Altarpieces

A Sensorial Journey into the Living World

Sage + I photographed by Megan Toenyes

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The hum of a hot day turns itself into song. Insect legs strum insect wings, a scratch that shimmers a chaotic chorus flirting with cacophony. Barefoot upon dry compact dirt, sole pressed to soul, weaving past pinecone and fallen needle, sweat meanders a salty river down the valley-spine. Suddenly, delicious as held breath returned, the sigh of shade.

Light and shadow are equal here, where desiccated pine needles meet moist moss. On the edge of forest and bank, many voices slip over rainbow river rock, the beds of caddice fly pebble cocoons supporting the alchemy of metamorphosis. Bull trout, stealthy shadow seekers, swim upstream yet appear still, stopping time as if the river were temporality itself. Meltwater-chilled air brings the headwaters to the tongue, winter’s snowpack still nourishing all who live downstream.

There, at the forest’s edge, wide and rooted in its own ending—the stump of a ponderosa pine. The tree’s wound opens to the sky. Toes tingle. Ants crawl over fleshy feet, uplifted roots, and solid stones. Follow the ancient pheromone pathways into the heartwood.

Kneel before the Altar. Skin on soil. Flame to leaf. Volatile oils are released.
Piney pungent smoke of prairie sage, only syllables of the spirit remain.

Felled ponderosa, artifact of enduring strength, life articulated in widening circles; rings extend beyond bark to the pines who remain rooted, to the moss and the rocks, to the tapestry of river and bank, decomposing flesh, wisdom woven in spiderwebs and mycelial mythos, maggot and microbe, antler and bone, ashes of ancestors held in soil song.

You are encircled.

Self Portrait with Sage at Sunset, Paulden, Arizona

An altarpiece is a sacred image placed behind the altar. It is a focal point where devotion flows, where our attention returns again and again. Each work I offer is an altarpiece. For the wilderness within us all.