Holding On -13.5 x 22 framed canvas, originally $385, now $225

I fell in love with the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest the first time I saw them in 2010, and since then I’ve taken several trips out to B.C. and Oregon. In 2018, after reading Peter Wohlleben’s book The Hidden Life of Trees, I felt a powerful urge to go again, this time just to sit among these ancient creatures.  I booked a lodge in Tofino, BC and set off with my usual camera equipment. Everyone thought I was going on one of my “photoshoots,” but I knew that this was going to be more like an eight day “self-directed silent retreat.”

On the way I stopped to visit my friend and she showed me the Gabor Mate book she had just read, In Search of the Hungry Ghost.  Though I didn’t have time to read more than 50 pages, that was enough to send me into a state of confusion and questioning, so deep that I felt like I was wandering through my own dark and unknown forest. In Tofino I spent my days among the trees, and my nights alone in my room reading, writing, and meditating. Each day the inside and outside increasingly lost their separateness.  Everywhere I walked, I felt like I was seeing signs and symbols, faces and forms that surprised and sometimes frightened me, like the 4-foot-high moss-covered stump that looked exactly like an old crone. I was like Castenada without the peyote.  

This tree appeared on the third day as I was deep into exploring an old (largely untrue) story I’d been believing nearly my whole life.  When I looked at the tree with that root-like creature grasping it’s trunk I felt like I was being given a koan from an old zen master: “What are you holding on to?” he asked.  I spent a long time sitting there contemplating some answers.  That evening when I looked at the image again, I heard another, equally powerful question: “What is holding on to you?”  These questions were mind opening and led me on a year long search for the truth. When I finally got down to the ancient roots of an experience that had been holding on to me since the age of 6 it let go and I was free.