About a year ago, I was uncharacteristically early for an appointment (I'm sure my friends are nodding all-too-knowingly at that statement!), so after I arrived in the parking lot, I turned off the engine and took out a book.
But then I happened to gaze up and saw the tree pictured above. Stately and serene, standing tall at the end of a wild and pretty meadow.
Not your usual view from a dentist's office, right?
Instead of reading my book, I got out of the car and took several photographs of that particular tree and that particular meadow, along with other equally striking trees framing the natural space.
I loved the way that the trees and the meadow combined to form a perfect union. One part of the other, and both part of the whole. It was one of those happy coincidences that I was there to appreciate them.
And it's particularly fortunate that I captured all of my "Tree-Meadow Portraits" when I did, because when I returned to the dentist's office last week, the meadow was no more.
In its place were diggers and dumptrucks.
Piles of dirt and concrete blocks.
The line of trees was still there, thankfully. But the trees somehow looked forlorn next to the buzzing construction site.
And frankly, I was really sad that yet another natural place had been scraped out, chopped down, stripped bare, and prepped for commercial ventures. Probably for another nail salon or burger joint.
Why do we have this insatiable need to eradicate the natural in favor of the commercial? To put money above all other things that have value?
In our town right now, we already have far too many commercial properties that have been vacant for the past few years. We have construction sites that have been stalled in their tracks because not enough buyers were willing to put up the money to complete the jobs, after the woods had been clear-cut to make room for...oh, nothing in particular.
I thought of all the little things I didn't see in the meadow when I took these pictures. The birds that were filling the air with their songs. Some field mice, most likely. Dragonflies and butterflies. Plenty of wildflowers that I didn't get close enough to really examine. Probably a few rabbits. Unseen little creatures who had called this meadow "Home."
I thought about how Beatrix Potter used a large portion of the money she earned from her Peter Rabbit tales to purchase thousands of acres of undeveloped countryside in England, just so she could donate it all to the National Trust and safeguard its future.
I thought about something I'd just read within the past month from my "go-to guru", Thich Nhat Hanh:
"Our way of walking on the Earth has a great influence on animals and plants. We have killed so many animals and plants and destroyed their environments...We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on Mother Earth. The future of all life, including our own, depends on our mindful steps." (from The Sun My Heart)
As soon as I got home, I searched for these photographs of the meadow, just to prove to myself that it really had been there...once.
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If you have a digital camera (any type, including a smart phone) but don't know how to really use it to its fullest artistic potential, registration is now OPEN for my July e-course, "How to Take Better Photos of Nature and the World Around You." Click here for details and join me online in July!
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© 2014 by Joy Sussman/JoyfullyGreen.com. All rights reserved. All photos and text digitally fingerprinted and watermarked. Site licensed by Creative Commons.
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