Lately I have been obsessed with
dead trees. Not all of them, just the ones that leap out at me from a
field, a
riverbank, a
swamp, standing
alone in stark contrast to everything else. The ones that have been
struck by lightning are my favorites. They're charged,
electric; it's like the storm never left them. I take pictures of them because they spark something in me, much like thunderstorms do for
Saige. I have an entire roll of film filled with nothing but dead trees, nothing but smooth grey
stillness. I don't think there's anything quite as moving as
dead wood standing in mute defiance of the surrounding green, reaching up for the
air, the
blue sky, the
stars. When I see them I want to scream, or yell, or cry, or
whisper like the wind over a field.
These trees are wise. They have lived, they have died, and they are beautiful because death is beautiful. "Nature's fierceness" as Saige calls it, is never more evident for me than in something it has already destroyed.