A very early spring walk in 2025. Outlines of the branches of bone-like architecture. Trees greet us at the precipice where a lake meets the clear sky blues.
A serene site as we stand on the shore of Sam Hoyt Lake in Buffalo's beautiful Delaware Park. Truly a treasure of the city. Here, a weeping willow tree arches above our heads and extends down in front of us with its longest branches sometimes touching the water. I always pause here in these special sites that appear like natural altars to leave some sacred mantra.
We look upward to the sky and view the silhouette of a mature tree trunk and branches still appearing like winter layered upon soft, weeping willow branches spilling forth. The background is beautiful in clear blues. A tiny shimmer of yellow-green shines on the willow.
Pine and branch stretch into the foreground with focus on the soft needles. Another branch appears without its needles. In the background, another weeping willow shows its flowing figure overlooking the lake.
The bold early blossoms of a cornelian cherry tree, which is a member of the dogwood family. Their presence in the spring landscape is a pop of royal flair with the gold crowns of blooms, which cover the small tree.
More cornelian cherry creates a spray of gold, which both holds our focus and blurs through the image. The blue of the background where sky meets land and the lake shore across the water.
Our vision remains dominated by the lines created via the cornelian cherry branches. Interesting negative shapes appear, and we see once more the lake shore across the water looking back at us. Are we observing nature, or is it observing us?
Both backdrop and foreground intermingle in this landscape double exposure of branch and bark. Cornelian cherry is still speaking to us, and the clear blue sky complements the blossoms so well.
A branch spotted with a shield lichen and moss appears as the earth herself. I imagine I can walk out onto this branch, and the scale is as the land would be. The self-healed broken twigs become ancient petrified trees, and the moss and lichen are an entire macrocosm of the terrain, creating soft, pillowy beds to recline upon.