1-Ashes

I wasn’t as excited about going to India as I might have been.

Our son, our middle child, passed away the previous month.  We’d been taking care of details and putting our home back into some sense of order.  Dan had lived with us the last several years and became a central focus of our daily lives because of his health issues.

Phil and I came on this trip to get beyond our grief.  In a way, it honored Dan.  He  had studied photography in college and had helped us both improve our efforts.  My dream had been that he and Phil could go on photo-shoots together when I was physically unable to because of my RA.  Now, I guess, it’s up to me.

In India my senses will turn outward.  I can’t seem to write about Dan right now.  I need to turn inward to do that.

“Photography and writing deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul,” according to the novelist Anne Lamott.  I’m counting on these kinds of soul food to revive me from my lassitude.

Jungle Cat Stalking Prey
by Phil Haffley

USA

From Ghost Trees to young Cypress (sans knobby knees) to Alligator Junipers—from India to Baton Rouge to Madera Canyon—our travels have been extensive so far this year.  Yet they seem to be coming to an end for 2016.

We are home again after two short photo-shoots separated by only five days.  That was time enough to wash clothes, download photos, and repack camera gear.  In Arizona I was going to need my heavy SLR Canon camera and gear because we would be working from tripods.

On the boats in the bayous of Louisiana and the jeeps in India however, I needed to handhold cameras which meant lighter gear.  Yes, I’m jealous of all the new professional cameras and lenses I’m no longer able to handle.  Their pictures are superb at 20-plus mega-pixels which I interpret to mean lots of cropping room.

What I’ve learned is that India may be unique, but our own country can be just as magical with Spanish Moss flowing from cypress limbs and Sycamores of the desert southwest seeming to be the American version of India’s Giant Ghost Trees.

Phil and I have many photos to process—thousands of them.  It’s going to take time to get them ready for this blog and for me to write a story or two about our encounters in nature.  We never did get photos of nesting trogons, but they are there as close as the Madera Canyon of Arizona.

Namaste

A f;lirting peacock from Bandhavgarh National Park, India
Photo by Phil Haffley

haiku

evening, black lava,

perched atop, yellow warbler—

a nugget of gold