I love those unrepeatable moments, those treasures that are captured with the brief opening of the camera shutter, and then are gone, and cannot be duplicated.
And I tried – I tried to come back to the same spot on the trail to have one more go at the leaves and the bokeh, but the spell had broken, the light had changed, and the cottonwood leaves were no longer flickering and flashing in the sky. But the magic lingers on.
Trixie and I went on a little hike this morning and, as per usual, I took my camera, this time giving myself a challenge: only shoot in black and white. That challenge probably had something to do with browsing some Ansel Adams photography yesterday.
We live in a color-filled world, and limiting oneself to seeing in black and white forces one to look at the world differently. Because black and white really isn’t black and white – It is dark and light. And that’s how one has to see, in darks and lights.
Composing a shot in color means paying attention to the color palette, paying attention to the color texture and mood of the background, how the sun distorts or realizes the color of the subject. Shooting in color means that the foreground and background actually have to “match” or complement one another, without splashes of distracting color forcing the eye away from the focal point. Shooting in black and white, however, is a whole different ballgame. Instead of composing colors, one has to compose lights and shadows and textures and contrasts. Highlights and lowlights, sunlight and shade. 
The delicateness of the flower has to be conveyed not in the delicacy or whimsy of the color, but in the transparency of the petals, the shapes and contours and contrasts. Those things obviously are important in color photography, but they become the essence of black and white photography. The pale green of the sprig of leaves might catch your eye, but in black and white it is the stained-glass quality of the leaf with the sunlight behind it that defines that leaf, not the color. 
Just a different way of marveling at this wonderful world.
There is something mysteriously delightful about the process of gleaning from Creation’s garden and being able to process and store and enjoy the homemade food. It was chokecherries earlier this summer, and now it is rosehip season. 
Last summer while hiking, we found a huge (secret) area of wild rose brambles, laden with the beautiful red-gold fruits of the rose. By the time we got to them, though, it was quite late in the season and many of the fruits were overripe and dry, so we really didn’t get enough to do anything with them. This year, however, we hit them at their peak! Mom and I spent an hour or two west of Custer picking rosehips, and came home with about 3 quarts of fruit. Harvesting rosehips isn’t as productive as harvesting chokecherries, but it is worth it. This afternoon, I processed the hips and turned them into the most beautiful honey-colored jelly. It is recommended to pick rosehips after the first killing frost for the best sweetness – Custer had it’s first frost back in August, at which point I doubt the hips would even have been ripe. Either way, the jelly is very flavorful. I found the jelly recipe online, since this isn’t an inherited project!
Wild Rosehip Jelly
8 c. rosehips, with stems and ends removed (should yield 3 cups of juice)
1/2 c. lemon juice
1 package pectin
1/4 tsp. butter
Juice Extraction: In a large pot, cover rosehips with water and bring to a boil. Boil for about 20 minutes, mashing fruit to a pulp as it softens. Rosehips contain tiny fibers or hairs around the seeds, which can cause irritation to the throat, so these must be strained out. Strain fruit pulp through a cheesecloth-lined collander or a jelly bag, saving the juice and setting the pulp aside. Put pulp in a pot and again add water to cover. Simmer again briefly and strain again. Discard pulp. If necessary, use fruit pulp and water once more to get to the necessary 3 cups of juice. For every 8 cups of rosehips, you should get at least 3 cups of juice – I used 12 cups of fruit, roughly, and easily had enough juice for a double batch. Juice extraction is not a science. There are many methods! 
Jelly: Add 1/2 cup lemon juice to 3 cups rosehip juice. Stir in 1 package of powdered pectin. Stir well. Let the juice mixture come to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Once it boils, stir in the 3 1/2 cups of sugar, stirring constantly. When sugar has dissolved, add 1/4 tsp. butter, to prevent foaming. Bring to a hard boil. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. 
Remove from heat. Let sit briefly and skim, keeping the skimmings for a taster. Pour into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space, and seal with two-piece canning lids. Process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. 
Jelly making is rather captivating – I am planning a trip back west of Custer to pick more rosehips this weekend!
After church yesterday afternoon, with thunder rumbling overhead, we took the Jeep to Rockerville Road to explore the backroads of the Black Hills. We had the dog and a picnic dinner, so essentially nothing was lacking!
Had it been dry, we would have gotten out and done a little hiking, or at least picnicked outside, but we drove in a steady drizzle and the dirt road was muddy and puddled. Not to mention, wet and muddy dog doesn’t smell very pleasant, and the backseat of the Jeep would have been pretty uncomfortable with a muddy Trixie sitting on our laps. The higher the road climbed, the louder the thunder got. We nearly bottomed out the Jeep once or twice, in places where the road was slick and deeply rutted, but Dad’s an experienced driver – Those places were the most fun, of course!
We followed a side road for a little ways, right as the sun burst through the clouds. Dad stopped so I could get some pictures, and the aspen trees along the road caught my eye, sparkling in the rain, with the sunlight behind them and shining through the raindrops, making the leaves like glass. 
I was with a coworker recently on a walk over our lunch hour, and I had my camera along. I showed her a picture I took while on our walk, and her response was, “How do you see that?” Well, you have to look for it. You have to determine to see beauty – If you look, it is there. “The heavens declare the glory of God!” There is so much beauty to revel in – Sometimes it is almost overwhelming, like the beauty of the aspen trees, and other times it is subtler, and becomes apparent only with a change in perspective. The knee-high, rain-wet grasses along that muddy forest service road seemed pretty mundane, until I crouched down in the mud to see the sun is glistening behind the golden stems. Then a whole new world of beauty opened up!
