Wanderings...

My Bags are Packed...

A good traveler has no fixed plans.

-Lao Tzu 

 I recently met with a group of people who will be accompanying me to Ireland next year.  None of them have been to Ireland before and they were bubbling over with questions, which is only natural.  Before I began to approach travel as pilgrimage, I too wore the somewhat heavy mantle of "tourist".  Schedules, agendas, "must see's" were most important and I made lists and lists of  lists.

   Now I have a totally different approach because I try to travel with a pilgrim's heart and not a tourist's mindset.  I make general plans and reservations but the minute I board the plane I leave all expectations behind.  I keep my heart and mind completely open to the serendipitous, the spontaneous and the spur of the moment.  I expect, no, welcome, the unexpected.

   My week down east was a perfect example of the unexpected.  Coming across the books by Brian Flynn reminded of the stone beach I'd visited 16 years ago on Grand Manan.  Reading the introduction I discovered there was such a beach right there on Campobello!  I asked the attendant and she showed me a map of the island where I could find these marvelous stones and off I went on a search that certainly wasn't on my "agenda".  The serendipitous, the spontaneous and the unexpected all at once!


   My friends and I will spend a week together next May in "John's house" in Ballyvaughan where I'll introduce them to that magical thin place, The Burren.  It is the first leg of my month long Threshold Pilgrimage.  (You'll hear much more about that in the months to come.) After a week in community, I'll leave for a solitary retreat to Iona and they will be on their own.  I've encouraged them to just wander.  To follow their hearts GPS and see where it leads them.

   I've always had this wild idea of going to the airport one day and letting circumstance and whim decide which plane I board and where I end up.  No plans, no reservations, no expectations.  I would simply  trust I'd end up someplace interesting and meaningful.  I would try to be like those ancient Celtic monks who would put to sea in their tiny curraughs with no rudder and no oars...content to let the sea take them to a place of its own choosing, not theirs.  This complete suspension of control is the ultimate act of faith I think.

Click on the lovely quote by John O'Donohue below to learn a bit more about these wandering Celtic monks. 

I would love to live as the river flows,

carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

- John O'Donohue

Slow Travel...

   Since photography's inception, people have been carrying cameras into the wilderness to record the things they saw.  In the 19th century it was quite a cumbersome affair.  Huge wooden box cameras and glass plates...it is amazing to consider how far we've come technologically speaking.  But with all our convenience and ease, in both traveling and photographing, I believe something precious has been lost.

Photographing the Train

   In the 19th century the journey was every bit as important as the final destination.  In Corrine Smith's book on Thoreau's travel to Minnesota, "Westward I Go Free", she describes in great detail the long and arduous train journey he and his traveling companion had to endure to reach their final destination.  What took them many days to do, we can now accomplish in a few hours in a plane.  We would fly over the land, 30,000 feet above everything that matters, while Thoreau slowly moved through the landscape discovering amazing things out the window as he chugged along the tracks.

   When I traveled in Scotland back in 2005, I took a train from Glasgow to Fort William.  I traveled in a restored steam train, the only steam train in the UK that makes regularly scheduled trips as a passenger train and not a tourist attraction.  It was an amazing experience. Since trains often travel through remote places, I got to see landscapes I would have missed if I'd made the trip by car.

The Engineer at Fort William

    As a child, my family would drive to upstate New York from our Eastern Massachusetts home.  It was a two day journey then because there were no super highways to speed our journey.  My mother would pack a lunch and we would picnic along the way and stay a night in a roadside motel.

   Yes, slow travel is a thing of the past but it needn't be.  Why not plan your own slow journey this year?  If you can't go by train, load up your car for an extended road trip.  Make frequent stops along the way and don't be in a terrible hurry.  Judge the success of your trip not by how quickly you can get from point A to point B but by how many new and wonderful sights you see along the way!

  



  

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry...

I wonder what photos Harold would have made?

  I just finished reading this delightful and inspirational book by Rachel Joyce.  It seemed fitting after yesterday's post to write a few words about this unlikely hero, Harold Fry.

