Come Alive

There’s nothing like the feeling of dirt beneath your body. I feel it now as I look at this image. I’m brought back to the moment, lying on the forest floor, mosquitos buzzing around me, dirt and sticks and broken leaves that would stick to my hands, and arms, and any part of me that rested on the ground.

I miss these moments. These moments alone in the forest, pursuing creativity, even if it looks a little odd in the process.

I love the process. The process of generating new ideas, of sitting with those ideas to plan them out, of being in the woods and shooting alone with a camera, of following inspiration as it comes in the moment… And I love bringing those photos into Photoshop and creating something I couldn’t capture in our everyday world.

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken my camera out. I could give a laundry list of excuses, but none of them really matter.

Spring will be here soon. I can feel it. The air is getting warmer, birds are singing again, and there’s that distinctive scent of winter melting away.

I’m weary. But maybe that weariness should be an excuse to create, rather than to avoid it. Maybe you’ve felt it too. When life feels heavy, and you feel weighed down by a life that’s turned to dust, it’s hard to find the energy to put on a dress and trudge outside. But maybe it’s in the dirt that we come back to life.

I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m in nature. It’s been like that since I was a child. Roaming through the woods… being out on the water and walking on an abandoned swan’s nest… collecting rocks, and acorns, and fossils, and seashells… going hiking and expecting to sit on a cloud, and being severely disillusioned when I realized that was an impossibility. But just because something’s an impossibility in nature, doesn’t mean it’s an impossibility in our minds. And if we can imagine it, then through art, we can create it.

So I will create again in the dirt. It might not be today, but Spring’s coming, and with it, creation comes alive.