My Friend Sally’s Greatest Teacher and Why I Believe Nature is Worth Preserving

Endurance ©Lynne Buchanan

View towards Heaven ©Lynne Buchanan

Broken Heart ©Lynne Buchanan

Sally's Tree ©Lynne Buchanan

I recently visited my friend Sally, a wonderful woman whose path I was fortunate enough to cross in Scotland and who invited me to stay with her on my way west.  While I was there, she asked me if I wanted to meet her greatest teacher.  Of course, I said yes.  We went out into the yard and she showed me this unbelievable pear tree.  She calls it Le Pere, the French word for father, because of all the wisdom it has imparted to her.  As we walked around the tree, she showed me where the tree had to be cut back after Andrew, spoke of the damage caused by Katrina, and then mentioned the devastation wrought by Isaac.  Those were just the big ones, she said.  The tree survived several other hurricanes with minimal harm.  Le Pere was one of a pair of pear trees that were on Sally’s property when she bought the house.  A Cajun man told her that both trees would die, because that’s what pear trees do when their caretakers die or move on.  In fact, one of the trees did die soon after, but Le Pere did not give up.  After Isaac, Sally thought that Le Pere was going to go too.  Then she said the tree spoke to her and asked her to clean out the rot filling the cavity that was hollowed out from all the damage.  Sally cleaned and cleaned that cavity, though she had no experience in rehabilitating trees.  The tree slowly began to revive and this year there is a lot of new growth.  Miraculously the tree still bears fruit.

As I spent time with this tree, I was so impressed with its energy and perseverance and willingness to offer its gifts of fruit to the world despite all it has suffered.  The tree was like a metaphor for the earth.  Our planet has been harmed in countless ways.  Do we just ignore what is happening and let it rot more?  Should we let the injuries fester and kill any remaining life?  Or do we step up to the call and begin working to clean out all the gunk, the dirty energy that is wreaking havoc on ecosystems and causing the waters to rise and fires to burn.  Our planet is so miraculous and there is much it can do to heal itself, if we just get out of the way and stop interfering by unnecessarily polluting it with fossil fuels, fertilizers, and other pollutants. 

When Sally worked to heal the tree, it was also healing her.  I sensed that from all the healing I received by just being in the presence of this wonderful manifestation of being.  Working with nature brings us all into greater balance.  We find our right relationship with the universe and whatever we give to the earth it gives back to us.  Please join me in honoring Le Pere by finding ways to help clean out the rot in your own backyard and ask nature what you can do to help heal within and without...

Davis Bayou, A Delicate Balance

Dusk at Davis Bayou ©Lynne Buchanan

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Davis Bayou Vegetation ©Lynne Buchanan

Ominous View from Gulf Islands National Seashore ©Lynne Buchanan

Three nights ago, I camped at Davis Bayou in the Gulf Islands National Seashore.  Walking along the boardwalk over the bayou was so peaceful as the day came to an end.  The water was still and and the varied subtle colors and textures of the grasses and vegetation were intriguing.  The pace of my existence slowed down and I was content to just take in the sights and smells and be with nature in this little haven away from it all.  As the sun set, it grew darker in the bayou and I made my way to the last light by the coast near the visitor center.  I climbed up onto a picnic table and photographed the view.  Standing on the Gulf Islands National Seashore looking out to one of the stilt town's that has grown up around the oil rigs was a little disturbing.  On the one hand, the twinkling lights proved to be a nice element in the background.  Yet, at the same time, it is the oil industry and dirty energy that is threatening our coastlines through accidental spills and rising waters caused by climate change.  The bayous along the Gulf Coast are such gems and deserve being protected.  I was very grateful to be able to enjoy that evening and hope they are not lost, so that others might be able to enjoy them too and experience the profound peace they bring to one's soul... 

The Beauty and the Heartbreak of Wakulla Springs and Wakulla River

Wakulla Fragonard ©Lynne Buchanan

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Wakulla Alligator ©Lynne Buchanan

Source of Wakulla Springs ©Lynne Buchanan

Eelgrass in Dark Water ©Lynne Buchanan

I took the boat trip from the lodge along the Wakulla River the morning after I arrived.  It was beautiful and heartbreaking.  The ranger, who had worked there for eleven years, said in many ways the river looks just liked it did when Columbus came.  Edward Ball, who founded the park, erected a gate to keep recreational boaters and others out of the park.  Though he was taken to court over this, he was so wealthy and had so much political influence that the fence stayed.  There are no trails and the only way to see the section of river right by the lodge is on ranger run boats.  The banks are pristine wilderness with cypress trees, pickerel weed, and other native plants.  There are many birds and alligators and we were able to see nests up close.  Steam was rising off the river and it was very mysterious and transported me to a different time.   When I got a glimpse of the small, wild creek off the Wakulla River in the first photograph, it made me think of a Fragonard painting.

