The Stone Butterfly

Dog Rock at Sunset, Ring Mountain, Corte Madera, CA.

There are moments when the very earth beneath our feet seems a vast and frozen sea. It is almost unimaginable, that at some point long ago, rock itself was indeed liquefied, molten and animate. But here we can imagine it. The exposed metamorphic rock pictured above seems to be breaching through the surface of the grassy melange; which itself appears to be heaving like a great ocean swell. This rock, at over 20 feet tall, is a rare example of what geologists call a high-grade metamorphic - a rock that once plunged deep into the firey bowels of the earth where it was baked at high pressure and temperature, drastically altered in structure and composition, and then squeezed back up to the surface in an almost entirely new form. What we see here is like an ultra-slow-motion image of a stone caterpillar emerging from its chyrsallis. 

I have always been fascinated by stone. It is durable, beautiful and old. Every one is unique. Every one has a distinct personality. The smaller ones are no less fascinating than the large. But the large ones are truly magnificent. A rock such as this possesses an aura not unlike that of a large tree. Perhaps all great works of nature do. I find this photograph enormously compelling. And it was pure luck - a miracle moment of light that occurred just as the sun was about to set. My photography is purely intuitive. It is guided by serendipity and chance and my photographs are almost always hand-held. Because my camera is a surrogate eye, and I am interested in what crosses it randomly. I walk and I follow my instincts and my most interesting images always turn out to be accidents, not designs. Ansel Adams said he doesn't take photographs, he makes them. But that is not what I do. I stumble upon beauty and then rush to capture it. My images are ephemeral. They are gifts. And every time I take my camera out I am throughly surprised, and blessed. I realize that I don't *do* anything. I have no talent, no special gift; other than the gift of seeing, of vision. What I saw in this strange and beautiful rock was something that represents all that is great and mysterious, not just about the earth, but about living on it and living period. That's why I take photopgraphs, to celebrate living.

 

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