When we are alienated from nature to the point that we are rapidly destroying it – the plants, soils, insects, birds, and animals – walking through nature can seem like entering another country. And going to another country can be difficult. The language , sights, sounds, and dress are foreign, strange, and unfamiliar. But entering this forgotten country with a forgotten language and rare colors can also seem hauntingly familiar, like going to a long lost home.
Entering, with a passport made only of a promise to see, I was always greeted by a trillion eyes of silent perception, never asking who “I” was, but instead gradually pulling me into a wider world of immersion and communication.
To see this country of nature, I needed many different types of lenses, similar to the multiple lenses of a bug, which allow view upon view, from every possible angle and viewpoint. One set of eyes would never be enough to see all there is to see – sights waiting to be explored and uncovered. How can I ever see enough and what would happen if I see too much and walk through a looking glass into another world altogether?
This country is warm, tropical, and never ending, only faintly explored with my relatively crude camera lens, but this country is home, infinitely friendly, consoling, enshrouding, merciful, and ecstatic.