Yet, despite all the beauty we saw, I was also very saddened.  The ranger said they used to run glass bottom boats to the source of the springs every day all day.  He said now the water quality has been so compromised that there are only about two weeks a year that the water is clear enough for them to run boats there and then only a couple of times a day.  When we had completed our return trip along the river, we passed near where the 180+ foot deep spring comes out of the earth.  You used to be able to see way down to the bottom, but now that is impossible since the water is so cloudy.  The ranger said the damage that has been caused to the springs by nitrogen from fertilizers and other pollutants is so severe that he doubts we will ever be able to get the springs back to full health.

I asked the ranger about the dark water and he said it was even darker than usual from all the rain, since it causes the black water of North Florida rivers to leach into the springs. It is not just the dark water that is the problem though, it is all the pollutants that are carried by our rivers that find there way into the springs, even though the immediate area around them has been protected.   In Eelgrass in  Dark Water, you can see the tannins from the rivers as well as algae blooms on the bottom of what was once white sand.  As rainstorms become more intense due to climate change, the damage done to the springs of North Florida will increase.  It was incredible to me that the water could be so affected when these springs are pumping 200 to 300 million gallons of water a day.  The springs and rivers of Florida are in critical condition and we are in danger of losing these valuable natural resources if we don't take action.

Gratitude for the Journey

Eelgrass ©Lynne Buchanan

Wakulla Springs at Dusk ©Lynne Buchanan

As the sun was seting on the first day of my adventure, I was filled with gratitude for existence and the mystery of life.  I had set off from the doctor’s office after hearing good news regarding a recent health scare.  The whole drive up to Wakulla I was noticing more details of everything I saw along the road, as if suddenly the whole world was more vibrant.  I was listening to Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon and his descriptions of what he saw driving the back roads inspired me to get off the Interstate near Tarpon Springs and drive through Homossasa Springs, Crystal River, and Otter Creek  before crossing the Santa Fe and heading west through the forests to reach my destination. 

When I arrived in the State Park where the lodge is located, I went down to the springs right away.  The water was very dark because of all the rain.   The sea grasses were still evident below the water, though typically they are much more visible.  (The state of the springs is actually quite tragic, but more about that tomorrow.  As it was the first day of my journey, I was focusing on the positive.)  I decided not to swim and instead went on a short hike to a footbridge that crossed a small stream off the main spring.  I stayed on the bridge as dusk settled in listening to the fish jump and warding off mosquitoes.  It was so peaceful, aside from the bugs biting, and the colors and reflections in the water from the sun behind me were subtle and warm.  I said a little prayer for being there, for being able to go on this journey, and for everything in nature that shares its energy and beauty with me.

Details of My Upcoming Journey

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On August 29^th, I will leave Sarasota on a three-month expedition across the country, including stops in the Florida Panhandle, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana (to see Glacier National Park while there are still some glaciers), and Nevada, before arriving in the Eastern Sierras and Mono Lake.  From there, I will travel to the Pacific Northwest, via Yosemite and Big Sur, where I will attend a personal writing workshop at Esalen, before ending up in Pacific Northwest.  The return trip is still in the process of being planned and will be more flexible.  However, as I will not be heading back until early November, my route will take me down the coast California and then across the Southern half of the United States in order to avoid wintry conditions.

This will be both a personal journey of spiritual and artistic discovery, and a voyage to record the effects of climate change on our rivers and the environment.  During my trip, I will attend several photography workshops in addition to photographing the wilderness with guides and on my own.  I will also interview river and water keepers, and anyone else I can arrange to speak with who is dedicating their life to helping preserve this beautiful earth.  I will endeavor to post a photograph and my thoughts and impressions each day on my Lynne Buchanan Facebook page, as long as I have Internet access.  My interviews with river and water keepers will be posted on my Lynne Buchanan Climate Leader FB page.

The interactive map shown here outlines my anticipated route.  As I travel, my wonderful assistant Tania will update the pins with my actual location, where I visited, and whom I have met with.   I encourage everyone to track me on my voyage and to post comments on my blog and my Lynne Buchanan Photography Facebook page.  I welcome recommendations of places not to miss and/or people I should try and meet up with to hear their stories.   There are so many champions of preservation who work diligently and quietly for no glory of their own, whose stories are inspirational and worthy of being shared.  Please check my blog on my website or at lynnebuchanan.blogspot.com for the most up-to-date longer posts, which I hope to write at least once a week.

