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This is my newsletter and journal with essays on art and slowing down, on landscape photography and wilderness travel. The intention is to give you pause, spark your imagination and reflect on seeing life in all its beautiful complexity.
Stillness is now organized and managed on Substack. To see current and past issues, go to scottmansfield.substack.com.
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FEATURED GALLERY - “Eastern sierra“
The 400 mile Sierra Nevada escarpment rises like an impenetrable wall. The granitic uplift that started four million years ago continues today, and nowhere is that more apparent than along the eastern edge where the Great Basin desert formed because of this moisture-blocking curtain of rock. The dry sagebrush uplands of the Eastern Sierra sing a tune of elemental struggle, but showcase sublime beauty in simplicity of shape and distance. I've traversed and photographed this region several times over the years, but have yet to really understand its voice.
Wander
“Here life is wild
and quiet
and beautiful
Roaming amongst glacial remains
with a little food
a blanket for warmth
Mountain time is slow time
performed in rhythms
scarcely heard
Our species is too young
and too loud
to carry on a conversation
I need to be one of the old ones
a twisted juniper would do
or perhaps a sequoia
But that’s asking a lot
for what can I offer in return
for such an honor
Our ways are not of their deep time
we flit too much in the human present
so I stand still to scent the earthly sienna
A distant symphony of wind in pine
waterfall chords rise and fall
a grayed nutcracker sways an interpretive dance
Eventually I go on walking
to wander this mountain place
away from the world of man
Here life is old
and quiet
and beautiful
”