We Are Made One with What We Touch and See

Day 18

08 June 2009

A walk in the woods at 9am. Far better than sitting in a fume-filled, congested road, getting fed up, running late, and caught up in the rush to live.

On my way to the woods I heard a thump behind me. I looked around just in time to see a young doe running up the quiet road and into the woods.

Magical.

I got out of my comfort zone as far as the camera goes. Normally I shoot on AV mode but decided to go fully manual today. These images have had a bit of tweaking with curves, but not much. The shutter speed was at 1/40-1/50 second, it could really have done with a bit of flash, but I liked the low light levels in the woods, and I wanted to convey this.

My heart was singing as I walked through the woods, not another person in sight (apart from my son, who was sleeping in his buggy), listening to the birds, the sea, the rustle of the breeze through the trees, the smell of seaweed penetrating through the fresh morning air.

Life can't get much better than this! I feel so grateful and thankful. I was reminded of the poem below. Enjoy!

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See

We are resolved into the supreme air,

We are made one with what we touch and see,

With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,

With our young lives each springimpassioned tree

Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range

The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole

One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,

And mighty waves of single Being roll

From nerveless germ to man, for we are part

Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,

One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth

Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,

The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth

At daybreak know a pleasure not less real

Than we do, when in some freshblossoming wood

We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,

Or is this daedalfashioned earth less fair,

That we are nature's heritors, and one

With every pulse of life that beats the air?

Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,

New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,

Critics of nature, but the joyous sea

Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star

Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be

Part of the mighty universal whole,

And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony

Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,

And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be

One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years

Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,

The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

Oscar Wilde