After my parents and only sister had died, I hiked in their memory on a trail that we had often enjoyed as a family long ago, in the White Mountains, New Hampshire. At its most dramatic point, the path emerges from the cool, dark forest onto The Ledges, an expanse of steep granite shaped by eons of fierce winds and winters. As I stepped onto its dazzle, convulsive tears overwhelmed me. When my eyes opened again, its shapes and shadows struck me as animate, starting with the dolphin in #4. Nature, now human, cultural, and personal, was charged with metaphors and meaning. Hallucinations? General pareidolia? The primitive camera could not stop me. Twice since, I have returned to the mountain for more. Although that extreme proved irreproducible, enough of its seeing persisted to yield more photographs.
Because of the mountain-like shape created by the shadows on the rock, this photograph introduced an exhibition of the portfolio at The C. G. Jung Center in Houston, TX, in 2008, a fitting site, since Jung's emphasized symbols in mental life. An unusually pious Catholic once remarked about one member of this portfolio, "I sense spirit here," which I, an atheist, gratefully accepted as a high compliment and testimony that we, usually separated by a wide gulf, had communicated. -- A lichen forms the white blob and circle in the center, but many viewers, including me, feel tempted to take it as a sign or symbol. Of what? From whom? Meaning what? No answers, but no matter; the notion persists, the perhaps-symbol packing punch partly because just perhaps.