"LEANING WINDMILL AND PAINTED SKY"

"Leaning Windmill and Painted Sky"

by Mil, 1969

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"SING TOGETHER YE WASTE PLACES..."
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With a broad background of blue...
And its slashes of white fall clouds
Reaching clear across the sky...
And the old leaning windmill
And the oak tree with its bare roots---

That day, on the Roswell highway
I felt that the Creator
Must have had His easel and paints
Out, and was maybe taking a turn
At capturing some of His own handiwork.

The scene was a quarter mile
Behind the Elkins Store, off the highway.
I spotted the old mill out there, and the tree
And turned left down a country road,
Crawled under a tight barbed wire fence
And walked out there and shot this picture...
One of my all-time favorites.

Caught up in the incredible rustic
Beauty of the whole scene
That autumn day in 1969
I forgot to check the tank
And see if there was water.
With a sucker rod leaning
Like that one---
I fear it was dry.

It's a sure thing that the mill
Was a spring of water for decades
For horses, cattle, deer, antelope
Small animals, quail, field larks,
Roadrunners, and maybe even
Rattlesnakes.

The old oak tree had served its
Time too---had been a faithful
Companion to the windmill,
Listening to its "clung- clungs"
Through many hot summers
And cold winters.

Its roots have been exposed
As the wind has swept
Away the soil from around them.
In the tree's younger years
It provided shade for thirsty cows,
And who knows?
Maybe an occasional people picnic!

I wasn't writing much in '69
But my camera eye was sharp!
This scene grabbed me, and

After taking five or six exposures

I sat down on a big block of rock salt...
Rested and relaxed...and meditated a bit.
It was a still day with no wind.

I sat there for the longest time
ln the unrivaled N.M.
Quietness and beauty---
Enjoying the sky, the distance,
The grass, the oak tree, and
My windmill. It was a nice experience---
Maybe I felt what hikers seek....

Forty-three years later
I am writing and studying
The picture that I love,
And new thoughts have come to me...

That was a beautiful place
And a time of solitude.
Other times like that have
Happened. 

 I've learned that---

In Solitude---
There is beauty...
There is rest...
There is meaning...
There is reflection...
There is cleansing...
There is growth...
There is determination....
There is resolve...
There is prayer...
There is Peace...

In the countryside
In the mountains
In the deserts
By the streams
In the quiet places
In the waste places...
Of the earth

Where God walks.

And this old windmill
Whose water
Is a symbol for life...
It is a spring
In the desert.

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From a meeting in Ruidoso, and en route to Clovis In 1991, we went through Elkins, N.M.,  fifty miles north of Roswell.  I don't remember if the store was still here---I was searching for my windmill.

Twenty-two years after taking the photo my windmill was gone. I didn't see the tree, either.

We passed on by.

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I'm proud to say that the picture above won a number of awards in photo contests, including several First Places. There'll never be another one like it.

It was shot with a Rolleiflex 2 1/4 camera with Plus X Pan, developed in Acufine. It had a heavy red filter to capture the sky, and bracketed exposures @ f8 and f11, shutter likely 125.

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BY MIL
6/02/13