The Reminder
Northern California - January 2020
People have asked why I placed this mysterious picture on my landing page. The answer, like most things in my life, is complicated. The picture was taken on the last trip I took (January 2020) before the pandemic closed the book on my lifelong wanderlust. I had business in California, then visited with my eldest son Marek, who had recently relocated across the country to northern California.
He took me on a mesmerizing motorcycle ride into the Big Basin Redwoods State Park, only eight months before a lightning strike transformed the Park into a devastating inferno. The photo was taken at the end of the day as we emerged from the redwood forest along the coast. I was fully grateful for the slice of preserved history we had just experienced among the redwoods, taking wholly for granted the permanence of that treasured grove for posterity.
I hold onto this photo as a reminder of:
- Impending – even ominous and otherworldly – change
- A sun setting on a way of life juxtaposed with the promise of what might yet emerge
- How miniscule and alone I stand in the vastness of this remarkable world
- A silence equally as powerful as the magnificent collective voice of the redwoods
- A desire to breathe in every facet of special moments along the journey
- The swiftness with which nature can reclaim its gifts
- The miracle of creation itself
I savored the memory of this gorgeous day as the pandemic dragged on through season after season. I was among the fortunate who were able to work remotely and in comfort through those years, yet I grew restless as my wanderlust shifted to an inner lust to lean more deeply into my creative capacity. The website is my celebration (line in the sand?) of that creative work. But it is static. The challenge and opportunity I face – some days with courage, and others not – is to shift my executive problem-solving self of 40 years into a soul that is more open to the temporal and simply unplannable nature of being, and the creative potential for new.
