Meditations

Rolling fields, open lakes, mountains and valleys make up the Palouse region of northern Idaho, where I explored as a child in the 1970s. When I started making photographs during the solitude of the 2020 pandemic so many miles and years later, I realized how deeply my soul connected with the road unfurling before me. The rhythms of the oyster docks brought to the fore how calming and meditative sounds of silence and the cool air on my face can be. I now live in a suburb of Seattle. When I travel – yes, jaunts back to the Palouse, but elsewhere, too – childhood associations with the smell of dry grasses, the taste of summer air, the distant hum of a tractor conjure feelings of home. I am fed by the intricacies of nature, how the beauty I encounter intensifies my grief for a lost loved one yet also my joy at the wonder of it all. Traipsing through mountains, hills, or floating on the water, my connection to nature expands my heart.