  Now, Harold was not a photographer but he has a lot to teach the contemplative photographer.  The first, and perhaps the most important Harold-Lesson is to follow your heart even if it tells you something your head doesn't agree with.  Inspiration is often obscured and suppressed in the day-to-day living experience but sometimes there is a tug on your heart you must listen to.

   The next Harold-Lesson is to travel light. You need far less than you think you do. Each trip I make I seem to leave more and more at home. This includes my camera gear. I've pared down my packing to the absolute minimum...it is quite liberating!

   The final Harold-Lesson I learned, which I really always knew, is that traveling solo is essential for the contemplative photographer, even when you are forced to travel with a group.  When Harold is joined for a time by people eager to share his pilgrimage he finds the burden of all their personalities too heavy to carry.  This summer, when I traveled to France with friends I learned that in future, no matter where I go and with whom, I will rent my own car so I can travel solo during the day. I must be free to explore the world in my own way and on my own schedule.  Everyone travels differently.  I am no longer a "tourist" when I travel...every trip is a kind of pilgrimage for me.

   I recommend The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry for all of you who are seekers at heart. It will make you laugh and cry at the same time and you may find that from now on you too will no longer be just a tourist in your travels.

Tourist or Pilgrim?

Tourist or Pilgrim?

I stand at the edge of myself and wonder
Where is home? Oh! Where is the place
Where beauty will last? When will I be safe? And where?
My tourist heart is wearing me out. I am so tired of seeking
For treasures that tarnish. How much longer, Lord?
Oh! Which is the way home?
My luggage is heavy. It is weighing me down
I am hungry for the Holy Ground of home.
Then suddenly, overpowering me with the truth,
A voice within me gently says:
‘There is a power in you, a truth in you
That has not yet been tapped.
You are blinded with a blindness that is deep,
For you have not loved the pilgrim in you yet
There is a road that runs straight through your heart.
Walk on it.’
To be a pilgrim means to be on the move, slowly,
To notice your luggage becoming lighter,
To seek for treasures that do not rust
To be comfortable with your heart’s questions,
To be moving toward the Holy Ground of home with empty hands and bare feet.
And yet, you cannot reach that home until you have loved the pilgrim in you.
One must be comfortable as a pilgrim before one’s feet can touch the homeland.
Do you want to go home?
There’s a road that runs straight through your heart
Walk on it.

(Macrina Wiederkehr)

A Taoist Approach to Travel...

   Taoism is not so much a religion as a way of life.  It is a philosophy, the only indigenous Chinese philosophy, that serves as a guide for followers in their journeys through life.  As the name of this blog implies, I also see the possibility of translating Taoist teachings into my photographic practice.  I also find it especially helpful when I set out on my travels whether those travels take me a short distance from my home or around the world.

The Road Ahead - Inis Oirr, 2009

   I think the most important element of a Taoist approach to travel is to remove the blinders.  Blinders are used on horses, like the one on the left, to focus their attention on the road ahead.  Blinders keep them from becoming distracted by things.  I, on the other hand, want to be distracted! I don't want to be so goal oriented and destination focused that I miss what I am passing through to get there! Taoism asks us to live in the moment, to be present in that place at that time.

   On my way to the holy well on Inis Oirr a few years ago, I made the young man taking me there in his horse cart stop at least a dozen times.  He was more use to taking people directly to the spot and back in rather a quick trip.  I felt a bit guilty of depriving him of his takings so I told him I'd pay him extra for all these stops but it was worth it for me. 

   It's good to have some general goals when you travel but remember that they aren't written in stone.  Remain flexible and open to the spontaneous, the serendipitous encounter that will get you side-tracked...you never know where it will lead you and what wondrous things you might encounter. The video below is a great introduction to this approach to travel...

A Taoist Guide to Travel

The Pilgrimage of Annie Leibovitz...

   I would never have refered to Annie Leibovitz as a contemplative photographer. Her amazing and technically slick portraits of the rich and famous, the privileged 1%, have graced the covers of magazines for decades. Accomplished commercial photographer yes, contemplative photographer, a most resounding NO...well, maybe...

