I visited Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park for the first time late one winter afternoon. The shadows were already very long and very dense. The effect was very appropriate to the place; there were alternating patches of deep shadow and very warm golden sunlight. Though I'd read The Yearling, I had never read Cross Creek. It is a beautiful book and powerfully evocative.
Though Rawlings regarded Cross Creek as a haven, her life was in fact rather turbulent; such peace she had was hard-won. I admire her for her craving for simplicity and for the deep love and appreciation she had for North Florida.
I took a lot of photographs that day 10 years ago. I was just beginning to enjoy photographing North Florida and that beloved "bygone" feeling---the nostalgia for things past that I never personally experienced---pervaded everything. The light was particularly rich and golden; it was that "certain slant of light" that reminds you of things you didn't know you remembered.
But more than anything else, I wanted to capture the reflection of the sun in the magnolia leaves. Sometimes late in the afternoon or early in the morning, when the sun is just at the right angle, I know just what the poet Marianne Moore meant by the phrase "In the Time of Prismatic Color." Everything looks as if it were made of green, blue, and golden glass.
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