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The 3 Most Precious Resources of Life

August 11, 2015 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life,
I should say books, friends, and Nature; and the greatest of these,
at least the most constant and always at hand, is nature.

Nature we have always have with us,
an inexhaustible storehouse of that which moves the heart,
appeals to the mind, and fires the imagination—
health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect, and joy to the soul.

To the scientist Nature is a storehouse of facts, laws, processes;

to the artist she is a storehouse of pictures;

to the poet she is a storehouse of images, fancies,
a source of inspiration;

to the moralist she is a storehouse of precepts and parables;

to all she may be a source of knowledge and joy.

-John Burroughs, The Art of Seeing Things

I’m spending my days mining the storehouse.

It’s funny how no matter how late I stay up here, I’m up with the birds morning. Something about the quality of the new light so close to the horizon demands that you rub the sleep from your eyes to witness it, and I have never, ever walked the beach close to sunrise and not seen something worth witnessing. It’s the ultimate creation of white space in which to highlight and experience wonder.

Only three weeks remain of the kids’ summer vacation; Jake’s last summer as a child and the first beach week in years and years that I wasn’t working while trying not to disappoint my family.

Savoring every moment.

The Song Sings Itself

August 5, 2015 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

In summer the song
sings itself

-William Carlos Williams

When we first moved here from the city it was late March and we were struck by how quiet it is. Although we do have neighbors, they’re not nearly so close as they are on a city street, and a line of trees on all sides buffer sound.

There’s not a constant stream of traffic, the lyrics from blaring stereos escaping from open windows, the bass turned up so high sometimes that you can sort of feel the car coming long before you see it. There’s no beeping from impatient drivers when the car in front of them doesn’t move quickly enough when the light goes green. No incessant sirens from the firehouse a few blocks down or on their way to the hospital half a mile away. No combatant couple going at it every weekend like clockwork, muttering and yelling until someone gives up and reports a domestic abuse or noise violation so that we can all get some sleep.

Peace. Silence. That’s March.

Summer is a whole different thing. I wake up to the house wrens feeding their babies, a cascade of warbling notes like a bubbling fountain, a chorus of fainter song responding in excitement or hunger. The crows hold a meeting in the trees outside my bedroom window, sometimes hopping down to pace the ground while they state their case. A pileated woodpecker laughs and drums away. Sometimes a squirrel gets all riled up and starts scolding. Morning is my favorite.

Once the sun gets nice and hot though, the birds sensibly settle down for naps and all I hear is insects. Bees and dragonflies drone by. And all day long, all night long, the grasshoppers, crickets, cicadas and katydids are hard at work. It’s constant, unrelenting. In mid-July they haven’t started yet and I’ll wonder where they are; by the first week of August I can’t believe I was looking for it. It’s SO LOUD, crazy making, wave after wave after wave of drawn out clicking and buzzing.

Perspective: I don’t miss the sounds of the city. And I know that pretty soon the robins will be at it and they’re downright annoying to hear all day long. After that, the leaves will turn and fall and the winds and snow will come and I’ll be counting the days until the hot and hazy days of summer return.

So I’ll try to enjoy the sounds of the golden afternoons while I still have them; savor the sunshine warming me all the way through, the delicious respite of a cold sweaty drink or unexpected cool air washing in at night.

It’s hard though. Goddamn those bugs are loud.

Photo of the Day: Spinning the Fabric of Living Matter

August 4, 2015 By Robin Strong Elton Leave a Comment

Plants do toil—

they spin the fabric of living matter.

-E. J. H. Corner, botanist & mycologist

When I first started blogging on this site, I shared a photo every day with a quote. Sometimes the quote jived perfectly with the photographed subject matter; sometimes I had to explain the train of thought that linked them together in my mind. Sometimes I sort of meandered and made a new connection while I was writing— a weird little surprise from my subconscious.

Anyway. I did this for a couple of reasons:

a main focus of my blog was opening my (and hopefully your) eyes to “wayside sacraments“— the little miracles that are scattered everywhere you go, but especially in your own backyard.
I had just moved from the city to not-quite-but-close-enough-to-be-called-country and I wanted to document all the flora and fauna; we called this bit being “backyard naturalists.”
I’m a lifelong hobbyist photographer and I wanted to make sure I took the time daily to practice and strengthen my photography and editing skills.
I had this huge collection of quotes that I’d been accumulating since high school on index cards, notebooks and Word docs and I wanted to share them.
My freshman year English teacher told me to “write every day” and it seemed like an easy enough way to ensure that I did.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped, and other sorts of posts took their place; the kinds that research informed me were the best to write to build an audience.

It happened slowly; first I dropped down to just Wordless Wednesdays, although I don’t think any of mine were ever truly wordless. Then it was Sundays, I think. Then just whenever I happened to have a shot I particularly liked.

It just seemed silly, I guess. Blogs had evolved until they were websites, not journals, and it felt childish to insist on continuing on as I had started as a newbie blogger, knowing nothing. The types of posts I was supposed to write were and continue to be fairly successful, but my desire to write them stalled.

It wasn’t fun anymore. I wouldn’t say I had writer’s block; I had a million things I wanted to write, yet no desire to write them. The honeymoon was over.

I just started blogging less and less. I was busy. I was working, and writing pretty much full time. More than full time. The last thing I wanted to do after finishing work was stay on the computer.

The thing is to become a master
and in your old age to acquire the courage to do
what children did when they knew nothing.

-Hemingway

I wouldn’t say I’m a master— not by a long shot— but I’m experienced. I’ve been at this since 2005, which in internet time is a danged long time. I’ve gone on to blog for other sites, wrangle online communities, develop content calendars, write copy for 17 newsletters (every week!), craft daily deals awash in poultry puns, become really good at SEO, edit guest posters, build social media channels, host Twitter chats, assist in social media marketing campaigns, wrestle analytics, and launch three more sites of my own beyond this one.

And now, for the life of me, I’ve been struggling to return and apply all that to this site.

I’ve decided the reason I’ve been struggling now is because “all that” doesn’t apply to this site.

I created this site out of my love of nature and my passions for photography and the written word.

I did it out of passion. I thought it would be fun.

Let’s try an experiment.

I’ll still write my informative posts, my reviews, my rants.

But first Imma gonna do what I wanna do: post my pictures, share my quotes, spin my stories into living fabric.

It’s what I did when I knew nothing about blogging.

OK?