For the past year, as the empty nest loomed on the horizon with the last of my children going off to college this fall, I have felt an increasing desire to see as much of our beautiful country as I can.  At first, my objective was to find myself and improve my art, as I enter this new chapter of my life.  I began preparing myself by working on an exhibition of the rivers in Florida, while my daughter was in her last year of High School.  This show became a turning point in my life.  Visiting rivers and contemplating their beauty and meaning from artistic, philosophical, spiritual, and social points of view helped me understand how valuable it is to spend time in nature and how essential it is for our psychological health in this technologically driven fast-paced, disconnected world we live in now. 

When the South Florida Museum asked me to present a two-hour lecture on my work, I realized that given the threats facing our natural environment from development and climate change, there would be no nature for me to spend time in and photograph without the dedication of preservationists and river keepers.  I asked Justin Bloom, the Suncoast Waterkeeper, to join me and help educate the audience about these threats and what we can do to keep our waterways safer.  For me, water is the biggest issue of all, since without pure, drinkable water there will be no life at all.  If we think the energy wars have been bad, just imagine the violence that will erupt when there is not enough water…   

Justin observed that bringing the beauty of rivers to people through photography and quotations from writers and thinkers throughout history was a way to motivate people to care that transcended pure facts and statistics and touched their hearts.   He said I should take my message on the road and consider traveling to more rivers outside of Florida.  In turn, after listening to Justin, I realized how much more I had to learn.  I was so impressed with Justin’s call to action and his dedication to spreading the truth about what is happening to our environment and protecting the area he has become a caretaker for.  Justin started his environmental work in New York, where the river keeper organization began under the auspices of Pete Seeger, and then spent several years working in New Orleans following Katrina.  Now the residents of Southwest Florida are fortunate to have him keeping watch over our waterways.   His valuable work made me want to learn what river keepers are doing across the country and contribute to the telling of their story through my writing and photography.

The more I learn about what is happening to our waterways, the more I understand many of these threats are directly related to climate change. I no longer feel right about living in denial.  This is why I have become a Climate Leader and have committed to help spread the truth about climate change, so we can influence politicians in our country to help pass a carbon tax and take a major step forward in reducing our dependence on oil.  If they were able to pass a carbon tax in Australia, we can do it here. 

Renewable energy and getting away from fossil fuels is what we have to focus our efforts on to save our waterways and the earth.  According to scientists, dirty energy is the single greatest factor contributing to climate change, accounting for 95% of the problem.  It is making the oceans warmer and raising the temperature of the earth.  As the ice melts and raises sea level, saline water encroaches on our rivers and the aquafor–a phenomenon that is already quite evident in Florida.  Seawater seeping into the Everglades is a huge threat to the drinking water of Miami, and even the newspapers are finally reporting the truth about that.  Storms are getting increasingly violent, flooding and dangerous fires are becoming the norm, and flora and fauna are being threatened as climate zones shift.  Scientists are recording all these changes, but they are repeatedly being silenced by corporate greed.  Lobbyists and corporations are controlling the media, preventing this information from reaching a public that would often rather remain in denial than face the reality of what is happening.  The problem is that the harm we are doing to the earth is more and more visible every day and is leading to the demise of our planet and the human species at a far more rapid rate than was ever anticipated.  Violent weather patterns do not care if you are rich or poor.  Their path of destruction is indiscriminate.  This is why it should not be a Democratic or a Republican Issue.  Climate change is a problem caused by humans that is affecting all life, and only humans can turn things around.  Many say it may already be too late, but that does not mean we should give up.  Without hope, we are all lost.

What gives me hope is the knowledge that there is a growing community of people working to protect and preserve our earth throughout the country.  As I travel across the country, I hope to meet as many of these individuals as I can.  Together, our power is exponentially greater.  Please let me know if you know anyone who is making a difference who might be willing to talk to me during my travels.  I am happy to donate photographs to help their cause and I will tell their story at my Climate Reality presentations.  It is local, personal stories that touch my heart the most, coupled with images of what things look like right now–especially compared to how they looked a few years ago…  Join me in loving this planet.  It is our only home.

The Power of Innocence and the Importance of Dreams

The Power of Innocence ©Lynne Buchanan

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The morning before I dropped my daughter and last child at college in New York City, I was taking a yoga class with her and this image from our recent trip to the Biltmore gardens in North Carolina came to mind.  At the moment I saw it in my mind's eye during meditation, I sensed this chain of nurturing feminine energy that came from my grandmother through my mother to me and which I was now sending to her.  I felt as if my bloom, as her mother, was fading away, as she is stepping into the full blossom of her life.  Yet, at the same time, I felt the presence of my own mother and grandmother so strongly in the room with me.  I knew that though our lives are changing and we are going in different directions, my daughter to college and me on a solo trip across the country, this supportive energy which comes through the lineage of the women in our lives endures all change.  It gave me goosebumps and made the loss I am experiencing a little easier to bear.

