Remember my goal of posting something 2 times a week? Well, life happened. The month of July started with a big and much needed family reunion, which lead into a Colorado National Parks trip and now I am finally back home and ready to share some of my amazing adventure with you. The most amazing part or being away from your personal axis point ( you know where everything sort of revolves and happens all around) is that you get new perspective. This is one of the top reasons I love to travel and to get away from the internet and the news and, as harsh as it is, people in general. I like the fresh air and the fresh ideas.
Let me first start my series of adventure blog posts not where the trip actually began, but somewhere in the middle. One of the nights we camped in the South Campground at a park called Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. I will go into more travel details in another post but for now I want to focus on the night sky. Man there were a lot of stars visible from there! We had a lot of evening rain and so I never thought much about getting out and checking out the sky each night ( figuring there would be a lot of cloud coverage and all). However, one night as my family sat around a campfire and read our scriptures for the day, i noticed the big dipper perfectly framed by a tree above my head. I bet your are wanting to see that awesome picture I took right? Well, I never took that picture. I’m not sure why, sometimes I just don’t feel that drive to go and grab my camera. There are times I just want to be in that moment and nowhere else. Anyway, so shortly after we finished up I was walking with my daughter to the bathroom and we were talking and looking at the stars and I noticed the comet everyone has been talking about. The NEOWISE comet is something I know very little about but had seen enough to know that was what it was. My daughter was less impressed with the comet and more impressed with the Milky Way, both beautiful in that night sky.
During this time, my daughter mentioned that she wanted her room to look like the Milky Way. I decided I would try to grab a few shots of it, and the comet who is now gone from site for a very long time. I had this idea that if I could get a good enough shot of the Milky Way, I could blow it up and basically wallpaper her room with it. In reality I wont ever get around to doing it, not to mention that she is just starting out her teen years and before long she will want “cooler” things than her moms photography covering her room. However, I took the shots anyway.
I am not an astro-photographer by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t have the patience or the interest to take the time to really learn all the technical skills that go into it. I have friends who are masters at it, I will leave it to them from a professional stand point. That doesn’t stop me from taking a few now and then just for myself and in this case, for history sake with the comet. After struggling a bit to get anything semi decent, I finally got some that you could at least tell they were stars. I called it a night.
On the back of me camera, you know that little rectangle that is smaller than your palm, the pictures looked pretty good I wont lie. My family was impressed but I knew they weren’t going to be great once I could see them on my computer. Still, I was proud of myself for trying.
Here is where I want to focus my thoughts today. I, and I believe many of you, want to do things perfectly. I want to do things to make the world a better place, a prettier place, a happier place, a kinder place, and the list goes on and on and on….like forever. However, when I let myself believe that things have to be perfect to have any affect on those goals, I fail completely. How many of us have those beautiful art pieces that hang on our walls, or on our refrigerator from our sweet children? I have a friend who has started mixing her art as a photographer with her children’s paintings and I just adore the pieces she is creating. ( Please go check out her stuff, it’s amazing and should be seen by the whole world. https://www.instagram.com/p/CDFBVxngu6N/?igshid=pmj1f23ij1c8 or her instagram is @themasonandhaileyshow ) Needless to say, most child art isn’t perfectly technical, sometimes it’s even hard to tell if it’s an elephant or just the next drawing of “mommy and her super squishy belly”. From time to time the ocean is purple and the sun is green but honestly who cares? We as parents love those extensions of our children and their thoughtfulness right? Perfection is the least of our thoughts when we open up that new card from our 7 year old who now has marker covering every little chubby finger tip. Personally, I would be bored if each of my children’s work was all perfect and uniform. I love the creativity, and the unique vision and skill set each of my kids has shared with me over the years.
So, with that in mind I want to share a couple of night sky shots knowing full well they are not great but that with what literally feels like the world falling in all around us, it is my humble attempt to find beauty and peace in it. With that said, I am learning to accept that my definition of perfect has been strongly based on what I see others do and how I compare myself to them. This is a flawed idea and I’m trying to leave it in the past, I encourage others to do the same. Perfection starts and ends with us. Are we being true to who we are? Are we doing the best with what we know? Are we taking steps toward becoming better tomorrow than we are today? I know that I will not achieve total perfection in this life span.
Just as the images here as well as the ones from my friend Jenny may not be technically perfect, they are part of our story and part of where we are in the journey of life and to me, that seems to be perfectly right were we are supposed to be!