Hippie, Once Removed

"I take photographs, often while in my favorite places.  I don't know why I take these photographs, as if to chart the passage of time like a flip book, filling yet another volume with near identical snapshots.

I lean out onto the rocky outcroppings to capture the familiar, not-quite-right framing of building, lake, and trees.  My skin is cold in the early September air, but within me I have a heart which is warm, alive, and beating.

And hiking around, the soles of my shoes are worn.

And hiking around, my own soul is revived.

Around me the air is full, brimming with the scent of things nearly done living.  Inward I draw their spirit as it passes from the world, and exhaling I share the joys of summer given.  The leaves that remain lend a voice to the wind and it cries of change, sighs renewal, and proclaims the moving on of another year well-lived.  I hear it now, in a one-time performance, and will not forget it.

Why do I take pictures of the same things when they already fill album after album?  Maybe it is to fulfill the superstition.  Maybe capturing the spirit of life and holding it still in time will remind me that I was once young and there was a day when my wife and I held a devotional in the forest, and took communion with the wind in the trees.

I am here now, in this moment, breathing in the spirit of things which have existed only to pass on - to me, at this exact time.

*click*" -JB 09/05/11

I love trees, and I would consider naming a child River, Lotus, Sage, or Autumn - but I am not truly a hippie.  I am the son of a true hippie - a man who sought truth passionately and, I like to think, found it.  There is a freedom in searching, as you give yourself away completely to the process.  There is a freedom in finding yourself again, transformed.

Sometimes I feel that I have never had to search, but then I remove myself from the trappings of society and, feeling that I have found something of substance, realize that my search was merely quieter than some who have come before.

My father was a hippie.  I guess that makes me a hippie, once removed.