Folks,
I don't know what it is about the frozen tundra of the north and the hard rock and drifting sands of the American southwest - but both of them, if you are there long enough, will awake a dormant spirituality that maybe lurks in us all. I cannot claim to be a religious person in the classic sense nor do my beliefs and non-beliefs align with the majority. That said there is something about the isolation and the sparseness and the feeling of the 'north' or the 'south'; that you are truly alone, that inspires what I will call a natural reverence - or maybe a reverence for and of nature.
I always find it fascinating that when you watch or listen to an interview with a native North American - whether Indian or Inuit - their world view and indeed their responses to questions are very spiritual, very metaphorical and somehow perfectly balance their needs with that of mother earth.
When I am home, I find their views almost foreign, out of place, even naive - out here, I start to understand what they are saying and maybe more importantly why, now more than ever, we need to listen.
I head into Death Valley tomorrow morning - I am looking forward to a great day of shooting (photographs) and I know it will be very spiritual - I can feel it already.
Then I head into the capital of hedonism - Las Vegas.
It's kind of like sitting in the sauna for 20 minutes and immediately jumping nude into a snow bank - to quote Marie Osmond, 'The good Lord made us all out of iron. Then he turns up the heat to forge some of us into steel', or to quote something of similar meaning from the Krome Koan, verse 9,
'Hard work pays off in the long run--- Laziness pays off now'
Phil
PS - there could be a Marie Osmond sighting in LV - Viva Las Vegas ..
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