Photographic Projections: Gift of September

Last Updated on August 1, 2016 by Patrick

I guess I have a special affinity for the month of September. I feel romance in the air, melancholy (in its superior aspect), a certain kind of sweet nostalgia that takes me far away into the past, into memory, but the kind of memory that is not bitter, dramatic, sad or the like. A memory of hope, I guess.

The sweet rain of this month where warm air is mingled with cool air in order to create the mildest atmosphere that I could experience is not only sweet, to just compare it with tastes, but gentle in its touch. But in the mountains, this month, we can see the craziest looking clouds and the most flamboyant of storms. I guess the cool air is reminding us that it can become colder than that and can bite hard with its winds.

Ascending the mountains I’ve reached some of the levels of the plateau in the great Bucegi, mountain trays if you will, tablelands, were rocks and vegetation meet to draw great contours here and there. I’ve always found Bucegi Massif to be special, one of a kind, electrical, eccentric as well, with its great ridges and crests mighty and majestic like a fortress in the sky. :) So I returned to them to explore some more. I will always come back to them because, somehow, they are beckoning me.

Nevertheless, I found that selective lights of the early morning sun going up on the horizon to its zenith can create selective-like spotlights on the land. In the last six months or so I’ve been attracted to them like a moth to a lightbulb, I should say. :) I’ve started to develop an eye for this kind of spectacle of Nature.

Ascending furthermore, the landscapes were changing and the light with them. Of course, it is a mutual relationship. One cannot see the landscape without light. But of course, again, I should say, there are different kinds of light due to their aspect, to their qualities. I’m not going to get into this.

I found something while on the trail. A mountain rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) standing on the high barrows amongst dwarf mountain pines (Pinus mugo). Not only this but it was full of fruits. The warm and merciful light of the September sun luminating this lonely mountain rowan on the level curves of the barrows amongst a plethora of dwarf mountain pines and junipers. Needless to say that its fruits where in their high period of ripeness which gifted me with their reddish drops of color. This is the first difference in color suggesting the beginning of autumn on the high plateaus.