First, obviously, it’s Karyn’s photo of our children, taken through her eyes, through her lens and onto this print to share her optics. I don’t think about how long ago. It’s an instant captured, Anna and Grace walking among ferns and old growth forest on the soft carpet winding its way between imposing, towering trees.
There’s the immortality of it. Those ancient, improbable Redwoods, rooted and looming. The soft step of Grace, Anna’s hand on her sister’s head, a path that they trust among giants.
There’s luminance shining through the distant opening further down the trail. There’s presence of other worlds, sunlight caught by the overhanging branch in the foreground. There’s a soft knit hat and smooth red hair in contrast with thickly barked trees that reach into eternity, beyond the canvas, beyond the sky, beyond our reach.
And of course it’s the complement of youth to very old, of that smallness to the incomprehensibly massive, innocence to wizened. It’s the bigger part of what we are, small in the presence of All, the great Mercy and the cradle of Nature we are both a part of and surrounded by.
There are associations and memories, an aching of all that was and all that still is. And while even trying to put it down into words makes it feel like less, Everything I hold dear is there within that photo in my living room, and I position myself on the couch to stare back into it, back into time protected by giants and looking ahead to the glow, framed by ancients, one trunk bent over to greet us.