    I recently visited her exhibition at the Concord Museum entitled "Pilgrimage".  Here was a woman who, for many reasons, turned to contemplative photography as a way to rebuild and nourish her artistic soul.  I'm not sure she would use that label herself  but I found that the images she produced during her pilgrimage have all the metaphoric qualities of a contemplative photograph.  In fact, I can think of no more profound and evocative example of the power of the contemplative image to link us to the essential question of self-exploration than  the  Leibovitz's series simply because it is such a huge departure from what she is known for...what she has built her entire career on.  She turned her back on what had made her famous, as many past pilgrims have done, and went on an extended pilgrimage across America and England.  While some images, such as Georgia O'Keeffe's pastel box and Marian Anderson's dress, were truly stunning photographs, some are significant, I suspect, only because Leibovitz made them.  Celebrity, as everyone of us in the 99% category understands, has it's privilege.

Portrait of Annie Leibovitz

      
   "I needed to save myself...I needed to remind myself of what I like to do, what I can do..."
                                       - Annie Leibovitz

Emily Dickinson - Annie Leibovitz

   The importance of this exhibit for me is that it demonstrates the role contemplative photography can play for people striving to understand themselves and what motivates their lives and their work.  In many ways, "Pilgrimage" is a provocative self-portrait and a tantalizing peek into the heart of a talented yet unapproachable legend of the contemporary art world.  She seemed much more real, more humanly accessible to me after I left the exhibition. It also got me wondering what photographs I would include in a like exhibition...what are my personal icons? I visited Orchard House, the home of Louisa May Alcott, after I left the exhibit and saw two of the "icons" she had photographed. One, a little sofa with three dolls on it, I was told was reupholstered by Leibovitz because she didn't like the way it looked.  Again, the "celebrity thing".   It also made me wonder about her process during this project...how much her need to "control" the outcome, as she does in the portraits she makes in her studio, played into it.  In the end, however, the work speaks for itself and it was a pleasure to wander the galleries looking at this woman's journey to re-discover her artistic roots.
  
    The exhibition at the Concord Museum is open through September 23, 2012.  It is the only New England venue for "Pilgrimage".   After it closes, the exhibit  itself will begin a "pilgrimage" across America.  Try to see it if you can.  It is strikingly thought-provoking, especially if you know Leibovitz's past work, and it is a call to the contemplative photographer in all of us. 
   

   

"Inside Every Question is a Quest..."

"Pilgrims are poets who

create by taking journeys."

-Richard Niebur

A Young Robin at Mount Auburn

   I've always loved how Minor White referred to photographs as "functions" rather than "things"...verbs rather than nouns.  For White, the photograph was a catalyst, merely a step along the path of self-realization rather than an end in and of itself.  I've referred to my photographs as "open-ended questions".  These ideas are at the very heart of contemplative camera work.  We either make photographs to illustrate essential questions or we discover those questions after reflecting on the work which spurs us on to make more images.  Either way each image is but a part of a larger idea we are seeking to understand.

   In this summer season of movement, when we venture out of familiar and secure surroundings to embark on our individual quests, we must keep the essential questions in the fore front of our journeys; those questions that will give form and substance to the quest.  For me, one of those essential questions is how what I chose to photograph reflects some hidden part of myself.  "Am I my photographs?" For me the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"  This questions is always in my mind as I frame my images...does it reflect who I am as a person not just whether it makes a "nice" photograph. 

    The photograph above is of a young fledgling robin I watched on my recent visit to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He could barely fly and would hop cautiously along until he reached the edge of the stone and then he'd make that wonderful "leap of faith". Sometimes he'd fly a foot or two, sometimes just land on the ground but he kept at it; persistent in his effort to stretch his wings and explore his tiny world.  I thought it was a perfect metaphor for those of us who are intent on photographing our world in a contemplative way...we each make that leap of faith every time we pick up the camera and set out on our photographic pilgrimages. Will our photographs reflect the essential questions of our quest?  It was also a wonderful juxtaposition...young life in the midst of death...the beginning contained within the end.  I am always thrilled when I come across these kinds of pairings.

