“When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architects shall appear” – Walt Whitman

I am in the midst of reading artist and author Emily Carr’s journals and I was surprised to learn that Carr, who painted and described her lush and wondrous British Columbia surroundings so vividly, often struggled to feel satisfied with the results of her work. In Hundreds and Thousands she writes:

“I am always asking myself the question, What is it you are struggling for? What is the vital thing the woods contain, possess, that you want? Why do you go back and back to the woods unsatisfied, longing to express something that is there and not able to find it?” 

Today I experienced this same frustration as I sat down to edit a series of photos I took on a short yet wonderful weekend trip to Tofino and Ucluelet last weekend. The live experience, every aspect, is still with me today, yet when I look at my photos, they pale in comparison to the incredible, mysterious sights, sounds, smells, touch and even taste of BC’s exotic west coast. How could I not recapture this place that is so alive in my memory? I can smell the oxygen-rich, green (yes green) scent of ancient Cathedral Grove and The Wild Pacific Trail (pictured above). I can hear the endless crash of the pounding surf in Cox Bay, Chesterman Beach and the windswept Wickinannish Bay. I can see and feel the presence of a millennia of natural beings co-existing in a place so brimming with life that your soul expands with each deep, grateful breath of clean, fresh, Pacific air. For two short days I felt detached from the hustle and bustle of my work life and felt a deep connection with the ancient, mysterious earth and sea. Hmmmm. Maybe all of “the materials” were “prepared and ready”, as Carr quotes from Walt Whitman’s poem about man’s connection with nature, A Song of the Rolling Earth. I just needed to appear? And listen, feel, and sense? You can judge for yourself as I have collected all of my photos from my Tofino adventure here. Let me know what you think!

Carr later writes that she better understood her process and muse once she recognized her connection to the natural world around her: “Search for the reality of each object, that is, its real and only beauty; recognize our relationship with all life; say to every animate and inanimate thing ‘brother’; be at one with all things, finding the divine in all; when one can do all this, maybe then one can paint.”