"Casper The Friendly Ghost" (c) Holy Week, 2003, 2016 Stu Jenks. (From the hardbound book and e-book, Flame Spirals: Journey Through Nocturnal Photography)
The canyon smells of dark musk and wet sand. It rained yesterday, which is uncommon for the Sonoran Desert in the springtime. Usually we’re without rain until July. This rich scent is three months early, but neither I nor the Palo Verde trees are complaining.
I’m rock-hopping up this anonymous canyon at the base of Mount Lemmon. The Full Moon's large and bright. I need no flashlight. There is no trail. It doesn't matter. I’m just winding my way up through the large granite boulders that sit in the trickling creek.
I find the angle pretty quickly. I've come with an idea, but then again, maybe I'll try something else. I have my Zippo, my Pentax and a 28 mm lens, for my idea is to create a wide angle flame spiral. But wait a minute. There's a small puddle of standing water in a depression on this boulder. Hmm. I do a practice drawing or two off to the right. This'll work.
I set up the angle and the shot, focus on a spot on the boulder. Then, with my index finger, I dip into the puddle of water and begin to draw a water spiral on the rock. It takes many passes back and forth from the puddle, but a wet spiral slowly appears. I return to the Pentax on its tripod and look through the viewfinder. Yeah, boy. I open the shutter, draw a flame spiral and wait ten minutes before closing the shutter. I then notice something I didn't expect. Over the ten minutes of exposure time, the water spiral has almost completely evaporated, leaving barely any wetness at all on the rock. I stare as the spiral disappears. I close the shutter at the end of ten.
I redraw the water spiral, open the shutter, do another Zippo pass, stepping out of the frame for another ten minutes. Cars pass far below on the Mount Lemmon Highway, cold air rushes down the high mountain wash, and the water spiral fades away. I don't have to be Buddha to recognize how this vanishing water spiral shows me that Life is temporal. That nothing is permanent. That everything changes. An old lesson that can't be taught enough to this Middle-Aged, American White Boy.
It's the Wednesday before Easter. I'm aware of a certain Christian energy, of a Holy Ghost that’s moving through this time of year. Yet this water spiral evaporating right before my eyes resonates far more with me than any image of a suffering Christ or thoughts of his final dinner of bread and wine among friends. This water spiral is my own personal Holy Ghost.
The Holy Ghost was always a cool thing to me as a kid. The Father, The Son and The Holy Ghost. Amen. I didn't trust God the Father all that much. My own Dad was a distant man who rarely praised me or my sister and often seemed to look at me with silent scorn. It was hard to wrap my arms around an image of a Loving God the Father with a Dad like mine. Also, I didn't know about the Son, Jesus. He seemed a little weird to me, getting himself crucified, and what was up with drinking his blood on Sunday? Ick, I thought as a child. But the Holy Ghost? Now that I could get behind as a six year old—mysterious and a little scary but I always had a feeling that the Holy Ghost was on my side. A wispy piece of God that was everywhere. A part of God that sort of liked me, like the Saturday morning cartoon character, Casper the Friendly Ghost, but bigger.
I can still get behind Casper. I feel him here tonight with my Zippo, and the little water spiral that keeps disappearing, and the musky green smell in the creek, and the cold mountain air that comes from above.
After a bit, I pack up and rock-hop back down to my truck. When I reach the road, I look back up the canyon and thank it for the good night and for the little bit of magic that it gave me. And also for the lesson that everything changes, that nothing stays the same.
A little lesson, perhaps, coming too, from Casper the Friendly Ghost.
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