   The title of this post is from the wonderful book "The Art of Pilgrimage - the seekers guide to making travel sacred" by Phil Couseneau.   I've mentioned this book before but it bares mentioning again for I believe it is an essential text for the contemplative photographer and I recommend it for your summer reading list.  Ralph Waldo Emerson advises that we each make our own bible - our own collection of "sacred" texts - mine includes many lines from Couseneaus's inspiring tome.

Grief - Newton Cemetery

   It is so easy to get caught up in the experience of travel, especially if you travel with other people, that you become "snap happy".  "The difference between pilgrim and tourist is the intention of attention, the quality of curiosity...." writes Phil Cousineau. I would also add, ... and the amount of time you are willing to spend entering into a conversation with the landscape.  This book reminds you to slow down and savor the moment. He enjoins us, repeatedly, to "pass by what you do not love".  I would add that when you do find something that pulls at your heart strings stay with it long enough to hear what it has to say to you.  Only then make your photographs.

   In his book, Couseneau recounts a story of Ansel Adams at the very beginning of his journey as a photographer.  His mother wanted him to dedicate his life to his piano playing, not his photography. "Do not give up the piano!" she pleaded, "The camera cannot express the human soul!"  Adams paused for a moment and answered her, "Perhaps the camera cannot, but the photographer can."  I'm so glad that he followed his heart in this case.  It is all we can do in the end - follow our hearts and take that leap of faith!

The Well-Worn Path - Reflections on a Walk Through Walden Woods

   "The inevitable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

   I made my yearly pilgrimage to Walden Pond recently.  I have been coming to Concord, mostly in mid-Spring, for over 40 years.  It is my spiritual center, my hearts home and the first "thin place" I ever encountered.  I'm not alone in these thoughts. Thousands come each year to walk the paths around Walden Pond and to seek out the peace that Henry Thoreau experienced there over 160 years ago.  They also come here to practice what the Transcendentalists called "self-culture". For Thoreau, self-culture was spiritual growth and the cultivation of the soul. He built his cabin at Walden to more easily practice his own self-culture; I come to Walden each year for the same reason. Truly, I can't think of a better place for a contemplative photographer to spend an afternoon!

   Thoreau liked to go "sauntering" around Walden Pond.  It was a term he gave to walking as a spiritual discipline. The word is derived from the French, Sainte Terre - Holy Land.  A Saunterer was one who was walking in pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the medieval days. Fitting I think. He considered his saunters as his daily "enterprise and adventure", sure to reveal some profound truth to fuel is contemplations. For Thoreau, Walden Pond was his holy land; it has come to mean the same for me over the years.

"They that never go to the Holy Land in their walks...

are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds...for every

walk is a sort of crusade..."

Henry Thoreau

   Most of my prior trips to Walden did not involve photography.  I would just take my journal and my well-worn copy of Thoreau's book Walden.  This time I put my camera in my back pack...just in case.  I had no specific intention of photographing anything in particular that day but I found myself drawn to the "well worn paths" that criss-cross the Walden woods and over which I have "sauntered" countless times. 

   Every time I come to Walden I meet people from all over the world walking these paths. From groups of local school children to the elderly Japanese couple with their canes that I saw this time; they all quietly follow the trails to the site of his cabin and put a stone on the cairn there.  While some come just to enjoy a walk in the woods or a swim in the pond, many come to pay homage to the man and to his ideas.  All those reverent foot-falls have given the paths a smooth, hard-packed surface...like brown concrete.  The beautiful sunlight filtering through the not completely leafed out trees created multi-toned spots along the paths and gave me the inspiration to reflect upon why this yearly pilgrimage is so important to me and why it was time to begin photographing the place.

