What the heck does that mean? It's 2:00 am, and I am trying to remember where I know these words, when it hits me, it's from the I Ching. The I Ching? How long has it been since I counted out yarrow sticks to divine meaning from the moment? More than thirty-five years. Yet here I was lying in bed, with two words straight out of those sweet, new-age hippie days on the 14-acre farm in West Linn, Oregon circa 1974, remembering those mystical divinations.
Perseverance furthers.So, in the morning I googled I Ching and found this from the very first hexagram:
The creative works sublime success,
Furthering through perseverance.
It actually doesn't matter that this means nothing to me. I am more struck by the remembering of words than considering the absurd poetry of hexagrams divined by yarrow sticks or coin tosses.
All I know is that I have been trying to photograph trees that are lit like fire by the setting sun.I had Roger show me how to use the digital camera with manual settings to open the aperture more and close the shutter more quickly. I knew I needed light and speed to capture these wildly lit moments.
The light doesn't always materialize in exactly the place I expect it. The trees stay green at the end of the day, their needles dark and calm, where two days before they were utterly transformed. The rains come too. The sunset orange glow rays move on, especially now that the sun is diving south as quickly as it can to reach solstice at its celestially appointed hour.
But I did persevere and found the lingering light in some trees across the road. I've read that this affect is called alpenglow, the low angle of the sun and maybe a bit of high altitude. I don't know. I am just awestruck by the fire of it and am glad to see it burn like blazing embers in the trees.
