I've found myself deeply drawn to landscape photography over the past few years, and it's only been recently that I've found the right words to explain why. I suppose it came to me as a feeling, though, rather than a thought:

I was standing by a serene lake in the Grand Tetons, munching on a Peanut Butter Cliff Bar while gazing across clear water at ginormous, slightly intimidating mountains. Wind gently blew across my skin, but didn't make me warmer nor colder--a hug from the universe.

As I peered through my camera, I couldn't help but feel infinitely small and insignificant compared to the cliffs and lakes and trees around me. Despite this slightly uncomfortable sentiment of tininess in a large world, I had an unexpected and highly comforting feeling emerge: that I was not separate from what I was seeing -- that I was made from many of the same elements and minerals as everything around me, just in different ratios and conformations. So as I lifted my camera and peered through the lens again, I was no longer seeing something disconnected from myself. I was seeing a self-portrait of sorts, but this time I was in the form of the needles on the pines, the water in the clouds, the moss on the forest floor, and the oxygen in the wind. My feelings of insignificance transformed into a deep sense of care for myself, because I knew that if I cared so deeply about the Earth and all of its intricacies, I had to include myself.