Like Thoreau, who had gone to the woods because he “wished to live deliberately, to front only essential facts of life” and to “transact some private business with the fewest obstacles,” I embraced this endeavor, with some trepidation, to see if I could find what had drawn me so long ago to my art, and to see if I had become as perceptive of nature as I hoped. “To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself,” wrote Thoreau.
Nature cannot be twisted to our whims, not even for the purpose of capturing her beauty on film. She must be approached on a level at once aware of both her charms and her harshness. Hers is not a world solely of “calendar” scenes,,, but one also of mystery and hardness, built of the timeless recycling of energy as creatures and plants die and are reborn. Thoreau’s “sunrise” is the calendar photograph that comprises what for some is their sole understanding of nature. My hope was that I would be able to cajole from her something deeper.
{Written as the introduction to Jim’s wonderful book “Chased by the Light” in which he undertakes to expose one frame of file a day for 90 consecutive days from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice in the north woods of Minnesota. To see the photograph referenced by ‘Thoreau’s “Sunrise”‘ go to Day 10 – Boundary Waters Loons.}
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