The Tree
Medium: Photography
Date: Taken October 29, 2011
Project/Body of Work: Souvenir Project
Photographed in October 2011 during an early snowfall on Bolivar Heights as part of the Souvenir Project, this image captures a tree transformed by roughly four inches of snow falling while autumn leaves were still clinging to its branches. The soft gradation in the background and the flattened horizon were not edited effects, but the result of snow obscuring the hill behind it.
When I turned and saw the scene, recognition came before memory. A moment later, I remembered a dream I had years earlier in this same location about this tree.
Process Notes:
The dream occurred in 2005 during an earlier period of life destabilization. In it, I stood on Bolivar Heights near a tree while a disembodied voice spoke about moving to Ocean City, MD, where I would learn “how things grow,” and then went on elaborating about the path ahead. At the time, none of the events described had yet unfolded. By 2011 when this scene was witnessed, all of them had.
Encountering this tree was not a symbolic interpretation layered on afterward. It was a shock, a kind of bodily familiarity with a moment that felt pre-lived. Only after that recognition did the memory of the dream surface.
Technically, the image required careful exposure to preserve the tonal range of snow and sky. I bracketed several frames to avoid blown highlights, but very little editing was needed. The scene appeared almost composed in front of me.
Over the next two and a half years, I returned repeatedly to this tree. It became part of an ongoing relationship with place, time, and witnessing. Years later, during depth psychology training, the image resurfaced again as a symbol of individuation and the Self, precisely because it had continued to live, I presume.
The tree still stands, though a storm later fractured one of its main branches. Its shape has changed. The relationship remains.
Additional images from this day in Souvenir:
