I have been going to this place for many and many a year, since long before my father and I brought my mother and my brother there one day last year to set them free forever. My youth is bound to this place along with a rich natural connection that is now so powerful as to feel like tripping when I visit. It is awesome.

I was called there today. I woke up in a hotel in Keene NH, and soon after I knew the visit had to be made. A very long day, but one I could never have refused. I saw a Diamondback Terrapin female on a nesting trip at the start and lightning bugs at the end. They were the candy, but perhaps not the true reward. It was the sort of day when I knew early on that I was not quite up to the journey, and I was extremely grateful to find a decrepit piece of pine deadfall that seemed to be just up to the task of serving as a meagre walking stick.

These journeys represent highly sacred moments to me. I truly believe that I will receive knowledge during the course of them, the sort of knowledge that cannot be predicted. The sort of knowledge that comes from the same place as a dream. The unknowable comes to mind through a process of faith. Light shines on a rock, you pick it up and mark it evil. A voice tells you that you do not have to carry it. You put it down, and moments later you see a perfectly heart-shaped rock beckoning.

Today I am not sure that I was successful in interpreting signs. I know that I was called, but I am not entirely certain why. I have an idea, though. I made it all the way to the point where half my family remains. I wanted to hear, but I heard very little. I did not hear nothing I am sure, but nothing did I hear that gave me to understand my calling. I felt called back to the wooded areas I had passed through on my hike earlier.

In the first wooded area I felt a distinct notion that I was safe. I knew that I would see the red ball of the setting sun through the trees eventually, and that I would emerge to see the sun set itself. So I did.

In the second wooded area, however, the sun had set many minutes earlier, and I soon became oppressed with a feeling of unease that rivaled any I have ever felt before. My hair was standing straight up from my head I am sure. I could not account for it. I had to keep looking back over my shoulder even though I had not seen a living soul for several hours. I knew that no one but myself, no corporeal human form, was about the land. I tell you that if it was not evil, it was certainly an unknown entity that made my skin crawl. I found in the very most oppressive moments that my decrepit walking stick grew in stature. I leaned on it with a will.

I emerged to the final long salt marsh section that preceded my arrival at the car park, and breathed a sigh of relief. I was in fact rather glad that the anxiety of the wood had propelled me through a phase of extreme exhaustion. I do this regularly, especially at this time of year. I push myself far beyond comfort in some insensible pursuit of enlightenment. I seem to have faith in my ability to follow signs that I do not yet know how to read.

I made it out of the second wood, well into twilight, exhausted, and wanting very much to sit down and walk no more. That would not be a good choice, however, because my mantra had become the phrases I had heard back at the point when I was striving to listen, “I believe in Good. I am strong”. I could not in good faith sit down with fatigue and still chant that I was strong.

I had a walking stick in my hand that I had picked up hours earlier in my first passage through the difficult wooded area that I had carried since. Now it was powering me along, a virtual staff despite its terribly fragile state, the poor old pine deadfall. I came to realize moments before the lightning bugs rewarded me with their candy of sight that the walking stick itself was the lesson. It had been in my hand all the way through the uncertainty. It had grown in force as I had kept it to my being, using it, taking it for granted.

It has been said that you never miss a mother’s love until it is gone. I know this because my mother told me those words herself! She left nothing to chance. She taught me everything she could, and that is why I do not in fact miss her love because it is not gone as long as I have faith that it shall be there every time I go to see her.

The rope of my vision is golden. It is invaluable at least to me. It connects the images of my wandering creative essence in a virtually linear evolutionary process. There are no missing links in a rope… not to the human eye. Links are the components of the chain that acts as a technological construct to imprison the creative spirit. Rope is an organic representation of infinite possibilities connected by a singular unified purpose. That is what my art is based on. Being human, I am incapable of defining a singular unified purpose, however, and realizing this unalterable fact I credit my vision to a power I am fortunate to channel. I am not Midas. I cannot make gold. I can only tap into its source, and draw it out as long as I know the truth of it.

My understanding of art is this… it does not belong to anyone. Not the creator, not the viewer. It belongs to this unknown power that speaks to us. It tells us what to do. We cannot hear it, but we can know its meaning by shutting our minds to ourselves. We impose our will upon it foolishly. We cannot argue with it, because it does not defend itself. It is a chimera. Believe this, there are no artists, there are only pioneers.

I am not sure that asking me to write about art is a good idea. Asking me to ruminate upon the nature of things is like turning the goats loose on your lawn. Before you know it, they’ve eaten the trees.

This article began life as a musing upon the art of seeing, but then started leering stubbornly towards a treatise of the creative process. Creation is life. Growth is life manifested. Creation feeds off the
self-perpetuating enigma of growth, thoroughly, like a goat.

As a photographer I am engaged in the practice of capturing instants of light. I see things that others do not. Like a man who believes in ghosts or UFO’s, I feel compelled to record evidence of that which I see for a purpose I am unsure how to define. I gather proof that the mystery exists, but make no attempt to solve it. Perhaps a solution might enable the corruption of some unknowable beauty.

