Not to belabor the discussion or images of sheep I’ve included in the last few posts, but I feel compelled to share this wonderful photo I have just received from a friend who was visiting and hiking on the Isle of Skye. It is complete serendipity that this sheep appears now in the exact landscape of the personal photo I chose for “Connections”, the title page of this website. How did this sheep climb into my photo, across time, but on the same hill?
In my experience, horizons change not just with location but with time. Here it is the agility of an animal at home in these hills that draws my attention. I can almost feel the rough grass under foot and the cool damp air around me. The horizon is close, personal, sensual.
As I approach a new decade, what was once the unimaginably distant horizon of becoming 80 years old now becomes this moment’s reality. All of those hills and peaks and cloud-driven moods of an abstract Scottish landscape are brought home to the particular: the close up curl of wool, the determined black face, the enviable center of gravity that ensures safe passage.
I guess it is that horizon of the close-up, the particular the drew me to the whimsical image of the “Form-Ewe-la-One” included at the end of the earlier post, “Mystery of ThroughLines.” Perhaps it is an oblique way of trying to understand my new age and the horizons it offers. That sheep on the red tractor? That’s me! Not just an image to amuse, but the reality of my new Kubota tractor that takes me across my fields to mow, to scrape, to move large objects. It may look funny to see a sheep, or an old lady, commanding the landscape in such a way, but it is my new horizon of belonging..
