sunrise

Nature’s Gifts

emyloom 1 Comment

I am thankful this today for the awesome beauty in nature. All around the world but especially for the beauty I see every morning when I wake.

In this season I have enjoyed the beautiful changing colors of the trees, gorgeous sunrises over Mt Si and a first dusting of snow on its highest peak.

Often in morning the elk are in my yard or I see them grazing in the fields along my four mile route to work. Several times I’ve seen them crossing in the middle of the Snoqualmie River.

It has been raining for days and on that same route I cross two bridges over the river. It is full and pushing the limits of its banks. To see it meandering through the tree lines banks brings a calm and peace to my heart.

The flowers are gone for the season but the birds still visit my patio. From my kitchen window I can see the Anna hummingbird drinking from the bright yellow blown glass feeder.

Last week a small sparrow splashed about in the deep red bird bath. He seemed so full of joy. I was amazed because it was quite chilly out and I know that was an ice cold bath but he didn’t seem to care.

I hung a suet cake for him only to see it ravenously consumed in a day by the regal deep blue Steller Jays with the prominent black crests. They are lovely but quite the naughty rascals.

A few weeks ago the black bear crossed the lawn looking for food in my trash. Sadly he found nothing here to fatten him up before his long winter nap.

Several times in the past few weeks the rain is interrupted by short sun breaks. When they arrive I am guaranteed to be blessed with a rainbow over the mountain.

I often have my camera ready and get photographs of these awesome events (the 4000+ pictures in my iphone are witness to this). However, when I am driving or when my phone is not around, I do something Josh told me once long ago when he was only five. He said to just blink my eyes and “Take a picture with my heart”

“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The (Most Favored) Photograph

emyloom 2 Comments

For Christmas my niece gifted me a subscription to a service where every week I answer a question that she sends me. The task has been interesting and I find I cannot give short answers! This week’s question was: What is one of the best photographs you’ve ever taken?

Lord knows I take more photographs that any one person can view or admire in one lifetime, but picking the best could prove difficult.

Of course there are hundreds of my friends, family and children. The ones of my sons are ones that will be cherished for a lifetime. These I look through and reminisce about days long gone. One photo can bring a flood of memories and these photos fill my heart with joy and sadness. They bring me to a realization that those days were really the wonderful magical days and how I wish now that I had realized it at the time.

So beyond those and taking many pictures of culinary creations and labels too small read, I take many, many pictures of God’s creation. After all is there really any better subject.

I have been fortunate to travel a bit in my life. Other than living in Texas, Florida, Alaska, Colorado and Washington, I have travel abroad to Korea, Japan, Canada, England, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Israel, Belize and Australia. Each one of these places have their own unique beauty and natural wonders. Before the days of digital photos and iPhone cameras, pictures were expensive and did not always come out perfect, as it was a little pricey to buy film, and pay for developing. For that reason there were not a lot of retakes. Still, I enjoy remembering those places even in substandard quality pictures. Unfortunately even today, with digital pictures, the camera is never quite able to capture the beauty of it all.

Once when Josh was in preschool, we were talking about a beautiful scene but we had no camera with us to take a photo. Josh told me that we would just have to take a picture with our hearts. He demonstrated that we look at the scene for a while and blink our eyes several times to capture it. Le sigh… I have so many pictures in my heart now.

I have thousands of photos of the ocean waves, mountains, sunsets, sunrises, clouds, peaceful scenes of freshly fallen snow, rivers, waterfalls, the moon at midnight, palm trees, the gorgeous colors of changing leaves in fall, plants, flowers and wildlife. One of my favorite things to do is take photos of the minutia in nature; close-ups of ice crystals, red berries, moss, weeds, the inner parts of flowers, spider webs, shells and the tiniest of insects. I am in awe of the detail in even the smallest of God’s creation.

So what is my best photo? I don’t know what scale defines best, but a favorite one that was a gift from God was a scene so rich and powerful it set me singing, “How Great is Our God” all day. It was January 4, 2012, I was driving to work and the sun was rising over Mt Si. The sky looked like it was on fire and the sun hitting the clouds looked like huge flames. We don’t get a lot of vivid colorful sunrises and sunsets here and this was the most stunning and vibrant I had ever seen anywhere. It was a gift. I stopped my car and took several pictures (with the camera on my iPhone 4, so the quality was not great) but my heart remembers the beauty. I recently heard someone say we overuse the word awesome. Dictionary.com says, “causing or inducing awe; inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration…”

Yes, that morning, that sunrise was awesome.