It was a sun-spangled, rain-washed world.
It seemed time to update my photography gallery, which had become very outdated. Time to spruce it up with some more recent work. So I’ve been doing some renovating in that corner of this blog, adding some more galleries, modifying the format, etc. Check out the galleries and let me know what you think!
Every good story has a transformation. And I love a good story. I think everyone loves a good story. The concept of a story is woven into our hearts as human beings. We naturally respond to and love tales of suspense and danger and good guys and bad guys, where the good guy wins, but just by a hair. We love high stakes, the threat of the story world falling apart if the good guy loses. We love the emotional roller coaster of thinking that the good guy is down, only to find out he is up again and the bad guy is retreating desperately. We love the stories of a knight in shining armor rescuing the beautiful and courageous maiden, or the gun-slinging cowboy thundering down on a ranch, to scatter the outlaws and marry the lone woman who had been defending her family’s ranch. We love the stories of bad-man-turned-good, coward-turned-brave, rags-to-riches, bondage-to-freedom, danger-to-safety, loneliness-to-love. Whether circumstantial transformation, or personal transformation, we love a transformation.
The genuine, regenerate Christian life is a life of transformation, a story of rescue (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Without transformation, we are still dead in our trespasses. Without transformation, we are still wretched beyond belief. If look at myself honestly, I recognize that I am full of pride and arrogance, lust and fear and envy, I am discontent and angry, spiteful and dishonest and disingenuous – and then I look at Christ. That is my rescuer! That is whom I am commanded to be like. That is whom I am commanded to worship. That is my Savior. How far short I fall! 
There is an unfortunate and deadly pattern in even those who consider themselves to be Christians, to try to deny their own indwelling sin, and to deny the need for transformation in their life. (1 John 1:8-9) The Bible clearly states that everyone is born with an innate knowledge of God (Romans 1:20). This means that everyone has a knowledge that this world is not how it should be, that there is something desperately wrong with the world and ourselves. If I am truly honest with myself, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am full of evil. I don’t deserve to be rescued! Without even trying to be wicked, I am wicked, and if I’m not wicked, it is simply by the grace of God! (Romans 7:21-25)
We live in a Christian culture where “good Christians don’t have problems,” where we don’t admit to our struggles, our sins, our own native evil. What a cruel message to perpetrate. What a burden of guilt, to not be able to admit what each of us suffers acutely from, to paste on a facade of perfection while withering away inside from shame! What a burden of sorrow and pain, to not be able to come to Christ, fall on our knees, and pour out our wickedness and repentance before Him, and let Him take our burdens and make us free! There is no sin too wicked, no secret too dark, no guilt too wretched, to be covered by the forgiving work of Christ. Just come. (Matthew 11:28)
What if Christian, the Pilgrim, had refused to admit he carried a heavy burden on his back, refused to drop it at the Cross, and tried to carry his burden all the way to the Celestial City? He would have died on the road, or drowned under its weight in the River of Life. And this is exactly what people do, who try to deny that they are struggling with their own evil, or who try to deny that there is such a thing as right or wrong, or that they have any indwelling sin in their life. They are refusing to let Christ take and destroy their burdens. They are denying the need for Christ. They are denying the need for a hero’s rescue, for a transformation of circumstance and person.
It does no good to claim Christ as Savior and deny the need of saving grace. It does no good to hope for Heaven if you don’t truly believe there is a Hell. It does no good to live a life labeled “Christian” if your version of “Christian” is no different from the culture. There must be a transformation.
What is springtime without first the deadened winter? What is dawn without the darkness of night? What is a rainbow without the fierceness of a storm? What is joy if we haven’t also experienced grief? What is salvation if we weren’t first dead in our sins? What is Paul the Apostle if he wasn’t first Saul of Tarsus? And what is the Resurrection of Christ the LORD if He didn’t first die a sinner’s death?
The glory of God is most beautifully manifested in His glorious rescue of wretched sinners. The salvation story is the rescue of all rescues, the ultimate knight-in-shining armor, the ultimate romance, the ultimate adventure, the ultimate rags-to-riches tale, the ultimate transformation of circumstance! The Hero comes, confronts the Villain, willingly pays the Ransom price to rescue the Prodigal, adopting as His children even those who had spit on Him, hated Him, abandoned Him, and crucified Him.
And thus we have the blessed paradox – A God who is all that is good, righteous, holy, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, a God who is just, and jealous, and justified in sending all of humanity to Hell for our corporal and individual wickedness…that same God stooped in love and mercy to become a Man, sinless and pure, to live a perfect life and die a perfect death, to pay the final price for sin: a gruesome, bloody death. (Ephesians 2:4-7) He died to save those who spit on Him, who reviled Him, who persecuted Him, who nailed Him to the tree. And each of us, by our sin, has participated in putting the nails through His hands and the crown of thorns upon His head. And yet He offers life. (Acts 22:6-8, 1 Corinthians 15)
It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t a story I would have written. I would have tweaked a few things. I would have made the object of rescue deserve it a little bit. I would have made the Hero a little bit volcanic, grabbing those who spat on Him by the shirtfront and giving them a righteous shake. But it is God’s story, and blessed be His name for choosing so glorious a rescue to be the story of all history! He makes it possible for us to live a life that is pleasing to Him – I have no power on my own to live a “good life.” I have no power toward any good, without the strength of Christ in me. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong….so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” ~ 1 Corinthians 1:27, 29.
Soli Deo gloria!
