The British photojournalist, Sir Don Mccullin, described the winter deciduous trees on his property as looking like etchings, bare and black, silhouetted against the cold grey sky. Upon reflection, his description yielded a different mental framing for that which I had all too often passed off simply as bleak nakedness, or images befitting an Edgar Allen Poe story. With McCullin’s perspective in mind, the etchings metaphor now reveals different shapes for different species, the nests, squirrels, birds, parasites, symbionts and occasional cold weather adornments. Etchings need not be black against a grey sky; aspen and birch trees being exceptions, and the background need not be sky. And questions! Why do twigs and limbs branch off in a certain direction? How does a white oak “know” to build support for an increasingly-heavy horizontal limb, a limb that might not be seen by a casual gaze at a leafed tree? How is a tree structure so wind-flexible yet wind-stable? However, answers are not nearly so necessary as is “wonder” about a tree, whose every carbon atom comes from the atmosphere, a being who, unlike us, gives back to Earth - in spades. I’ve tried to capture some of that wonder in a separate gallery by the same name as this blog post on this site, all toned to create a mood of winter’s coldness, as in the example below.
Camden Park gnarled white oak against cloudy winter sky.