NATURE'S BREATH
When I was a child my father would race home from his job as a firefighter, throw us into our aging Chevy station wagon and take us for a "ride in the swamp," as he called it.
Boy, how I hated that.
"I don't want to go!" I would scream at my father who was busy loading cameras and notebooks in the back seat." I want to ride my bike in town with my friends!"
Staring out the back window onto an endless Route 63, I thought my father rather odd. Why would he prefer to take photos of dirty, scruffy animals when he had the ultimate playground in the firehouse? I loved sliding down the bronze fire pole. Sometimes we were allowed to blow the truck's horn - a loud, droning scream that made you clap your ears shut with your hands. We were allowed only one honk for fear of scaring the neighborhood into thinking there was a real fire in town.
So how did the wildlife refuge - the swamp - even compare in the slightest to that fun environment?
My brother and sisters were much more adept than I at naming Dutchmen's Britches in a thicket or defining the call of a nuthatch amidst a dense grove of trees at Swallow Hollow. I was bored and certainly not willing to sit still for endless hours as a woodduck mother coaxed her young from their nest in a hollow tree.
One day as we drove out of town I noticed a bright purple growth along the side of the road, which seemed to go on for miles. Its color was nothing short of brilliant. I asked my father what it was.
"That's Loosestrife," he said. "It's a weed that chokes out every other plant in its path. That's why you see so much of it."
"But aren't weeds bad?" I asked.
My father only shrugged. "Nature is funny that way," he said. "All I know is that it is beautiful."
From that point on I was intrigued. How could something as bad as a weed be so beautiful? Our trips to the wildlife refuge became more like a game to me. I joined my siblings in naming a flower by its color, recognizing a bird by its call and coaxing chickadees to eat from my hand when one is patient enough to outwait its hunger at the feeder. I came to sit for long stands of time waiting for the right moment my dad would catch on film.
I never became as good as my brother or sisters at naming this or that natural thing, but I felt as though I could at least hold my own. As I grew older, the thrill of the firehouse faded away. But the nature my father shared with me lives on as a constant source of wonder.
I dedicate much of what I create to him - a quiet influence on my artistic life.