Last week, while I was on a retreat in NE Oregon, it became blatantly obvious to me that sometimes the muses have something completely different in mind for what kind of work an artist should be doing.
As a fine art photographer, I always bring my camera on long distance trips. You never know what might happen. To be honest, I had second thoughts about bringing them with me on this trip since I have been working on new images much more than my writing projects over the last few months and I was reluctant to spend any more time behind the viewfinder. But after a long conversation with friends who own a gallery and have seen their fair share of average but uninspired photographs, I succumbed to the idea of going against my nature of only catching late evening light and vowed to get up the next morning at 3:30 AM to catch the sun as it peeked over Zumwalt Prairie. It held little comfort for me when my friends warned that although there could be some really lovely light, it was also a good time to cross paths with wolves and cougars looking for breakfast.
It was early dawn when I rolled out of bed and prepared for my trip the next morning, barely able to remember my name much less my camera equipment as I stumbled around the house and then set on my way. Admittedly, my fears got the best of me with only four hours of sleep and there were many times that I was tempted to turn the car around and go back to bed. Yet I drove on, to where the pavement turned to gravel and I could only drive about 20mph in my little Honda for several miles while I urged my brain to stay awake, even for the sake of surviving my journey out into the middle of nowhere.
Keeping diligent watch for any signs or silhouettes of predators in the open land around me, I set up my camera, covered it with a blanket to keep it from freezing and waited in the chilly wind for the ‘perfect morning light’. Even though gray clouds had covered up the Wallowa Mountain range in the south, I kept hopeful, but much to my dismay, the clouds hid the sun from me too. I came up with diddly squat. But no predators, so my body was still intact, even if my spirit wasn’t. The muses had not arrived on the scene. I was forced to go home disappointed but relishing my survival of my first early morning shoot in the outback.
I decided to focus on my writing, making edits on a novel I have been working on for years. Then VOILA!!! the path became clearer to me; I needed to change certain passages from ‘lecturing to the reader’ into actions and responses of the characters, and for the first time in months, I was once again an inspired novelist. Later that evening, as I prepared for an early trip to bed, mother nature and her muses taunted me with a miraculous sunset over the valley from my bedroom window, giving me two final shots of the trip. I was elated and vindicated for my willingness to be open to a new way of working.
After all was said and done, I had certainly made some progress, just not in the way I had envisioned, reminding me that sometimes it’s just smarter to throw away my expectations and surrender to what gifts have been placed in front of me; a lesson often taught but easily forgotten. —m.c.reardon
