Land as Family

My childhood and adolescence were firmly rooted in the more-than-human. I truly have my dad to thank for that, whose commitment to conserving wildlife in our state for the first sixteen years or so of my life provided the foundation for how I view shared ecosystems between the human and the wild.

But it was difficult not to be rooted in nature given the environment. I grew up hearing coyotes yip and howl at night, watching American Bald Eagles look for fish trapped along the edges of frozen rivers and lakes in winter, spending time deep in the hardwood forests, near powerful rivers that are home to the biggest fish I've ever seen. Watching raccoons, deer, beavers, and more go about their lives in much the same ways I went about mine. It was impossible to not be fully aware of the more-than-human world. In fact, it was impossible to not know I was part of it.

As I went to college, married, enlisted in the military, divorced, traveled to far more places than I ever expected to see with my own eyes, and ended up (currently) hundreds of miles from home, I've always deeply understood the significance that a single small piece of land in rural northwest Missouri holds for me personally. When I was pursuing my masters degree, 1.5 hours away in the largest city I'd ever lived in at the time, I frequently drove back to my rural home just to feel like I could breathe again. As soon as I saw those green loess hills on the other side of the big river, I felt at ease. Even twenty years later, I find myself desperately yearning for the comfort and familiarity of the place where I was raised, where the more-than- human far outnumbers the human and the trees are elders who welcome me home with open arms. My roots there are deep. My family has lived on and worked that land for over a hundred years. I can feel my long-deceased family in the soil and the trees. This is not hyperbole. When I moved to Lubbock almost fifteen years ago, being the longest distance from home I've ever lived, I filled a medicine bag with soil and bird feathers from the loess hills of home. That bag has hung around my rearview mirror ever since. Home has always been with me.

So when a young man entered my booth at the Lubbock Arts Festival this year and stood staring at a photograph of my granddad's old aluminum shed nestled against the bluff among the hardwoods, I silently observed. A few minutes later, after he'd looked at it from every angle, he turned to me and said that it spoke to him in some deep, inexplicable way. He asked where it was made. I told him. I told him about my granddad sitting in that old shed whittling sticks into canes, about the "doodle bugs" we'd call out of the dirt floor when I was a kid, and about the old well across the road where granddad would sit for most of the day, drinking well water from a tin cup and greeting folks who came to buy one of his famous black diamond watermelons. Granddad would give us kids a drink of cold well water from that dinged-up old tin cup that permanently hung from the cast iron pump, and I remember it all like it was yesterday. I told the young man how I almost didn't print that photograph for the festival because it holds such personal significance but perhaps wouldn't mean anything to others (realizing as soon as the words left my mouth that this in fact describes most of my images). I told him that place was home. He looked at me with big eyes and said, "It's almost like land is family."

I smiled. And nearly wept.

Land is family.

In an age where we seem to have expanded our unhealthy desire for perfect bodies into an equally unhealthy desire for perfect landscapes, why bother making nature photographs at all?

This is why. Conversations with people for whom the concepts suddenly click. Those who see and feel in my images what I see and feel with my whole being. A spark. A connection. A crack that lets possibility in. The possibility that the earth itself is more valuable than all of the money made from destroying it. The realization that, on a grand scale, through our careless destruction of the more-than-human we're ensuring the gradual destruction of ourselves.

And of course, too, the lighter things: to share with others the things that bring us meaning in life, that console us and keep us going in difficult times. To be reminded that there are people out there still who see the depth of meaning in an old metal shed nestled along the edge of a foggy hardwood forest, who can conceive of the beauty and peace in having a relationship with the earth. For me, there's still hope in it.

The Old Shed

I don't know the name of the young man who came into my booth that afternoon. But whoever and wherever he is, I thank him for seeing the meaning in what I do and reminding me that I do, in fact, do this for more than just myself. It’s a very solitary thing, to be a human and walk with the more-than-human. Yet there is so much human connection to be had in the sharing of those experiences, and how they can change us.

Below is the image in question. I've given it a second name in honor of my brief conversation with the young man at the arts festival: Land is Family.

Keep scrolling to see a few other family photos I've made throughout the years.

It is my continued hope that my nature images can, in some small way, contribute to conversations, known and unknown, about the significance of our relationship to land and the numerous ways in which it sustains all life, including us mortal humans.