I want to see all that is before me.
And in self forgetfulness,
I become everything.

Joseph Cornell.

I acquired early in life a sense of awe and love of  Nature. I did this on my own, born out of endless curiosity about the world from reading and observation of Nature around me in my suburban New Orleans neighborhoods, and on vacation trips to  South Carolina.  I know I also acquired, to a significant degree,  my love of clouds, skies and flowers from my mother, who even in her 90s hardly missed a day to exclaim how blue and beautiful the sky was when she was looking out her tall French door windows in the den.  Also, when we drive to a doctor appointment,  she would always comment on the sky and clouds. “Look at how beautiful the sky is,” she would exclaim.  My father had no interest in hiking, camping or the natural world except for the stars and celestial bodies above, and being on open expanses of water such as the North Atlantic Ocean.  He learned to navigate by the stars in his youth when he was on ships during World War II.  I often wished we had gone camping when I was young.   But those are regrets of life that are now long in the past.

I think back to my younger days and realize that my first tantalizing acquaintance with pristine Nature was on a first visit the newly protected Francis Beidler Forest in Four Holes Swamp in central South Carolina near the town of Harleyville. I had seen an article in Audubon Magazine in 1974 which contained photos of the majestic ten-story tall bald cypress trees that had been saved from logging. This never-disturbed swamp riverine system has intrigued and awed me over the decades since, and I have been there countless times and taken hundreds of photos.

The quiet off-the-beaten-path sanctuary was one of my favorite weekend getaways for day trips during the 2010s when I was a full-time caregiver for my mother, and worked a full time job as well.

I always returned from the 90-mile round trip refreshed and renewed by the natural wonders of that swamp forest.

I remember how much I savored those initial few moments when I entered Beidler Forest to begin my walk, leaving civilization behind quickly. Most of the time it was utterly still and quiet except for occasional songbirds, owls and crows, or a gentle breeze in the oaks and cypress trees that created tiny ripples on the water in the swamp, clear and tea-colored and moving in a barely perceptible flow, a sheet of pristine water.

When the breezes ceased, I looked down into the swamp and saw reflections of the cypress trees, some of them 1,000 years old, and they looked exactly like the trees themselves. I couldn’t tell the difference. I thus could gaze deep down into the tea-colored water and experience the forest from another vantage point or dimension, another way of seeing it, reflected in the calm water. I always looked intently to detect how slowly, even imperceptibly at first glance, the water flowed through the swamp, and it was always there in the wetter seasons, sometimes only in narrow, braided streams headed for its merger with the Edisto River a few miles away.

By the time I arrived at a small oxbow lake, via a 1 1/2 mile elevated boardwalk over the swamp, I had entirely forgotten the outside world, and my agitation and fitfulness were gone, completely. I sensed deeply the calm, and felt the potent pull of that primitive and untouched natural area, left alone to its fate, determined by the natural forces that shaped and influenced it over eons of time. On those occasions, I inhabited for awhile an interior landscape of the mind, comprising wonders and riches of Nature unavailable anywhere else.

I miss that tranquil swamp forest of tall trees, gentle breezes and birdsong. It’s time to return.

Visualize that your mind is a pristine mountain lake. At the edge of the lake is a mountain ridge with its image, reflected upon the lake surface. Imagine that your thoughts are winds that ripple the lake surface, preventing you from seeing the reflection, clearly, but in your thoughts, slow down, and the breezes cease, and you can see the image of the mountain perfectly.

Joseph Cornell, Listening to Nature, 1987

Some of my Beidler Forest photos taken over many years:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/r9e069sC02

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/255G859iKr

The Art of Nature

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/17Hr6491U5