Looking at things with our eyes and processing the visual information is something most of us do all day long. Seeing is more of an event characterized by the sudden realization that we have proof of the divine nature of vision right before us. Like a rainbow, the lazy man’s lobster of enlightenment, a vision of magnitude has the power to stop a person in their tracks and feel both empty and full all at once.

Photography has a universal appeal in that it affords anyone the opportunity to exploit a technology with a feeling of confidence. We imagine that we now have a device that is fully in our control, and that we have the power to use this tool to record evidence of things we have seen. Can we truly? How often does a photograph stop a person in their tracks and cause them to marvel?

Skill is an ego trip for people who do things. Those content to simply be, have no need of skill. In order to learn photography one must obtain skill. In order to see, however, one must learn to be. The pitfall of pure skill is to achieve pure nothing. One must have a goal which justifies the acquisition of skill. It is the belief in the beauty of all things truly seen that provides my rationale for acquiring the skill of photography.

As a badge, as a shield, or as a talisman, the camera may be carried religiously. For those who care enough to see, it should be carried as a divining rod. Used properly, the camera is an instrument through which meaningful energy can pass through undiminished. A camera cannot see, however, and it is important to believe that we do not need the camera to see.

I have become obsessed with the act of creation. I make photographs and electronic music professionally, and I dabble in an evolving set of creative endeavors from performance to writing. I stir the pot. I program chaos into my life for the sole purpose of stimulating new shoots to nibble on, for there is nothing quite so tasty as a budding green concept.

In order to feed an unyielding appetite for new growth I am cultivating an increasingly wide variety of creative flora with the belief that diversifying my diet will yield a fuller, more rewarding understanding of the nature of my surroundings. In other words, I feed imaginary goats.

Stubbornly, the symbolism won’t be ignored. Pragmatically, hungrily, the goats return to munching.

Diamondback Terrapin hatchling on Cape Cod

I spend as much time as I can hiking out on Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable. It is one of the most beautiful places not just on Cape Cod but anywhere, and it engenders a communion with nature in my mind that I have never found with such regularity. It seems that ach time I visit Sandy Neck I am able to tap into a spiritually rejuvenating wellspring of natural energy.

I first visited Sandy Neck in the company of a high school teacher named Peter Auger. He was a man instrumental in my pursuit of Biology as a discipline, and also in the development of my connection to Sandy Neck. Many are the words I could write about my time spent there from that first day until now, but I would just like to mention my visit yesterday afternoon.

Each fall, I look forward to walking out the Marsh Trail which somewhat crudely defines the ecotone between the Great Marsh of West Barnstable and the backside of Sandy Neck, a barrier beach. On that first visit with Mr Auger, I was introduced to the Marsh Trail and to the hunt for Diamondback Terrapin hatchlings making their way to the relative safety of the marsh. This they do primarily in September and October.

Yesterday, October 2, I was walking the walk when I came across a hatchling making its way along the Marsh Trail. I have never lost the thrill of finding a small animal such as this moving with purpose seemingly dwarfed by the scale of the landscape around it, the danger surrounding it, the mystery of its navigation, and the enormity of its mission. It is not uncommon to discover the tracks of dozens of hatchlings without ever glimpsing one of the little beasts.

These tiny terrapins climb their way out of a nest buried in the sandy face of a dune, and then never having existed outside the shell before somehow determine the way to the one place they stand a chance of survival, the salt marsh. As an active field researcher years ago, I studied these animals through all the phases of their reproductive cycle. I spent a great deal of time observing hatchling behavior and thinking about how they were able to find the marsh, because clearly it wasn’t random chance. They were hatched with ‘programming’ of some sort, and had the ability to use it in an adaptive process. Right out of the box.

I decided to spend my time yesterday watching the discovered hatchling for the better part of an hour just to see what it would do. For anyone who has ever done this sort of animal observation, you learn pretty quickly that your mind will inevitable wander off into areas of thought that will begin with the subject in front of you. The longer you watch an animal do pretty much nothing, the further along the path you will likely go.

I thought about how it had been nearly 30 years since I had last really watched a hatchling this way for this long, and it made me think about how differently it seemed I was perceiving this hatchling today versus another one back when I was a much younger person. I thought about whether this particular hatchling was in any way related to one in particular that I watched for hours long ago. I began thinking about the relationship between man and hatchling.

Finally, I was no different from the hatchling. We were on the same mission, with the same purpose, the same tools, the same mystery. The sense of scale, it being tiny and me being large suddenly seemed irrelevant when each of us was compared to what was around us. Believe me, this train of thought had left the station, I was on board, and I wasn’t getting off. Of course, I’ve got frequent flyer miles – or whatever they call those credits you get on trains of thought – having made this journey often.

The point of it all, I suppose, is that I have learned over time that without that sort of regular immersion in the natural environment I lose the connection to the true purpose of all things. If you don’t walk the walk, you can’t talk the talk.