Everyday awe and enchantment in Daydreaming on the Porch

There is enchantment right in front of you, waiting for you to notice.
Janet Luhrs

Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
William Wordsworth

We do not see Nature with our eyes but with our understandings and our hearts.
William Hazlitt

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

I’ve been thinking about the term “awe” recently, particularly since it was quite the term to use in referring to the total eclipse which crossed our city after sweeping across the nation on Sept. 21. For a number of reasons I didn’t see the “totality,” but I did experience the quite amazing, even bizarre sensations of seeing the sky very briefly darken to night in the middle of the day then return to its normal mid-afternoon brightness. I knew what the totality experience “looked” like from all the YouTube clips I watched, etc. And I was bemused by the testimonials describing it as the “most awe-inspiring sight you will ever see in Nature.” “A life-changing experience,” according to some of the extreme devotees who travel the world to see them about every 18 months. “Put it on your bucket list. See it! See it! You must” they all exclaimed. Now I was annoyed. It was as if every other awe-inspiring sight in Nature, from small and hard to find to magnificent beyond mere words fail to convey, was somehow secondary to this once in a lifetime event. I couldn’t disagree more, and here is why.

Over the course of my life I have seen some of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders during my round-the-country road trips: the Grand Canyon, Yosemite Falls, the magnificent sea stacks along the Pacific Northwest Coast, the cascade mountains of Washington State. In Washington State ever since I first saw it, the most awesome site to me was 14,000 ft. Mount Rainier. When I first visited the National Park where it is located in 1984, I was smitten with the wonder of its old-grown forests, waterfalls, glaciers and glacial-fed rivers. But most of all, the sheer colossal immensity of the mountain when you see it at the visitor center at the 5,000 ft. level. It’s the first place I’ll visit when I go back there one of these days. Closer to home, the huge trees of Congaree Swamp and Beidler Forest have for decades been a source of awe and gratitude to be living in a world with such beauty.

But now I can’t travel, even though I am retired, to see these splendid places in faraway states. But as much as I am drawn to the national parks and other such wonders of Nature, I have always been content to look closely when I return to again and again to my favorite parks and gardens near where I live: Caw Caw Park, Magnolia Gardens, Charles Towne Landing State Park, Beidler Forest, and Waterfront Park and Hampton Park in the city of Charleston. Not a week goes by that I don’t visit one of those places. They have become my sanctuaries in this chaotic and troubled world, places of momentary peace and rest that help carry me through the rest of the day or week ahead. There are beautiful forests to wander through at Caw Caw, Magnolia and Beidler with as much leisure as brief forays to them allow. As Washington Irving, one of my favorite writers, wrote many years ago,

     *There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.*

I always have my camera with me whenever I visit one of those magical places. I am always seeing something along the paths to photograph. Each visit is different in that although I may have “seen” the same places or flowers or trees or plants a hundred times before, I always find something different or unusual that’s worth marveling over. Late afternoon light casts a magical and rich glow over the woods, gardens and paths. Something pops out at me and I photograph it. I am always looking either down to the ground around me and to the sides or else up up in the sky to see the awesome beauty of clouds. In fact, one might say I even have an obsession with clouds. Sometimes I put my camera back in my bag and bend down to examine a flower, leaf or butterfly as it alights on a flower to sip nectar. This afternoon while at Hampton Park, one bed of flowers was filled with butterflies. I could’t believe my luck. I had so much fun taking pictures of them, trying to get just the right capture of their gorgeous, unbelievably beautiful wings, illuminated just right in the sunlight. I had some “wow moments” when I knew I had gotten just the shot I wanted.

Here are some photos taking over the past week or so, which capture those special moments when “what” I “see” in Nature is what really matters. It’s all there in our everyday worlds and experience if we only take the time and effort to notice.

I must mention finally that for almost 50 years my inspiration for observing and photographing the closeup, not easily noticed details of Nature, has been the photography of Eliot Porter. I highly recommend you check out his work. He was famous for his bird photography. I have many of his books. Go to images.google.com and type in Eliot Porter.

Some of my recent images:

Last updated September 04, 2017