"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." — Albert Einstein
The Silent Petition of Bark and Root
In a secluded pocket of Fort Ord, Monterey, where once soldiers trained among the brush and wind, a forgotten grove convenes. Their meeting is silent, yet thunderous in its meaning. These are not ordinary trees. They are elders—keepers of memory, mourners of extinction, and whisperers of hope.
Their trunks lean inward, forming a natural amphitheater. It is as though they gather to deliberate the fate of the land they’ve cradled for centuries. Each curve in their bark seems etched with stories, scars from fires past, and the weight of witnessing humanity's recklessness. The red-soaked ground beneath them glows like embers of a dying fire—suggesting both life and warning.
Some say the trees were once people, rooted in place by sorrow too deep to bear. Others believe they are dream forms—manifestations of the land’s longing to be seen, to be understood before it vanishes under concrete and indifference.
But I say this: they are the guardians of what remains.
Their gathering is not passive. It is an act of resistance.
This image—this frozen moment of surreal communion—serves not just as art but as activism. It does what petitions and protests often cannot: it invites you into a conversation you didn’t know you needed to have. It is a call to attention, veiled in beauty and mystery. And it asks nothing more than your stillness, your presence, your willingness to feel.
As an artist and storyteller, I believe in the alchemy of images. One photograph can ignite empathy, rekindle reverence, and awaken responsibility. It’s not about capturing what is visible—it’s about conjuring what is forgotten.
When collectors, curators, and viewers hang this image on their walls, they are not merely displaying fine art. They are preserving a cry. They are holding space for the forest’s voice to continue speaking long after its silence becomes permanent.
So linger here a little longer. Listen.
The council is still in session.
Artist Statement
I create images as acts of preservation—of emotion, ecology, and myth. In The Council of Forgotten Trees, I return to the former military lands of Fort Ord as a storyteller of the unseen. I seek out those rare moments where memory, loss, and wild beauty converge.
This image is a meditation on environmental grief and spiritual resilience, told through a dreamlike visual language. The trees become ancestral figures—silent, spectral, and enduring.
I use photography not as a record of what is, but as a portal into what was and what may yet be. These are not just landscapes; they are visual elegies.
With each work, I challenge the viewer to feel before they understand—to approach nature not with logic, but with reverence.