" SpiritofSaltSpring:BC:Canada:GulfIslands:SaltSpring:Salt Spring:

July 19, 2009

Familiarity in a Changing World


There aren`t too many places, I imagine, in the world where time seems to stand still. That`s how it feels for me to go to the Barn at Ruckle Provincial Park.

As I`ve said too many times in the past 9 months, I`ve been coming here for around 20years and nothing has changed it seems to me about that one spot on the island where the original Ruckle Barn still stands.

I can walk around the original farm house and peer inside and the brass head board is still propped up against the wall in the same place near the windows to the south. The pink paint is peeling away from the porch posts. The two board inside the barn are poking outside one of the open windows in the same way I have photographed them from years past.

I`m not sure why but there`s something about standing, looking and feeling that you`ve been in a place before and it`s exactly as it was 20 years prior is for me, more comforting than I ever imagined it would be.

The house I grew up in isn`t here. Some really significant people in my life are not here anymore. The way I used to look isn`t the way I look now. So many people have come and gone and yet when I stand in this one spot on earth on a day like today where the hot mid-day sun turns everything a white-gold, I just feel like I can let go. I am safe. Everything is good. I am light. I am love. I am.

So, in spite of all the disappointments, the endings that have never turned out the way I`d imagined or desired, this one place wraps itself around me and supports my heart and soul better than I could ever do for myself. I feel it at Ghost Ranch. I feel it on this one place on Salt Spring like I have never felt it anywhere I`ve ever been.

Today, was the first Meet-up Photography Group event that I organized and nine people showed up. The assignment was to try and capture the theme of texture.

3 comments:

Ben Anderson said...

keep up the good work w/the photo group.

And whenever you can, return to the Ruckle barn and the Ghost Ranch whenever you can to re-capture that feeling of I am safe. Everything is good. I am light. I am love. I am.

And sooner rather than later you will feel it wherever you go.

Gayle Mavor said...

Thanks Ben,
I'll keep working on that. Maybe at some point all I'll have to do is press my index finger to my thumb and poof, I'll be there in spirit. :-)

Ben Anderson said...

that might work - whatever works for you, that's the key :)