When the time came to leave my daughter and I saw how comfortable and excited she was to be at college, I realized she is embarking on an amazing new phase that will enable her to discover and manifest her deepest dreams.  It is at this point, when we stand on the brink of a new era in our lives that our dreams seem brightest.  They are so powerful and pure because our critical voices and the way little discouragements along the way chip at our hopes have not tainted our dreams yet–everything seems possible.  I am sure I have not always been the most perfect mother, no one is, but the one thing I have always done is try to nurture my three children in a way that helped reveal their talents so they could follow their dreams.  The greatest gifts I have received in life have been watching them do just this.  Now it is time for my presence in my children's lives to recede a bit, as they evolve more and more into their own unique beings.

Yet, this does not mean I need to wilt.  Instead, it is time from me to discover and manifest my own dreams, the ones that have lain dormant for twenty-three years as I dedicated my life to nurturing the dreams of others.  In a little more than twenty-four hours, I will set off on a solo three month journey across the United States to discover whether the nest is really empty.  I am hopeful that during this trip I will come to know my true self better and discover how I can be of more service to the planet, as I see and feel both the beauty and the destruction of the earth.  The latter has been painfully apparent to me in the past few days from the news coverage of fires in Yosemite, one of my destinations on the west coast and a national treasure. The ravishing effects of climate change have made me realize the timeliness of my journey and the importance of co-creating images that express the sublimity of nature. 

I invite you to join me on this journey by checking my posts here and on my Facebook page–Lynne Buchanan Photography.   Perhaps what I see and express through my photographs and words will spark some memory in you that brings you home to yourself or reminds you of the power of dreams.  You also may have suggestions of places for me to visit, places that touched your heart deeply and which you would like to see now but can't get there at the moment.   Comments are always welcome on all sites.  Dream on, remember gratitude, and never lose the innocence of being in the moment.  These are our greatest strengths, the source of true change, and the only hope for the future of the earth.

Living and Dying Every Day

The New Dawn Framed ©Lynne Buchanan

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Sun Burning Away What Was ©Lynne Buchanan

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Just before I left North Carolina, I received a message from a friend asking how I am as I have been dealing with some health issues the severity of which is presently unknown.   For some reason, I could not answer right away even though I am feeling great.  Then it came to me in the middle of the night: I am living and I am dying just like always, only some days it is a little more of one than the other...

One of the most poignant moments on my family trip to North Carolina that I just returned from was watching the sunrise with my daughter's wonderful boyfriend who recently enlisted in the Navy to be a chef on a submarine.  Later this week, I will be taking my daughter to NYC where she will be attending Barnard.  The whole trip was very bittersweet–spending this incredibly special time together forming even closer bonds and knowing our time together in such close physical proximity was nearing the end.  At times I was so happy to be with my family connecting in nature and playing games together, and other times sadness crept in.  I could tell the same thing was happening with Adam.  My daughter, as always, seemed brave and ready to cross the threshold into her new life.  She was likely entertaining all the exciting possibilities before her, and I know there are many.

As Adam and I sat on this rocky outcropping known as Sunrise Rock waiting for the sun to rise we were mostly silent.  At first, we were just waiting to see what would happen.  It was dark when we got there and we didn't know precisely what the sun would reveal.  The colors were subtle and there were some nice clouds on the horizon.  It looked like it would be a safe and gentle sunrise, one that made me think of possibilities and the joy of being alive.  In soft voices we commented how beautiful it was and how glad we were to be there.  Then, just as the sun was about to break over the horizon, bigger clouds started to collect.  I quickly switched to my 80-400 lens from my wider tilt and shift.  The drama was clearly the imminent sun and what was closest to it.  Looking through my lens, it felt like a fiery orange ball was about to eat up everything in its wake.  The miniature trees on the horizon were electrified.  The sky became swirls of oozing lava.  It took my breath away.  Before the new day could begin, before I and my daughter and her boyfriend can move into the new chapters our life, so much of what we have known must be destroyed.  Otherwise, there will be no canvas for us to paint new pictures of how we will live next.  It was exciting but in a way terrifying to watch.  We don't get to choose what will be burned away and what stays.  This cycle of life is more powerful than any of us individually.  Yet, it is still beautiful to watch even though saying good-bye is often heart-wrenching.

After the sun rose, more and more clouds formed and Adam and I made our way to the car to go to the local coffee shop.  By the time we left, the skies had opened up and it rained for hours.  I remembered the native American chant I learned about the gifts of the elements and the line "Let the beauty of the rain wash away your pain." I also thought how rain at weddings is supposed to bring good luck and hoped this was also the case for all new beginnings.  The rain was indeed purifying for me.  It washed away all but the enduring love I have for my family and everyone they share their love with.