The cheeping couldn’t be ignored. What kind of juvenile songbird was it? Precisely from where was it coming? The questions jumped from my awareness and into my curiosity. I had to go look.
A few years before, I never would have heard the cheeping. I certainly wouldn’t have been walking around this abandoned parking lot looking for it.
Finding Nature Right Where You Are
There are times in our lives when we don’t notice nature unless we happen to be right in the middle of some place new and beautiful. Whether we are preoccupied with work or worries, are hurried or harried, or have placed our surroundings into the subconscious categories of “boring” or “normal,” we fail to see the richness in nature that goes on all the time. Our desire to see nature can be lost behind a shroud of dulled perspective.
What I have found from my daily nature photo walks that began eight years ago, though, is that when we place ourselves in a mindset to look and see, suddenly the whole world opens up with its intricacies and cycles. Things that were never evident before can’t be ignored. Curiosity explodes, questions come in a flurry, wonder blooms, and connection is formed with the world around us. We learn about the cycles of specific trees during the season; we grow to care more about the environment; we begin to recognize different species.
But sometimes when we think about what we want to draw or photograph, we end up perplexed. Nothing jumps out as interesting enough to notice or to take the time to draw.
I don’t know in what part of the world you live or your perspective on the nature around you. But, to reignite my own curiosity and put recent experience to the words I’m writing, I set out on a challenge. I went to an empty parking lot in an abandoned part of a former shopping mall and sought out nature.
I was amazed at what I found.
A Closer Look
At first, all I could see was cracked pavement, weeds, and overgrown dividers in the parking lot. ) But there is something I apply in my photography and it definitely helped me on this day: I call it prepositional seeing. Instead of just looking at the weeds around me, I looked over, through, under, in. In so doing, I also looked at them closely. Suddenly, a weed transformed into green leaves with purple-pink edges, and their shapes were not only twisted as if dancing, but the edges were inconsistent. I noticed along the edge of the leaves there were little thorns, and as the sun shone upon them fascinating shadows were cast. The play of color and form and texture was so intriguing. Questions sprang up into my mind – were those the actual shapes of the leaves or had they been formed by insects eating them? If formed by insects, then did the purplish edge happen in response? Or is that the original shape and coloration of the leaves?
This happened again and again, and suddenly I wasn’t in a barren parking lot but in a whole environment to be explored. The overgrown grasses had gone to seed and their swaying in the breeze was beautiful. The cracks in the curb were no longer visible when I looked closely at the color and texture of a pine-like bush.
Then, I started noticing something else…
A Deeper Listen
This happens to me all the time now. When I get into that place where my concerns and the troubles in the world are silenced because of my hyper focus on what I’m seeing, the acuity of my hearing increases. In fact, I’ve come to realize:
The more you see, the more you hear.
The more you hear, the more you listen.
The more you listen, the more you see.
…and so it continues…
Susanne Swing Thompson
It happened on this day as well. The more I looked, the more I heard, and off in the distance was that cheeping. I followed the sound and wandered over to an area with a tree, several overgrown bushes, signage that had been dumped on the ground, and debris from seasons of leaves falling and weeds growing. I looked and I listened.
There was a Mockingbird in the branches of the tree. The Mockingbird was an adult, but it watched from a distance what soon caught my eye: the branches in one of the bushes were moving. It was from there that the cheeping came. Walking around, bending down, I finally caught sight of the juvenile Mockingbird that was making its plaintive cheeping sound.
What a delight it was to get to watch as I sat there and photographed: once the adult ventured into the branches for its young one. Other times, the juvenile sought food on its own. Calls from the young one’s sibling sent it flying awkwardly to another bush. Sometimes it hid deep in the branches; other times it ventured out just a little.
The “seeing” continued as I sat there and watched. I began to notice the bees pollinating the flowers on the bushes, and the Fritillary Butterfly seeking nectar. A place that had been ugly was now coming beautifully alive.
While walking home, I reflected: life longs to flourish. Nature does everything within its adaptive power to do so. What a beautiful opportunity to see the interplay of nature once again: experiencing it in being present, looking at the details through my lens; and interacting with it as I created in my nature journal. The parking lot hasn’t changed, but my perspective has.
About Susanne
Susanne Swing Thompson lives in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. In the past few years she has taken up photography and writing full time, and she greatly enjoys nature journaling in pen and watercolor. She sends a free weekly nature email called “A Closer Look,” which is simply one of her nature photos and a short bit of original writing.
You can see more of Susanne’s work here:
www.wren-photos.com (and you can subscribe to A Closer Look on the Contact page)
Instagram: @wren_nature_photos