Seeing 2010 (#150)

For your consideration: a portrait of an old friend - a beloved fellow denizen of my ancestral desert haunts.

Last weekend I made a distressingly brief (31 hours) trek to Tucson et ses environs, primarily to attend a rare family birthday gathering for an aunt I'd not seen in more than two decades. During my visit I rebuilt some long-dormant bonds with cousins, and became acquainted with several (younger) relatives never before met.

Initially I did not believe I'd manage to find any time to escape to the small, specific desert locale which I've come to cherish and consider as my own personal Holy Ground. My cousin Gene, who graciously put me up in his home, stayed up talking with me until 3.00 a.m. Saturday; that ought to have precluded the just-past-sunrise Gates Pass sojourn I knew would be my only reasonable window of time to make my pilgrimage. However, my wife sent a late night text message urging me to make the effort. Thus, I set my alarm . . .

And so I went, and sequestered myself for 2 1/2 hours with camera, Emerson's Nature, and a throw rug for sitting meditation on the sanctuary of The Rock. The experience was profoundly healing, and yet at once also unsettling. For in that still, crystal clear air I experienced, at previously unplumbed depths, the principle of Impermanence -- the ceaseless evolution, erosion, transformation and inevitable recreation of all that Is.

It was near this place I spread my grandparents' ashes; it was here where exactly one year and one week before I sought clarity on the decision I faced regarding my mother's tether to her lift support machine; it was here that in years past my cousins, friends and family and I spent countless hazy hours gazing at sunsets and spectacularly starry night skies. During this visit I experienced the discomfort and uncertainty of deeply personal changes afoot, yet again.

Thus it was no surprise, really, that although I drove out with my own agenda -- to relish experiencing the severe beauty and underlying silence of the Sonora Desert -- a far more potent destiny patiently awaited me.

So it was that I came upon the scene of this entry's photograph, where I'd previously taken one of my personal favorite portraits : an shockingly unexpected moment of sudden sadness when I realized that only a year ago this same stoic cactus sentry then so grandly greeted me with the sweeping, open arms of an orchestral conductor, as if commanding its own symphony. Even this -- even this suffers restless change. Impermanence.

Gates Pass Saguaro (Impermanence), #2526

© 2010 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: November 13, 2010; Canon 20D; f/8 @ 1/2000 sec; —1/3 EV; ISO 400; 100mm.

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