Pareidolia, or the strange habit of our brain to make us think we see faces when there are none. In this case though, maybe it is a photo of a guardian of our planet. This fellow was found on a hike through the local state park near me one late fall afternoon. The light was soft under the canopy of branches that afternoon. As mentioned in a previous post, I tend to be the type of hiker that is always looking at the ground. I mean, I absolutely spend my fair share looking up as well, but I love finding the little things along the way that others may have missed. I found a cool desert rose selenium a couple years ago at the Badlands. It was super small, and clearly part of the park, so I took a quick snapshot and returned it to the earth.
You see, I do my best to respect our planet. This place we call home is lent to us. I don’t own it, even if I happened to “own the land” I am on. It is still part of something far bigger and entangled than we humans can comprehend. Maybe that’s why this face appeared to me. Sure, scientifically speaking (which I am very much a fan of), this is simply a tree with bark that has broken away leaving this wonderful pattern that my brain decided to see a face in. To me, this is the face of the forest, even if it’s just a lone representative of that small space. Does the planet and environment have representatives?
I strongly feel that we need to shift our mentality to the idea that we are simply visitors of this spectacular place we call Earth. We don’t own nature, and we never did. All we can do is try to live in a benevolent kind of harmony with it. As a photographer, I want to share my love of this place and I hope to inspire more to take on the same reverence.