Here is another photograph I took of the old tulip poplar late this morning, this time with a small brown bird (a.k.a., little brown job) perched on the fence wire. After the thought, I considered how much more splendid this photo would be if I had only used a polarizing filter….
A friend and Piney Woods Church Road resident reminded me yesterday afternoon that I have taken very few photographs of the road itself, for all my travels upon it. This photograph does not actually remedy that situation, though a few other tulip poplar photos I took this morning do include the road edge. It does add to the small collection of landscape photographs I have taken on my journey, reminders that all wonders are not on the macro scale, hidden under leaves or among the threads of a spider’s web. This aged tulip poplar, scarred by a past lightning strike, greets me every day on my pilgrimage. This post is dedicated to Mark Hirsch, whose work with That Tree helped inspire the Piney Woods Church Road Project.
Sometimes when I am in need of new inspiration on an evening walk, I walk over to one of the several expanses of barbed wire fence along Piney Woods Church Road, and begin taking photographs. Often, I find that the sunlight illumines something on the fence in an intriguing way — perhaps a spiderweb, a leaf, or a clump of horsehair. These are two of my latest finds, both bits of horsehair backlit by golden light.
Lately I have spent many mornings and late afternoons photographing leaves illumined by sunlight. I have posted relatively few of them, by comparison. In this case, I find delight in the way the late-day sun has touched and transformed a single new leaf of a greenbrier. Beautiful.
Walking along the woods’ edge on Rico Road this morning, I glimpsed a pair of huge white flowers with purple centers, perhaps four inches across, on a vine with heart-shaped leaves. The flowers were at head height, on a vine hanging from tree branches. They looked like blooms that belonged in a tropical rainforest somewhere.
A member of the morning glory family (Convolvulaceae), the Wild Sweet Potato (Ipomoea pandurata) is native to much of the Eastern United States, despite it exotic appearance. The bulb of the vine is described by an Illinois wildflowers website as being “edible (barely) when cooked”, and was evidently eaten by Native Amerindians, according to the same source. Cooking was clearly essential; the Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern and Central North America notes that roots have purgative properties if eaten raw.
For my own part, I think I will be satisfied with appreciating the stunning flowers.
I could not avoid today’s image. The dead cardinal, head crushed and body mostly decomposed but with feathers still retaining a bright red sheen, lay on the dirt and gravel just a few feet from where cars and trucks raced by along Rico Road. After hesitating a moment, I quickly snapped a single photograph, reassuring myself that it was “for documentary purposes only” and that I would undoubtedly discover something else on my walk. Only, I didn’t. I unenthusiastically took a couple of photographs of a new black cherry leaf, and tried (without much success) to catch an orb-weaving spider in the midst of wrapping a giant fly caught in her web. But I knew, as I walked up to Hutcheson Ferry Road and back again, that I had already found the day’s subject. So when I returned to where the cardinal lay, I stopped for a few more photographs; the one below was the last I took before continuing toward home.
For 195 days, I have largely avoided death in my photography. When I first considered photographs that evoke wonder, I tended to think of springtime and new growth, or else the play of shadows and light on the trees and grass. As an occasional oblique memento mori, I might photograph some fallen leaves or wildflowers past their peak. But today, I came to accept, at last, that death is a source of wonder, and that wonder can sometimes be tinged with sorrow and loss. Death is, after all, the ultimate mystery of our lives. It waits on the edges of our vision, lingering there in the shadows, occasionally emerging into our noonday hours when we lose a parent, a spouse, a dear friend. Each time that happens, we are compelled to recognize how precious our hours and days are, and how vital it is that we live them deeply and fully, sucking the marrow out of life, as my mentor H.D. Thoreau once wrote. Confronting death, whether that of another or even our own in the midst of a terminal illness, can serve to accentuate the delight we can find in simple everyday experiences and things, if we allow that to happen. And without the prospect of death, would our potential for wonder and awe be as great as it is? When we know that the only certainty is here and now, we can open up to the incredible possibilities each and every moment may offer us.
I can’t get enough of Wood Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium). Perhaps it is because oats have been my favorite grain since childhood. Or maybe it is because Wood Oats growing in a forest remind me of Sea Oats growing along an ocean coast. Or maybe it is simply because the seed heads are so beautiful when the morning sun shines through them.
So little is in bloom along Piney Woods Church Road this time of year. I glimpsed one Horse Nettle, and a few bedraggled Daisy Fleabanes. But then, along the woodland edge near Rico Road, I noticed one bright yellow eight-petaled flower. It is a sunflower, a member of the genus Helianthus, and quite possibly the Stiff-Haired Sunflower(Helianthus hirsutus). To make the identification a bit more difficult, there are actually twenty-eight different species of Helianthus native to Georgia! No matter its species, it was a burst of sunlight on my walk, a bit of yellow in a sea of green.
Today did not begin well. I heard a hissing in the wall behind the shower — the plumbing equivalent of discovering an unexpected lump somewhere on the body. Instead of setting out at 9:15 am, when the temperature was a pleasant 74 degrees, I set out an hour and a quarter and a couple of telephone calls later, very much distracted. For the first time in ages, I walked from one end of Piney Woods Church Road to the other without taking a single photograph, the Sun all the time climbing still higher in the sky. On my return journey, I halfheartedly took a few photographs of brightly colored fallen laves on the road and backlit green leaves with shadows — nothing inspired, but something to fall back on if necessary. I still felt no particular worry. For 193 days, I had walked the same stretch of roadway, finding at least one moment of wonder every single time. And today was no exception.
About halfway back to Rico Rd., I discovered this spider in the center of a huge web at head-height, oriented perpendicular to the road edge. It is sometimes called the Crab Spider,, because it is shaped rather like a crab with paired spines along its abdomen. According to Spiders of the Carolinas, it is actually a Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). Like most all Georgia spiders, it is harmless to people, and can even be handled safely by its spines, though I am not clear why one would opt to do that. It is an abundant spider of mixed open hardwoods, like the forest strip edging Piney Woods Church Road.
Today is Day 193 of my Piney Woods Church Project. I announce this, not to prompt awe, but to set the stage for a confession. In 193 days, I had never noticed a large rock off on the side of the road, and how the late afternoon sun cast shadows of grass blades onto the stone. It was humbling to make this discovery, and to begin to appreciate all that I am still missing — all that still awaits to be explored and experienced. And this is only a single dirt road, less than half a mile in length. How could we ever claim to know the world, were we to have a billion lifetimes to live in it?
