The Photo that Always Gives Me Hope

     Canadian singer Bryan Adams had a hit with the song, “Summer of ’69”.   Whenever I hear the song I flash back to my life-changing summer in 1969.  It was a summer that had a profound effect on me.  I had just graduated from university, and had applied to join the Peace Corp.  I was happy at being accepted and overjoyed upon learning that we were to be spending two and half months in Hawaii to be trained.

    Being in Hawaii was a life-changing experience for this Indiana boy.  I suddenly found myself in a tropical paradise, full of amazing land and sea scapes, dramatic topographies, and colorful tropical plants.  As a result, being in those beautiful and colorful surroundings made me a more sensual person.  On weekends, we trainees had free time, and some of us would hitch-hike to the dry side of the island of Hawaii to sleep on the beach.  It was a wonderful, sensual experience surrounded by nature.

    Field trips were part of our training, to familiarize us with the Tropics, since we were being trained the teaching of elementary school science for two years in the Philippines.  One of those field trips we took was to an area that had previously been destroyed by lava flows from a volcano.  

    As I walked across the black, barren, moonscape-like rock of the lava flow, I came upon a fern starting to grow out of a crack in the harden rocky lava.  It was an inspiration to me, seeing how life somehow finds a way to re-establish itself, in what seemed like an impossible situation.  I used my old Argus 35mm camera to snap a photo of the fern. 

    I had always been partial to ferns.  I had loved learning about evolution and how life changed and evolved on our planet.   In my youth, I was fascinated with paleontology and had some experience in collecting fossils.  In my meager fossil collection, I had several fossil imprints of ferns that had been alive 350 million years ago.  

    I loved ferns because they had always seemed so ancient and primal.  Seeing this fern growing out of the Hawaiian lava, seemed to show me that life is still struggling to adapt and survive.

    Seeing the fern growing through rock gave me hope that life will somehow continue, despite catastrophic conditions, and certainly hope is a commodity that we desperately need today.

      

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca