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When you stop and look at things like this cottonwood tree for instance, if you’re paying attention to how things work you’ll notice that this tree is just going to sleep. Its early fall, the summer has been long and hot and filled with blistering days and sudden thunderstorms with wind that threatened to tear off it’s very branches. There was lightning that struck close by but spared it and nearby fires that were the most dangerous thing of all. But through it all it has stood fast.  Now it gets to sleep for its long night. This tree marches to a different drummer, with its night lasting for months before it begins to wake for it’s equally long day. It’s waking and slumbering schedule is incredibly slow as we see things with its days and nights lasting six months each. Do trees live to be as old as they get because they measure time differently than we do?

When this shot was taken it is about 6:00pm in early November on our schedule, the sun is setting and soon our day will be over. The difference is in ten or twelve hours we ‘ll be back at it again while the tree slowly slumbers on. The wheels of time spin at different rates for everything in our existence. To the tree our days and nights must seem like the gentle blinking of the sun, if trees notice it at all, while to us the trees slow cycle can appear to be a form of death or least a sleep so deep it seems that way.

One of the irreplaceable benefits and joys of being a photographer is the ability to document life as we travel though it. To be able to visibly chronicle the passages that affect everything about us and then have the ability to travel back and forth between the changes is a form of magic. To re-experience these events by viewing these frozen moments in time, gives us and all who view the images, the ability to make some sense of our lives. To some degree anyway. It doesn’t answer all the questions but some answers are better than none. In about six months the tree wakes up again and we can ask it more then. If we’re polite and pay attention it should share.