So have you heard about this fabulous, creative force known as Reverb 10? I discovered the initiative through my Polaroid sister, Susannah and a few other people on twitter. Reverb is an online initiative to get the creative juices flowing throughout December providing us with a great way to reflect on the year and to look forward to 2011. Each day in December, the Reverb authors provide a prompt to get you blogging, creating and reflecting.
From the website:
Reverb 10 (#reverb10) is now an annual event, an inspired response to (and evolution of) #best09. It’s an open online initiative that encourages participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. It’s an opportunity to retreat and consider the reverberations of your year past, and those that you’d like to create in the year ahead. We’re connected by the belief that sharing our stories has the power to change us. We look forward to reading yours.
I am going to start today with Moment.
December 3: Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).
I don’t know what it is about travel, but I always feel most alive when I am out there in the world, discovering and exploring. This year took me to the land of woodland creatures and forest dwellers. To a place where storybooks from my childhood came to life and I felt as close to nature as I ever have. Driving from BC to Alberta took me from the noisy city to the quiet of the deer inhabited mountain woods. From the moment that I spotted the first deer, I knew instantly that this was something that was going to change my life.
Bears and Elk and Moose do not roam in the place from which I come. You will most certainly not see lakes so turquoise that you question their physical existence. We got so close to elk that I could almost touch the velvet on their antlers…elk that were taller than our car. Each day I wanted to encounter more of the forest magic that kept me as enchanted as a child on Christmas morning and each day I longed to see more than the day before.
I am a city girl through and through and I never imagined that encountering some forest animals on a road trip would have had such a profound affect on me. It made me feel so very alive and full of wonder. I love, love, love that 2010 brought me close to those forest creatures and the magic that their spirits leave behind.
*The image in this post is by artist Martin d’Orgeval. It’s from a beautifully painful series of photographs taken of a Parisian taxidermy store that was burned in a fire. As you know, I usually post my own photographs but I wanted to share some of this beauty with you.*
