abandon me to them, or ask me to endure more than I am capable of. Shape me to your liking and take pleasure in your work, and I will seek you always.

 Maybe those crumpled papers weren't so hopeless after all.

Sky's the Limit!

 Sunrise February 19. 2024

The sky is the infinite movie for me. I never get tired of looking at what's happening up there.

Singer K.D. Lang

There's a game called "Never have I ever." Evidently, it's popular among teens at slumber parties. Well, I crossed a "Never have I ever" thing off my list last Friday. The Northern Lights were visible on the Kansas plains. And, from looking at Facebook, we weren't alone. People posted awe-inspiring photos from across the nation from places that don't normally experience them.

In truth, they were barely visible to the naked eye. But point the cell phone camera to the skies and a whole kaleidoscope filled the screen. 

We weren't the only ones driving around in our pajamas Friday night. We had to turn our headlights back on when our neighbors turned down the same dark country road where we were viewing the free light show. And yes, we all admitted to wearing our PJs for the trip outside.

We tried again on Saturday night, but clouds had started to move in, blocking the view. I did see photos from our neighbor, Rebecca, who knows more about photography than I do. But Saturday night didn't provide a repeat of the glut of Facebook posts that Friday spawned.

I've always loved to watch the sky. My sisters and I sang a Joni Mitchell song, "Both Sides Now," for a 4-H Club Day long, long ago. That song often rolls around in my head, much like the clouds that shift in Kansas skies:

 

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way.

 Sunrise February 19. 2024

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down and still somehow

It's clouds' illusions, I recall

I really don't know clouds at all.

I've always liked clouds, but I think I became even more aware when Brent was little. Some people have backseat drivers. I had a backseat cloud watcher. 

Sunrise and my sunrise tree - February

Brent was always discovering some shape in the marshmallow fluff of clouds floating by. 

Clouds reflected in the Rattlesnake Creek, April 2024

When the kids were little, I "retired" from working full-time as a writer-editor at The Hutchinson News, but I wrote a column for them, "At Home with Kim," for several years. Here an excerpt of what I wrote when Brent was in kindergarten:  

 

It was one of those days when it looks like the angels are using the clouds for tumbling mats. Brent and I were driving home, and he started cloud-watching.

"Oh, look, Mommy! That one looks like a dinosaur. And that one looks like a puppy."

We found an eagle and a dragon and a cat among the whipped-cream clouds. I was thinking that even though our world changes, some things - like cloud watching - have been children's pastimes for years and years.

And then he said, "Oh, there a roller blade."

 

As a child, I saw dragons and rabbits, but not a single roller blade was suspended in my cotton-candy skies. Change is part of us - even daydreaming cloud watchers confirm that.

 

Though I no longer have cloud watchers in the backseat, I still love watching the clouds. Perhaps it is their ability to change quickly, shifting the scenery in an instant. I personally struggle with change, so I guess I admire it in other things. 

April 2024

Maybe it's OK to have your head in the clouds on occasion

I recently saw this post featuring an Ralph Waldo Emerson quote on a friend's Facebook feed:

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. Begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Maybe sunrises and sunsets are our celebration of a life colored by those attitudes - leaving behind the worries of the day and looking forward to the clear page provided by another new day.

It's worth a try.

Once upon a time, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

Terry Tempest Williams

 

Summer Sky Gazing

 

 The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.  

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

 
Good old Ralph probably didn't know much about wheat harvest, but as we did our part to bring that "daily bread" into reality, I thought his quote was appropos. For the first week of harvest, there was hardly a cloud in the sky. 

And, admittedly, we got a lot done. Since the air was dry and there was no humidity, Randy was able to start cutting before noon each day.

However, the remainder of harvest certainly provided a prettier backdrop for photos. 

I find skies with clouds much more interesting. 

Taken through the semi truck window

I figure I can apply the same principle to my sky gazing. 

Those HGTV shows are always talking about "texture" making a room more beautiful - whether you're talking a sky over a field of waving wheat ...

 

 ... or after that crop has been harvested ...

 

... with your favorite golfer in the foreground while thunderheads billow behind him ...

 

... at the corner coming home ...

... or over the waters of Quivira National Wildlife Refuge at sunset.

 

 

To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie –
True Poems flee –
~Emily Dickinson, c.1879

Looking south at sunset over the Little Salt Marsh

When we look up, it widens our horizons. 

We see what a little speck we are in the universe, 

so insignificant, 

and we all take ourselves so seriously, 

but in the sky, 

there are no boundaries. 

No differences of caste or religion or race. 

~Julia Gregson