A painting teacher told me once that every painting should tell a story. Photographs, on the other hand, ask us to "capture the moment". I'd like to take credit for this beautiful sunrise photo from the first day of spring, but I can't. My friend, Connie, took it, and I thank her for sharing. She was awed by the orange fountain effect just as I was, seven miles away.

Connie's photo of the sunrise is spectacular to me not just because of the unusual configuration of early morning light, but because of the story it tells of the land we call home. A country road with no cars on it, a field of corn stubble on one side and a pasture on the other, and then two massive trees that rise above the horizon. Their urn-like shape says they could be among the ever-shrinking number of surviving elms in southeastern Minnesota. They stand like pillars, as if they were placed there to be a gateway to the countryside beyond. In actuality, they probably planted themselves and now ask only for a little respect for their ingenuity and endurance. They, too, have a story to tell. The sunrise is framed by another tree, a sturdy white oak wearing its brown leaves for a winter coat.

Rolling acres, woodlands and the work of human hands tell us of all the earth can provide if we tend it carefully. In this beautifully captured moment, I see a story any painter would be proud to portray. The sunrise is its exclamation point.


O, Wise One
Trees in fur-coat leaves,
fences and fields,
that row of perennials
you never had time
to transplant,
logs waiting to be split,
electricity not yet running through the wires,
snow everywhere
beneath a furnace sun--
how can this be?
Ask a tree.