   It was one of those perfect Spring days.  The kind of day that makes you want to linger in a place forever.  As happens in most thin places, your sense of time can become suspended.  As I sat on the edge of the pond, reading my book and jotting in my journal, I watched a dragonfly dart in and out of a swarm of tiny insects hovering above the water's edge and before I knew it an hour had past.  I realized that this place has an almost mystical quality to it.  It isn't because it possesses some character of remoteness and isolation. In fact, I could hear, occasionally, the sounds of the traffic along Route 2 and the airplanes landing at Hanscom Field in nearby Lexington. Thoreau noted the same sorts of distractions when he wrote of hearing "the rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway" while he sat on his cabins doorstep.  Despite these modern intrusions, Walden woods  is still a singularly solitary place.  Here you can be in nature and still be within the context of the human landscape.  This is why people have worn these paths so smooth and why I continue to come here year after year.  It is a place to find the perfect balance in our modern world...solitude and society.  They seem to blend effortlessly here.

" He (Thoreau) does not advocate "dropping out", but a healthy balance between solitude and society, nature and civilization, materialism and a life of voluntary poverty."

Barry M.Andrews

Thoreau as a Spiritual Guide - page 19

   Do you have a place that you would call your "spiritual center"?  A place you feel compelled to return to again and again?  When you return to your special spot, take your journal and your camera and maybe some inspirational text.  Try to record the mystery this place holds for you.  What makes it, for you, a place for "self-culture"?

   

"This spot where you sit is your own spot.

It is on this very spot and in this very moment 

that you can become enlightened.  You don't

need to sit beneath a special tree in a distant land." 

Thich Nhat Hanh - Zen master

If you haven't found your "spot" yet, is this the summer you seek it out?  I wish you joyful "sauntering"!

"May the stars light your way

and may you find the interior road.

Forward!"

-traditional Irish farewell

The Photographic Pilgrimage-a soulful search for meaning

     I have been thinking a lot about pilgrimage lately.  Scottish Life is featuring my black and white photographs of the Outer Hebrides in their Summer edition as a photographic essay on my travels in the Western Isles in 2005 and 2011.  While preparing my introduction to the feature and the captions for the photographs, I had time to reflect on my motivations surrounding these trips.  Both trips were, in a very real sense, a pilgrimage

      I looked up the definition of "pilgrimage" in the dictionary.  It read, in part, "any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest or for a votive purpose..." I then had to look up "votive"! It read, "expressive of a wish or desire". Yes, that certainly fit. My trip to the Outer Hebrides in 2005 was a quest.  I had to see if after a 25 year hiatus from photography I could still make images with feeling and substance. (And, I might add, whether I could figure out all this "pixel" stuff with my new digital camera!)
   
     The essence of a pilgrimage is that at the end of it there should be some profound change...some revelation...some deeply personal growth.  I experienced all those things.  I discovered the notion of contemplative camera work and dedicated myself to understanding how it could impact the images I make.  Most importantly, it forever changed the way I approach a landscape or a subject of any kind. It also reinforced my love of solitary places, away from the tourist attractions and bus tours.

     Does every trip a photographer makes need to be a photographic pilgrimage?  Hardly but as I recently discovered on St. John, you can take the contemplative photographer out of their solitary places but you can't take the need for those places out of the contemplative photographer.  I still managed to find them on an island that is known for it's material culture and hoards of tourists.  So I guess my answer to the above question is that wherever you travel you travel as the person, and the photographer, you are. If you seek contemplative imagery then you will find it no matter where you go. I am always on a quest for images that reflect more profound truths and personal experience.  In that respect, I am on a continual pilgrimage. I saw a quote recently that I think is appropriate to this conversation.

"We are not human beings trying to be spiritual,

We are spiritual beings trying to be human."

   .

 

     We may choose our travel destinations or they may choose us but no matter why we go where we go, there will be something to learn about ourselves in the end if we take the time to reflect on the images we make. So ask yourself this. What kind of photographic pilgrim are you?  What do you fervently seek and what do you most wish to find in your camera work?  What will your next quest be?   A book you might find inspirational as you plan your summer trips is The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred.   It could very well be a guide book for the contemplative photographer.


    My next photographic pilgrimage will be to  France in August where, in part, I plan to pay tribute to my Father's role in the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944 on the beaches of Normandy.  I wish you safe travels this Summer on your soulful search for meaning.