Sitka Center for Art & Ecology at Cascade Head on the Oregon Coast
Class: “Writing the Image, Drawing the Text”
Instructor: Sarah Rabkin
August 22, 2012
My assignment was to wander around outside taking pictures with an imaginary camera. A small empty frame of an old 35 mm slide was my viewfinder and my brain provided a couple gigs of memory. After my photo shoot, I was to head back to the studio and sketch and write what resonated the most in my mind.
Off I went in search of something grand and broad and profound. I wanted a tiny framed glimpse of an ocean too wide to comprehend and too deep to plumb. I held the little frame close to my eye seeking the perfect panorama.
Along the way to the vista, I passed a great Sitka Spruce and its sweet spicy fragrance stopped me in my tracks. I breathed in the aroma, and it sank into the deep crevices of my soul. The breeze through its great boughs whispered a soothing peace over my heart. The sight and sounds and fragrance of the spruce washed over me. I approached the towering ancient and held a fleshy palm to the rough mosaic of its grey bark. I was dwarfed next to the giant. For more decades than I have drawn breath, the old Sitka has stood watch over the Pacific from Cascade Head.
Something quietly settling carried me away, and I found grandeur in two cones hanging together, one above the other, from a branch twirled with stiff blue green needles. The sunlight illuminated the right side of the cones creating a rich reddish brown glow. Each wavy scale was bright and warm against the darker center of the cone. I held the viewfinder to my eye, framed the cones and took a mental picture.
I search for majesty is the greatest broadest places, and rush past the splendor hidden away in the small cones of the Sitka Spruce. The Creator puts His majesty in the smallest cone, the single spruce needle and in the sighs of its boughs as the breeze stirs its branches. And so, God has placed His majesty in the smallest detail of my life. Nothing escapes His notice and His care. Nothing is plain and mundane when God inhabits it.

And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Matthew 10:30