Creative Grace

My dad, Dr. Roderick Nash, the noted environmentalist, has been a river rafter his entire life. One of his favorite places on earth is the Grand Canyon, and he knows it like the back of his hand. He has been doing a lot of speaking about the canyon lately, as issues of water rights and preservation heat up, and he told me this fantastic story:

My dad was sitting down for an interview with a filmmaker who was planning a photographic expedition down the Colorado River. The filmmaker placed 20 photos of the canyon in front of my dad and told him to take 5 minutes to place them in any order that he found pleasing. They were pictures of water and rock, sky and scrub trees. Without even thinking, my dad arranged the pictures in the order that you would see the images as you floated down the river. The filmmaker, who had expected groupings made according to time of day or photographic theme or even the impression created by the image, was stunned. He said, "You may be one of the only people in the world who could have done that."

And that may be true. My dad has floated the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon more than 50 times. He knows it because he's been there. He know it because he's paid attention. He almost never takes pictures because he stores the images are all in his head. There's something about the story of the photos and the filmmaker that reminds me that inspiration isn't always easy. Sometimes it takes years and years of work to have one moment of creative grace.