Welcome to Friday. A weekend! Gratitude for another day. The simple beauty of dawn drifting towards the fullness of the day, weather becoming whatever it will. The road beckons, cares and worries in the rearview mirror. Miles away. There are many opportunities in the Smoky Mountains to let the road carry you away. Even some…
It’s another Spiritual Sunday. Today we are in the Deep Woods. Something about being among Big Trees speaks to a person’s soul. If you’ve ever stood in a grove of California Redwoods, you know the feeling. They’ve lived for so long, and withstood so many of nature’s hardships. They tower above their peers, leaving you…
I’ve noticed that lichen seems to come alive in the winter. In the Smoky Mountains, lichen are everywhere, on boulders and rocks and tree trunks. Maybe they stand out in winter because they are not competing with the lush green foliage of summer. In any case, wandering the quiet winter trails, the lichen really jump…
It’s Philosophical Friday once again. Today’s post is about making stacks of balanced stones as art and therapy. Some days you just need to go out and stack some stones. Right? Just head out along some creek and start wandering, looking for a good selection of rocks. The right color, right shape, ability to get…
Philosophical Friday here. Standing beside the Lynn Camp Prong, taking in the autumn splendor. It’s so quiet, so still. So many details to look at and appreciate. The way the leaves contrast with the beautiful gray of the rocks and tree trunks. The way the water makes endless currents and flows. The vine snaking down…
It seems like every year as we move from August to September, all the signs suddenly point to the end of summer. In these Smoky Mountains photos of buck deer in Cades Cove, you can almost feel what they feel. The easy days are slipping away … the days of fattening up on lush grass…
Some of the best Smoky Mountains photos of deer and bear that I have seen are those of photographer Brian Shults. I’d been wanting to meet up with Brian to get some tips on wildlife photography, which is a specialty requiring a whole different strategy than what I’m used to. But even though we both…
These are stressful times. So much strife in the world, polarized beliefs, and intolerance. Some days it’s too much for a sensitive person, and I have to turn off the news and turn off my thoughts. I use nature, and the grand expanse of Smoky Mountains at my doorstep, to recalibrate and rebalance. I feel…
In the middle of a hot summer, I can get restless, and feeling a bit confined within the boundaries of “normal” images. I start to think “outside the camera.” For example, a few weeks ago I wrote a post about camera movement during long exposures to create photographic Impressionism. Today’s Smoky Mountains photos have a…
Celebrating a fine Friday morning with a few thoughts gleaned from poet Wendell Berry: I come into the peace of wild things … for a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. We pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What…
The photo above and below show how densely packed life in the Smoky Mountains is. No sooner does a big tree fall than the recycling begins. Moss and lichens, then ferns and little pine seedlings. Death becomes life, and the old is made new again. In the Smoky Mountains, nothing is “cleaned up” unless it…
Ah, Smoky Mountains Dreamin’ … you wake up and feel like you’re in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Soft morning light, the cabins around you still shaking off the night, a little fantasy village. The Smoky Mountains off on the horizon, greeting the day in their own proud way, beckoning you. This is one of the…
Happy Friday! It’s been a while since we had a Philosophical Friday. Today’s thoughts are about living in an area like Gatlinburg that features great changes in altitude. Downtown Gatlinburg is about 1500 feet above sea level, yet only about 20 miles away, on the top of Clingman’s Dome, the altitude has climbed to 6,643 feet!…
I was walking along the road to the Ramsey Cascade trail in the Greenbrier section of the Smoky Mountains last week. Just out for a stroll, with my little GF1 attached to a monopod like it was a walking stick. Another photographer came out of the woods onto the road, and we exchanged a greeting….
