Heroes Not Zombies

I took this photo over five years ago but it’s still one of my favourites. One of those photos I return to and spend some time with. It does more than please me. It brings back memories of that day. It activates connections I have deep inside. It inspires me.

What do I notice?

Well, the largest part of the image is taken up with rock, and just look at that rock! It flows and it folds as if it is pliable. But, take it from me, that rock feels as hard as ….. well, rock! It must take aeons to shape it like this. What shapes it? I’m not a geologist but it seems pretty obvious to me that the major creative force here is water. See the river rapids just beyond it? That lively, foamy, energy-charged flow of water? That’s the main sculptor here. Moment by moment, day by day, year by year, era by era, it persists, crashing against the rock, flowing over it, caressing it, smoothing it, shaping it.

There’s something else in that interaction of rock and water which is not so obvious from this image…..the water and the rock change each other. The content of the water is changed by the elements washed out of the rock. The direction, the speed and the force of the water is changed by their encounter.

The look directly in front of the rock at the log…..this log which is the remains of a tree which fell who knows how long ago and who knows where? It looks like it has been carried downstream to here. Is this where its journey ends? It too has been shaped by the river. It brings its own structure, its own patterns, but it now reflects the flow of the water and the markings on the rock it lies next to.

Each of these, the river, the rock, the tree, are interacting with each other, exchanging atoms and molecules, intermingling their energies, influencing and shaping each other.

In front of the tree is more water, this time less energetic, less white and foamy. This time pooling more peacefully, almost resting between the tree and some smaller rocks. And look at that rock in the front of the photo….a striped rock, a history of millennia running right through its middle, reminding us just how ancient this world is.

When I look at that striped rock I see a hint of a baby elephant. Now there’s one creature which has never been known to stroll through the forests of Scotland! But that’s how we function, we humans, isn’t it? We are continually being influenced by and interacting with everything we see, everything we hear, smell, taste and touch, and by all those invisible flows of microbes, molecules, and energies that continuously shape us, just as we shape them.

That’s what this image leads to, for me ……. a sense of the Life Force, the Creative Force of the Universe …… active, dynamic, flowing, shaping, influencing and interacting.

That delights me.