In the early twentieth century, the American photographer Alfred Steiglitz developed the idea of the Equivalent, - “the photographic image as metaphor, as an objective correlative for a particular feeling or state of being associated with something other than the ostensible object.” During my first year at Goddard, my digital camera was my sole walking partner. Together, we would document our forays.
As time marched on, and I retroactively reflected upon the snapshots that the camera captured, I observed how the lens was like a third eye peering into the psychological makeup of this artist. The grainy hues and the disjointed appearance of my own internal landscape had become sharper.
During this same time period, I also allowed a carefree friendship to bloom into an expansive courtship. Together, my partner and I discovered the terrain of our budding new relationship as we explored Cuyamaca State Park, topography that only years before had been nearly decimated by wildfire.
Together, we climbed up and into charcoal laden Pine trees. We danced with our shadows. We soared with the crow. With each visit, we bore witness to the testament of life, - from ravaged to rejuvenated. As a girl, I had spent a week in these same mountains, running barefooted and splashing in natural waterfalls. Twenty years later, I had returned to discover that I, as in that soulful world of spirit, was now much like this beloved forest, - nearly vanquished. Yet, even in the midst of the all-encompassing sorrow that followed, hitting me like a two by four to the head, I glimpsed hope. After all, a forest needs fire to germinate.
When does a forest officially become decimated? When the carcasses of wild animals, - Mule deer, Jackrabbit, grey squirrel, den fox, coyote, and mountain lion, have been left behind on high desert mountain hillsides? When a sixteen-year old girl’s life has been lost, her sister’s flesh seared, and a firefighter has fallen, in the name of duty, while erecting a human ring around a historic, western outpost’s main street? When the charred remains of hollowed oak, pine, and eucalyptus, are all that remain? When thick, black clouds of smoke and ash fill a southern California eastern horizon? When soot falls like languishing dust bunnies on deserted, city streets?
When a fire-ravaged countryside begins to grown again what constitutes its rebirth? The first seed planted; the strongest root that takes hold; a singular bulb that pushes its way up through the forest floor; or the initial blossom of a sweet spring’s arrival?