Friday philosophy time combined with a photo tip … a two-fer-one! For me, so much of photography is about seeing the world within the world. Most photographs don’t jump out of the jumble in front of our eyes and say “here I am, take me!” Some do, but mostly not. Instead, I think of them…
Philosophical Friday here. A quiet mid-winter day. Here’s a poem from Robert Louis Stevenson, who must have been staring thoughtfully, or otherwise, into a fire when he wrote these lines. Armies in the Fire from Child’s Garden of Verses The lamps now glitter down the street; Faintly sound the falling feet; And the blue even slowly…
It’s Friday, and also my Birthday! So as I thought about the years slipping by, I thought about these two items … the blue hat and the winter boots. The blue knit wool hat pictured above was knitted by my older sister somewhere around 1980. Thanks, Anne! I’ve had it all this time, worn it…
Happy Friday everyone! I recently took a break from our craft fair and stopped in at the Gatlinburg Festival of Trees, at the Mills Center just after Thanksgiving. In the picture above you might be able to see my reflection in the ornament, with the trees all around me. Very M.C. Escher, isn’t it? In…
In addition to a newly paved loop road for the Roaring Fork in 2010, the Reagan Mill got a brand new flume to carry the water to where the mill once was. So, although it is pretty and adds to the charm along the Roaring Fork, it is really just a “flume to nowhere” because…
It’s Friday in Gatlinburg once again, and you know what that means. (enter the word “Friday” in the search box to the right if you’re new around here) I love this time of year. I think of it as “echoes of autumn.” The trees are nearly bare, but still there are a few leaves hanging…
It’s Friday again. Time to ponder whatever comes to mind. Like walking in the Great Smoky Mountains with your head pointed upwards. Watch the squirrels jump from treetop to treetop. Appreciate the soft sunlight filtering down through the canopy. Maybe spot a woodpecker at work. This is a stand of poplars. Probably took over the…
Several months ago I wrote a little thing about creating zen rock stacks near my home in the Smoky Mountains. There seems to be an almost universal relationship between man and rocks that is reflected in the creation of these zen stacks. Recently I traveled all the way up to the coast of Maine, to…
Philosophical Friday here again. Always something to think about. For example, once upon a time the problem was finding a needle in a haystack. Now you can’t find the haystack. When was the last time you saw one? Do you know what a haystack is? These haystack pictures were taken at the Mountain Farm Museum…
Philosophical Friday here again, and Friday the 13th no less. These pictures of the marvelous old pickup truck resting in glorious decay illustrate the idea that beauty and ugliness do not lie at opposite ends of a spectrum. Rather, there seems to be a circular relationship, where if you start out at beautiful and head…
Philosophical Friday again. This time it’s the classic situation that sometimes to go forward you’ve got to go backwards. The road up to Newfound Gap offers just such a case in point. The road climbs until it reaches a place on the mountain that is too steep for a road grade. What to do? Loop…
It’s Philosophical Friday again, and we’re continuing on with yesterday’s post into the creepy interior of the Palmer House. The image above might be crying out “What happened? Where did the time go? It seems like just yesterday that Jarvis and his wife were rising at dawn, rushing out into the Cataloochee sunshine.” If walls…
“The year’s at the spring, And day’s at the morn; Morning’s at seven; The hill-side’s dew-pearled; The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in his Heaven— All’s right with the world!” Robert Browning
I think fog gets a bad name. It’s typically about what fog can obscure: living life in a fog, the fog of war, the fog of depression. Well, like our neighbor over in the mountains of western North Carolina, Carl Sandburg, I think fog has delightful qualities. For example, in the picture above, a dash…
Another light snowstorm through most of the day yesterday, but not enough to close the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I drove up into the Greenbrier section and found a winter fairyland. So beautiful and dreamlike … I’ll have some more images soon from my roamings, but first a few abstract treatments….
The picture above is the footbridge leading to the Ramsey Cascades Trail in the Greenbrier section of the Smoky Mountains. Yes, it’s still cold and quiet around here. Another cold, snowy scene from the Greenbrier is below. But to warm things up on the waning days of winter, there’s a gallery of quotations down below….
I live in Gatlinburg TN, on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. The Smokies are a very spiritual place, and I attempt to capture some of that spirit in each of my photographs.
If you are in Gatlinburg, please stop in at my gallery .
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