The Gift of Good Land

None of the 100 directions my brain is going this morning seem suitable for a 300 word blog post. And so I resort to the thousand words a picture can conjure–in this case, one from last October’s Land Trust photo-sessions in Grayson County.

This shot was a peripheral–not intended for the piece we hoped to produce on the donation of land along the New River. But it grabbed my eye, more for the shadow than for the light, the way the umbra of a copse of trees spilled down across the meadow, like moon shadows on the snow. (Click for larger image and possible desktop picture!)

I had not worked on this image last fall, so discovering its untapped potential in July brought both the AHA! of discovery and the AH! of deep satisfaction–two strongly emotive reasons to keep one’s eyes open, to learn to see the compositions around us every hour, and to carry the camera, ready!

Title for this post is the title of one of the first books I ever read by Wendell Berry, who therein said among so many other things that grabbed my attention:

“I want to deal directly at last with my own long held belief that Christianity, as usually presented by its organizations, in not earthly enough . . . I want to see if there is not at least implicit in the Judeo-Christian heritage a doctrine such as that the Buddhists call ‘right livelihood’ or ‘right occupation.’

Being there on that gentle Grayson County pastureside with a camera, a good story of good Earth to be told and a beautiful October afternoon seemed very like “right occupation.” Still does.

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