FYI the main tree pics in the gallery here is a frame grab from a video. Not the best resolution. It’s late on a Sunday night and I really just wanted to write and mark the moment. Today I went out to Rochester Cemetery in Iowa for the Iowa Prairie Documentary Project. It has, what is considered to be, the finest stand of Oak Savannah in the entire state. There is a lot to why this designation is given but the old growth oak trees are definitely a big part of it. This is my fourth visit to Rochester Cemetery. I am planning on visiting and documenting how the oaks change in each season. Today though was about taking shots of each remaining oak tree within the pioneer cemetery grounds, since that is where the some of the land has never been tilled, grazed or otherwise mucked with since the last glacier retreated from this area. The area stands as an island in a sea of cultivated humanscaped “progress”. Documenting via photography and video, each individual tree was quite an experience.

We have to spend time in a place to understand what it can teach us. It’s like the words it’s saying come forth ever so slowly. If you just pop in for a quick visit, you will barely get the first word. It takes time to let the land teach you. And it takes seeing a piece of land through different seasons to see what the larger world is saying to it, how it’s interacting with everything around it.

The other pics are just me in a hammock and my tea kettle boiling lol.