My Nature Walk

This was the first picture I took on my walk, leaving my house. I was intrigued by the pile of leaves and moss that seemed to creep their way onto the pavement of my driveway, creating a puzzling juxtaposition of natural vs. man-made. While antipodes, the two come together as the leaves cross over to the suburban realm of the driveway, and the moss dusts the side of the pavement stretching like a bridge from one world to the other.

This picture is from an interesting point. I'm between my house and my neighbor's, but I'm also in a dense forest-- so this also reinforces the motif of industrial, man-made suburbia vs. un-touched nature that is so present in my pictures. What struck me was the ivy and moss creeping up the trees. It envelopes the otherwise naked trunks with tangled, yet beautiful life. I think this speaks to the things we as humans find ourselves entangled in. Everyone has their baggage, but rather than seeing the knots that can potentially suffocate, what if we saw the lush vibrance that makes each person exactly who they are?

Growing up in my family, allusions to famous Robert Frost poems would permeate the air of our home like potpourri. Thus, when faced with a path, whether literally or figuratively, the following Frost stanza comes to mind.

"I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference."

In a bleak, brown, and boring scene, the emerald moss on each of these logs vibrantly stands out as the only source of new life. The dead leaves beneath it serve as a reminder of yesterday, but the moss, which sprung from the dreary and constant rains of winter, gives the dying hillside a sense of renewal.

I've lived by this lake since the day I came home from the hospital as a newborn, and I've overlooked it from this spot in a thousand different scenes-- scenes of summer, when the sky rains down the joyous, comforting light of the sun, scences of winter, when the water freezes over and I poke through the snow and ice with a broken twig, and scenes like this, when gray skies, green grass, and dead trees line the shore. What I like about this picture is that, because the sky is drab and gray, the reflection of the trees in the lake is all the more evident. Isn't that true in life, too? When the sun is shining over us in the happy times, we often cannot see the reflection of what we have become in the placid lake of our souls; but when the sky is gray, it is all we notice.
Anyway, this viewpoint, no matter what the season is so much of my life. This view is where I'm from; and one day, when I live far away from here, and I tell people where I came from, this picture right here is what I will mean to describe.

These are some leaves at the bottom of the lake near the shore. The water was clear enough so that I could see through to the bottom, but the picture is still fuzzy because the actual objects I am photographing are far from the surface. To me, this was an accurate depiction of the human soul. A transparent person has clear water like this lake, but the essence of who he or she has been made to be lies underneath the "water" of things both good and bad in this world, whether they be the complications and confusions of his psychology, his past, present, and future, his sin, his physical needs, etc. The important thing with this picture was that it captured the treasure that sat at the bottom of the lake.

Usually Mt. Ranier, in full glory, towers above those foothills when I click my camera to capture perhaps the most beautiful view of all South King County. But on the day of my nature walk, gray-blue clouds conceal the mountain from view. While at first a disappointment, I now am grateful for those clouds. For, since I don't see Mt. Ranier in the background, and my eyes aren't drawn to it, I appreciate those foothills all the more. Their carved-out shape and blue and white colors remind me of how beautiful the place I live is. They remind me of how beautiful my life is. Often times in life, we take the foothills for granted. We ignore them, and our eyes are drawn to the mountain. Sometimes we see other people's mountains, and envy them. But we fail to see the beauty of our own foothills, that add a richness to our lake-scene of a life that nothing else could.

The light seeped through the heavy rain clouds and I breathed in the cold, damp air of December, looking this scene over; and I thanked God for the foothills.

Prose Meaning and Total Meaning-- An Analysis of Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."

This poem, in total meaning, deals with the juxtaposition of obligation and desire. The speaker is torn between the "promises [he has] to keep" and his peaceful pause in the "lovely, dark and deep" "woods" as he admires the natural beauty around him. In the end, repeating the line "and miles to go before I sleep," he ends up choosing obligation over his serine observance of nature, or at least repeatedly reminding himself of these unfulfilled responsibilities.

The minute prose meanings within the text lend the total meaning its significance. Each element Frost uses to create the tranquil winter scene in the forest builds up, entranzing the reader into the narrator's peaceful world, until he is let down-- only to realize this moment of bliss, watching the snow fall in the perfectly still forest, must end. For instance, the iambic pentameter of the poem seems to lull the reader into the speaker's trance, ultimately creating a peaceful, unhurried tone, which contrasts the last stanza, a reminder of pesky obligation. Secondly, the sensory imagery of "the sweep of easy wind and downy flake" allows the reader to share in the narrator's experience, hearing what he hears, and acknowledging the utter silence he experiences in this picture of serenity.
In contrast to these blissful images, the last stanza disrupts the speaker's trance, reminding him of his "promises to keep." For example, the first three stanzas use the rhyme scheme, "aaba, bbcb, ccdc," but this pattern breaks in the last stanza-- "dddd"-- almost as if the societal obligation the speaker faces is repeatedly poking him, disrupting his dream-like moment of tranquility. However, having said that, the last stanza maintains iambic pentameter, which lends the poem a unity that brings these two states of mind (obligation vs. desire) into a single moment. There is significance in this brevity too. Frost depicts the conflict of an instant, the internal struggle of a second, the experience of a few minutes in the woods. He takes a trivial life experience, and creates depth from it.