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This picture was taken from the Sourdough Spring in late summer of 2006. The spring originates just inside a small cave in a rock crevice. I took a close-up picture as the water flows from out of the fractured rock just inside the little cave.
The picture looked interesting enough and I thought of using it as a watermark background picture for the page on water, but I didn’t want to distort it in any way to make it fit across the page, so I book matched it. What this refers to is an example of how woodworkers use burl veneer. A burl is sliced thin and then laid down like a opening a book with pages. The right side is a mirror image of the left side; this practice was quite commonly done on all sorts of cabinets. So this is exactly what I did with the picture to make it wider to fit across. It took me quite by surprise when I book matched them side by side, there was something looking right at me all of a sudden, and there was even more hidden images. As I showed it to the rest of the family everyone found something else.
This amazing image was quit fitting for what I have read on natural springs. The myths and high esteem these ancient sacred sites have about them throughout mankind’s history is fascinating, revealing a past of shrines, water nymphs, tales of the elixir of life, etc.. The water is symbolic of life-giving, or birth-giving, since it emerges out of the earth and most cultures refer to the earth of being female in nature it more and more made sense. The importance of natural clean water, vibrating with energy to give forth its life giving force and to nurture all forms of life on this planet is reverberated throughout every human culture on this planet.
Below is Heike’s rendition of this photograph. She is our middle daughter, and currently attending her first year at the University of Victoria.
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Once was seen, in mind’s eye, a beautiful little stream, rickety with its surface waves, carrying away a little butterfly, crushed by the eager but innocent and unknowing hands of the child that threw it into the water. The child that I was so many years ago, believed with all my heart in the magic of the water that swept the little corpse away, magic all in itself.
There are magical aspects to nature that people do not fully understand. We can only stand ad marvel at the beauty in front of us at best: mountains, valleys, lakes, lush forests, rich mosses, tall trees, and sparkling streams that rush with the attitude “I belong here”.
Growing up in the Kootenays with parents who value Nature a lot – that spells a lot of nature walks, adventures sledding in the winter, cross country skiing, and working in the garden in the backyard. Wonderful, though really, I didn’t appreciate it as a kid. Walks were the honest to goodness worst thing to endure. What child has the motivation to go out and walk for the sake of walking? Boring! But, somehow, my siblings and I always came back full of happiness from the last fort built in the woods, the mushrooms spotted, the mosses bounced on (yes.. that wasn’t the best thing, but as a kid, you never care) and heck, even the tinkling of the water rushing past you as you pause for ten seconds at a stream. All the adventures imagination brings up from being in Nature are as the bed in the Princess and the Pea: thousands of times greater than those brought up by the material world today.
There is a powerful mysticism that surrounds one of Nature’s elements, Water. No nature walk was complete without it – the dew on the leaves, the puddles, or the streams. It was always there. We ourselves are eighty percent water. Somehow, Water makes itself into all of humankind’s historical beginnings, into all our old stories and myths worldwide. There is a sort of global connection and understanding amongst people that Water is special.
Just recently, my father found the ‘Sourdough Springs’ as they have been named. I was astounded to see where the water came spilling out from this crack in the earth; a few dark rocks, some with a bit of old algae or some sort of green growth, but the musicality of this natural voice, dripping, splashing against the stones, caressing the rock bed as it traveled downward, down the side of the mountain – it spoke to a mysticism that went far past the brief moment of my visit. It seems almost ironic that the picture my dad took of the springs brings up this image that speaks to what I felt back then. This image was book-matched: the left side was reproduced symmetrically and flipped to the right, so one sees a mirror image that stares back at you. I saw the spirit for it when I looked at it at first, but others have suggested comments of a wolf’s head, a crystal wine glass, and a woman giving birth. I’m certain that even you will have your own interpretation of this multilayered picture.
While I did not see it myself, the woman giving birth speaks to a nature that Water has been given – it is the source where life comes from, in old stories, and likely for those reasons, has always been given female connotations. Water is life; enjoy it as you may, and value every drop you spend on a shower or watering your plants, or now, that the Kaslo Sourdough Bakery shares with you within its bread. |
