Wednesday, August 20, 2014

The Powerful Beauty of Nature




We were all quickly reminded of the power of nature this summer, when we watched a fellow community member struggle against the odds, and eventually make his way out of a disastrous situation. We are all thankful for that and the amazing work of a variety of people that came together to save his life and make the area safe again for others. For me, it became a time of reflection, as I was just there the day before the occurrence, having gone for a bike ride with my son to that exact spot at Half Way Creek. So quickly it can happen. So quickly we are brought into the folds of Mother Nature’s arms and told what to do instead of telling nature what we are going to do to it.


As an artist, I spend time manipulating the environment. I want my perennials arranged in a way that emphasizes the texture of the leaves and the succession of colour from the blooms. I want to carve out pockets of dirt to urge vegetables out of its ground, cut down trees that don’t fit in with the architecture, and plant more trees to give a “natural feel” to my yard. I think of both form and function when playing this game with the flora that surrounds me.  I ridiculously think that I can control the earth and the plants until the critters come along and chew on my lettuce leaves, and burrow holes through my tomatoes. The grubs dig deep within the grass and turn my yard into a lumpy obstacle course. The rain comes and gives all of my plants root rot and the wind snaps the branches off of my delicate trees.

You don’t have to look any further than Canada’s own Group of Seven to see how our weather can arch trees beyond the point of no return and fill the skies with impending doom. (Image Google search “Group of Seven storms”). We can all relate to that feeling as we watch the elements unfold their wrath before us and have a story to tell of our “close call” with Nature. Therein lays the balance; the give and take if you will that we should consider the thought of surrender at times instead of trying to fight something that is bigger than ourselves. I believe that Mother Earth does this all the time for us. She is put in a position of absolute surrender. I am all too quickly reminded of this when I take walks in the woods and see old garbage that has been completely smothered by the fresh green shoots of a native plant, and I think, “Ah Nature, you’re too forgiving.”


Every year my husband and I do an exploration on Canada Day. We pick a back road somewhere down the 105 and we venture into the unknown, seeking out what Mother Nature literally offers us in our backyard. It is an artist’s dream and I spend a lot of time photographing her extraordinary, untiring beauty. We are always pleasantly surprised and thankful for what she offers and this year was no exception. Yet even in the middle of nowhere, we are confronted with the essence of human presence, usually in the form of garbage, or four wheeler tracks that have ripped through the ground. If we went on these adventures with the intent to pick up garbage, we’d never make it back home. And we too were confronted by a large road wash out that had engulfed the road and easily pushed all of the road’s content downstream, along with several massive trees, which even sheered the sides off of large embankments, leaving years of sediment layers newly exposed. And as I looked upstream, I saw the little critter that was perhaps the cause of all this, and couldn’t help but think if this animal’s oblivious ignorance, simply doing what nature had intended it to do; what it was instinctually born to do. This beaver had no intent of harm, no reason to show resentment towards humans and how they plowed a road straight through his living room. He was just listening to the running water that was swooshing through the culvert and had an instinctual desire to fix it. And even though that cut into our mission of further exploration, and cuts into the productivity of others, and costs us money and man hours and so on, I can’t help but think that it’s a good reason to stop and think about just exactly what I’m doing as a human being, and an artist, and a citizen of this beautiful earth, and make decisions as to whether I really want to put up a fight with the might of Mother Nature, or graciously surrender to her significance.









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