The Shore Beyond the Mist
At sixty-eight, I imagined the horizon would be easier to read. I thought age would bring a certain clarity, that the distant shore would finally come into focus. Instead, much of it remains veiled in mist. The future is still there—I can sense its outline—but its details remain hidden from view. The final chapters of my life remain shrouded in mystery. I also assumed that by now I would be wiser—more settled, more emotionally mature, more at peace with myself.
Yet wisdom, I have discovered, is not a destination one reaches. It is something one returns to, again and again, often after wandering far from home.
Not so much in matters of contemplative practice or photography. I know most of what I need to know there. The deeper lessons are older, simpler, and infinitely harder to live. They concern forgiveness and fearlessness, the willingness to be broken open by beauty, and the courage to keep saying yes to life despite its griefs and cruelties. They concern making room for silence, paying attention, and finding grace in the ordinary gifts that surround us—a perfect peach, a ripe avocado on the kitchen counter, sunlight pooling on a wooden floor, the face of someone we love. None of these teachings are particularly complicated. The challenge is remembering them.
The challenge is allowing them to sink beneath the intellect and become part of the body, part of the breath, part of the way we move through the world.
Great photographs continue to remind me of this. The work of Sally Mann and Carrie Mae Weems, among so many others, returns me to truths I am forever forgetting: that love is worth the risk, that wonder often waits close to home, that joy is not frivolous but essential, that cynicism is a poverty of imagination, and that our lives become smaller when we spend them seeking the approval of others. The photographs that linger with me do not merely show the world; they invite me back into it. They remind me that magic is rarely found elsewhere. More often, it is waiting in our own backyard, our own neighborhood, our own kitchen, patiently hoping we will notice.
With whatever time remains, I find myself wanting to take another look at the world. I want to stand before it with fewer assumptions and greater tenderness. I want to photograph everything that catches the light of my attention. I want to tell my friends how deeply I love them. I want to throw my arms around my beautiful family so often that they eventually laugh and tell me I’ve made my point. I want to linger a little longer over conversations, sunsets, poems, and ordinary afternoons. I want to become more available to astonishment.
Death, I know, is somewhere in the neighborhood. It always has been. My balance is uncertain. I cannot hear out of my left ear. Osteoarthritis has taken up residence in my body. I have accumulated a lifetime’s worth of mistakes. I have been stubborn when I should have been flexible, guarded when I should have been open, and I have carried certain hurts longer than they deserved.
Yet something bright remains. Something curious. Something unbroken. Each morning my body reminds me of its limitations, but each morning the world continues to offer itself—the call of a bird before dawn, the slant of light through a window, the kindness of a friend, clouds gathering over distant hills. The invitation to live has not been withdrawn.
And so I find myself wanting to begin again—not from the beginning, but from here. To walk more slowly. To notice more carefully. To love more extravagantly. To live more gratefully. There is still beauty here. There is still mystery. There is still time. Not forever, of course, but enough. Enough for one more conversation, one more photograph, one more act of kindness, one more season of astonishment.
Across the water, the far shore remains hidden in mist. For now, it is enough to stand here in wonder, grateful for the light, the water, and the mystery between.
