Oddly enough, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, not a Hallmark writer that said "the earth laughs in flowers". If that is true, someone said something hysterical in Mingo Swamp.



Inspired by SD's azalea pictures, I took my camera in and around the swamp to capture these images. The goal was to only take photographs of things humans had nothing to do with.

The white lilies and ferns grow down in the swamp and come up every year as the soil warms. From the road you might think they were from an old homeplace, but no person has lived there.


The fields are covered with flowers. The red flowers are apple grass. We used to eat the stems as kids. The purple ones I'm not sure of.

"Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have experienced a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear."

When I am there, really seeing, I am as close to happy as I will ever be. Perhaps this is because , as Emerson says, "when we are in the woods, we return to reason and faith".