This afternoon I needed time away from the city, again, so I drove out to the eastern plains for a bit of physical silence and solitude. I spent several hours out there, actually. My last stop was this old cottonwood. I look up to this Old Soul who has stood guard over this field and the horizon for many years now. If you’ve followed me for any length of time you have seen several images of this Elder, as I check on them often. What made me stop and take this image was some journaling I did an hour earlier. I am aware of the challenge it is to capture images without the sign of man involved. The Old Soul or Romantic in me has often wondered how I would experience this land with its silence, its solitude and the vastness of it 200-300 years ago. So today I listed a few things in my journal that would not have been here then. There would be no roads, no vehicles, no air pollution, no oil well pumps, no fences, no bar ditches where someone has dumped an old couch, no jets overhead and their contrails, no plowed fields, no irrigation systems, no power lines, no cell towers, no wind turbines, no fields of solar panels, no housing developments, no warehouses full of stuff, no dairy farms, no buried gas lines, no water towers, no farms, and the list could go on. And, one more thing that would be missing would be the sound pollution coming from man’s machinery. I guess what I really was aware of today was how invasive man has been in nature, wondering how many people seem unaware, and may even believe it has always been this way. The sun has set and darkness moves in. It is time for me to publish this, fill my bowl with popcorn and read for awhile. May you stay safe and warm and enjoy your weekend.