In transitioning out of my full-time job, I’ve been doing a lot of work indoors. I’ve been working heavily on a new project and in sitting inside for much of yesterday, I noticed fall leaves being blown rather easily off of an aspen tree outside my window and it dawned on me that I’ve most likely missed fall here in its prime. There’s still plenty of color around the valley, but much of it has already either faded, or fallen off the trees.
Thus, this morning, I forced myself out of bed for sunrise (something that should be much easier than it is given that sunrise is around 7:30am these days), and headed up to Schwabacher Landing in Grand Teton National Park to capture some of the remaining cottonwood trees. There’s been a hint of brown in many of them around Jackson Hole, but with some nice, warm morning light, anything looks good. It’s simply one of those pieces of advice that I throw around on this blog that I need to take: get outside! At the same time though, I think it’s those long periods indoors that makes us appreciate the outdoors that much more. I haven’t watched sunrise since I last saw the black bears on Moose-Wilson Road that were causing so much controversy a couple of weeks ago. In seeing it again though, it was a blatant reminder that I still need to get out every now and then.
By ‘need’ I don’t necessarily mean that I have to make it an uncomfortable priority, but I just need that break of silent peace where I’m on my own and I can release and/or distract myself from the bigger priorities I have lingering above me. It’s one the main reason I love photography so much: so that I can just escape into my own world, something I dove a little deeper into while writing out ‘My Vision’ on my About page. Everybody needs that release so that they can escape the day-to-day stresses. Mine’s obviously photography, but what’s yours? Do you have any favorite places to go regularly or some kind of creative output that helps you ‘get away’?