Bog Walk
By Cora Saddler
Artist Statement
October 15, 2022
3:45 p.m.
Home is a walk through the woods. It’s mud-caked boots off the beaten path and overcast October afternoons with slivers of sunlight seeping through the dusky and dim blanket of cloud coverage. It gets dark early here, nothing like where I’m from, and yet, this feeling of homesickness gets caught among the birch tree branches and finely pointed spruce needles. Or maybe they’re fir? Perhaps pine? I was never good at remembering which was which, but I don’t need to know their names to appreciate the quiet beauty nestled all along the wooded path.
I first became interested in nature close-ups a year ago and have since sought out the beauty embodied in the simplistic and small. On this walk, I found joy hiding in the patterns of leaves. At one point, the sky opened up and for a moment, and the sunlight turned the yellow tamaracks to gold.
Little moments like these illuminate the richness of our world and the pleasures found within—the lessons of patience and reflection that ten seconds under the tamarack tree can teach—if only we take the time to look at it all through a new lens.
Home is a walk through the woods, and I’ve done a great deal of learning inside of it.
