Secret Things
Oregon · USA
It might surprise those of you who are pretty familiar with my body of work that it’s not waterfalls
that I’m most drawn to in nature, but forests, even if the former is disproportionately represented
in my portfolio. Make no mistake, there’s nothing like the graceful dynamism of a thundering
waterfall, but the energies they entrain are very different, and in an increasingly boisterous and
unkind world I more often seek to align myself with the gentle tenor of leaf-shuffle in the trees
than with the cacophonous roar of falling water. Whereas waterfalls are about kinetic energy,
the forest is about potential energy--my own. Just as the foliage purifies the air, so to
does it help distill away the impurities of an excessively urbanized life. And it’s in the quiescence
beneath the boughs that my thoughts most freely wander to fill the available space, and
perhaps, with luck, a notion worth sowing finds fertile ground in which to germinate and bear
fruit capable of nourishing my soul long after I’ve left.
The forest is a place of endless wonder, and my curiosity is always piqued by life lived on a
different scale—that on the order of redwoods and Douglas-firs, hemlocks and cedars, maples
and cottonwoods on one end of the spectrum and of ferns and lichens, mosses and fungi,
insects and microbes on the other...not only in terms of size but also of time. It’s endlessly
fascinating to ponder the 30-plus-foot girth of a towering redwood bestowed by a half millenium
of growth, particularly when contrasted to the poignantly fleeting existence of the mayfly, whose
adult life is measured on the order of mere hours. There’s such grand mystery and power in the
complex network of life in an old-growth forest that I cultivate a sense of healthy insignificance
standing in its midst every bit as profoundly as most people experience when marveling at the
vastness of space in the endangered absence of light pollution.
The forest is a multilayered tapestry of Byzantine proportions, too immense in its many
magnitudes of scale and too intricate in its complexity to ever be appreciated and celebrated to
the full extent that’s it due. But while the canopy precludes every bit of sunlight from reaching
the ground, every now and then enough breaks through to highlight a small sliver of the beauty
that lies within, and in the process it often confers wisdom upon some issue I might not have
otherwise recognized as a significant encumbrance in my day to day life. And, just as in life, it’s
that ever-present potential that beckons me farther into the woods, even if I can never be truly
assured of all that lies beyond.
