Nearing year's end...

“You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.”

~ Maya Angelou

Ain't that the truth... and in my case... as my body and the environment it is in is always my home, my home has wandered all over the west. My house stretches east to the Rockies and west to the Pacific and a beautiful one it is too.

Sometimes though, I wonder at the capriciousness of my life when I was younger. I suppose that, being pretty much a happy individual, my needs were simple. It has gotten a bit tougher as I've gotten older. I suppose these 2 children I've been raising have something to do with that... but I'm lucky having the two I do. They're good kids, smart and, lucky for them, they've inherited their mom's good looks instead of mine. Of course they do show signs of having inherited my sense of humor... hah! A parent's revenge.

As usual I digress... I was speaking to the caprice (that is so obvious to me now) I exhibited when I was young. I'm not a big fan of regret. Its an exercise in futility. However I do believe in introspection and understanding one's self. But regret can distract from being comfortable with who we are. I mean if you're a wife beater, a thief, a creep... then by all means have a hefty dose of regret and let that weight maybe change you.

But me... I'm a nice guy. I've done some good things in my life, not too many bad ones. When I've struggled I've had friends and family there for support (I mean not like a jock strap kind of support...) and when I've been on the up side of things I've given and shared. Its the way I was raised. Of course there are things that, in retrospect, I wouldn't do now... but we're human and humans make mistakes and man, am I human.

Being human carries more than just a modicum of responsibility. A lot of who I am comes from my family, my parents. A lot of it comes from paying attention to life and whats going on with those around me. My dad always preached learning as much about mistakes as you can from the mistakes other people make. But... being human... we have to make some of our own. There is absolutely no way to avoid it. And there isn't a human out there who is perfect or mistake free. The trick, I think, is to be comfortable in my own skin. To grow in spirit, to accept as much responsibility as I can handle... maybe a tad more, just for the challenge... and to do right by those around me.

So... I'm thankful fo the blessings I've had and I can look back and smile knowing I've done ok, I tried hard and sometimes... I just plain goofed off. And even that goofing off has been beneficial. I know that my eye for these nature pictures I do comes from doing nothing but sitting and looking and seeing the environment I'm in... of understanding light as it shifts and moves throughout a day, across a season and over the year.

I know I'm a far, far better photographer now than when I first thought I was a good photographer. This past year has been a process of shaking off some cobwebs, a process of learning again as I switched from film to digital. The computer in my camera has taken me a year to finally get comfortable with... makes me feel like that old dog...

I'm hoping y'all enjoyed your Thanksgiving (if you're U.S. types... I sure don't expect that other nations sat down with some Indians who saved their butts 300 years ago... I mean I don't know for sure, but I think that makes sense) and that you stay warm and dry through the winter coming...

Here are some pics from the last year, mostly from around here around the farm... but including some of the work from all over. Enjoy! (and remember... your family loves receiving fine photographic art as gifts for Xmas! order now...)