Photographer's Log Photographer's Log

Photo: (Copyright Mohan 2007)

Season’s Progress

Oh, these last Spring and Summer seasons have passed me by so quickly. Due to some health problems I wasn’t able to spend much time watching the gentle progress of my Valley moving from one season to another. This is the first time in eight years I’ve missed it. But, I did get out last week in time to see the slow turnover from Summer to Autumn.

The fields are beginning to turn their yearly shades from tan to reddish gold as their crops reach final maturity. Now begins my favorite time in Cambridge Valley: HARVEST. Apples are crisp on the branches; corn stalks are bleaching out from lush green to shades of yellow and beige; soy bean leaves tinge with reddish-gold; tomato leaves curl with frigid night air leaving plump, deep-red globes fully exposed, shouting their harvest-ready presence for all to see. The air becomes pungent with ripe crops, wild grasses and flowers. Everywhere all growing things are bursting forth with the last of their potency, before the inevitable blanket of Winter muffles the voice of growth. It is as if they know now is the time to give everything to their lives because soon they will sleep, and some will be no more.

We human beings are much like this. We carry on in our daily lives, not fully aware of the act of living, until something confronts us making our mortality finite in a way we’ve never experienced. Suddenly we, like September’s vegetation, start living with a gusto we’ve never practiced, ripening to a level of existence once unknown, but now so savored and cherished.

I once thought we human creatures fools to spend our time just inhabiting our lives with a simple daily appreciation, rather than draining each day dry. After a time I realized if we lived each day in a frenzy we would burn out quickly, shortening those very lives we so treasure.

What would it be like if the plants put it all out there in the first month? They would die out quickly, leaving us in barrenness and starvation. No, nature understands it all. Life is for living in gentle, slow progress. Each day is all that there is, yes, but living is not trying to outrace death. It is knowing there is an inevitable end to the state of life, but not dwelling on it. Living is confidently confronting each day on it’s own terms, knowing you’ve done your best, and, hopefully, finding sweetness and peace within to regain what wholeness you will need for the next “today”.

Even nature’s growing things harbor that “abandon to reason” until the moment they can let it all free, in keeping with their seasons. And, when their passing times come the vegetation is spent, nothing left. The vigorous greens become beige and brown. They took life in its inherent day-to-day pace and gave it their all at the end.

How lovely to me is this ear of silage corn, growing and drying out upon it’s fading stalk. A strong presence defining life to all who view it. It’s simple existence on South Cambridge Road marking the passing of another Cambridge Valley season. This is now one of my favorite photographs. Autumn is nearly upon us. The abandon of nature is beginning to transpire. Hopefully I’ll be out enjoying the beauty all season and so, also, will you.-June Mohan

To contact the artist, please send email to: junemohan@hotmail.com.