WESTERN PEONY (Paeonia brownii), Eagle Cap Wilderness, [ click photo for next . . . ]
WESTERN PEONY (Paeonia brownii), Eagle Cap Wilderness, [ click photo for next . . . ]
The name Peony comes to us from the Greek. Paeon was
a prize student of Asclepius, the Greek god of healing and
medicine. Evidently, poor Paeon was a bit too talented of
a diciple. As the story goes, the god of gods, Zeus,
intervened to save Paeon from his teacher's jealous
wrath by, as gods do, turning him into a flower.
Western Peony is a member of the transition zone between
dry sagebrush steppe, and the wetter and higher Ponderosa/
Doug-fir forest. [The photo above was made at 1450 m.
along the ecotone of such a transition zone. It is a
perennial, its strikingly earthy rusty-red leaves emerging
straight up from the wet soil directly after spring snowmelt.
The dark maroon of the Western Peony's flowers are equally
noteworthy. It flowers relatively early, and then enters
a long period of dormancy as the heat and dry soil of
montane summer approaches.The Ohlone people of present-day California used the roots
of Western Peony as part of an herbal tea for gastrointestinal
discomfort.
On the road in the American Northwest.
CONCLUSIONS & QUESTIONS
Conclusions fight;
Questions ask.
ON SUSTAINABILITY . . .
(0) Sustainability is movement without contradiction, without
conflict, without waste;
(1) Sustainability is Network is Community is Friendship;
(2) Sustainability is when natural law and cultural convention
fit together like the shape of a well-crafted violin fits the laws
of acoustics, of its spruce and maple woods, as well as the
physical movements of the performer. Sustainability is there-
fore a state of dynamic, creative, and sometimes even genera-
tive chaotic, harmony;
(3) Sustainability is when the structures and norms of cultural
convention adapt continuously to the exigencies of natural
limit; Limit gives rise to the formative context; Art happens
when the artifact reflects this formative context on all its sides,
in all its myriad details.
(4) Sustainability is what we become aware of with the dire
shortages of crisis; Contradiction is what we become aware of
in the sudden surprise of total collapse; Freedom is what we
become aware of when the Inquisitor knocks at the door.
NATURAL STRENGTH?
2 points, a stick;
3 points, a system.
UNLEARNING THE OLD
We shape the world and the world shapes us.
Learning the new is simpler than unlearning the old. To
learn the right things, at the right time, and in the right way,
is the intention which naturally not only takes its seat at the
head of the class; it may be compelled to leave the school
altogether for the freedom of the open field.
| If you're interested in philosophy and the general background
to the present crisis of perception, culture and consciousness,
please preview my little book, THEATER OF THE NEW. |
| my webpage for THEATER OF THE NEW | facebook page |
Please visit my picture-poems.com MOUNTAIN WATER print gallery Above is a set of recent flowing water images. (Mouseover for TITLES & CONTROLS!)I might just mention here that, following the simple, basic ethical principle, First, do no harm, I never use cars or jeeps or or snowmachines. Instead, I do everything on foot, bike or ski. I think this in a deep and direct way affects my work, and how I see and experience the world generally. So know thaty all the photos collected here were approached on foot -- including all the in between spaces -- sometimes involving journeys of weeks, or even months.
I would not want to work any other way . . .
All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999 -2015 picture-poems.com
(created: V.3.2013)
