Along the National Seashore on Cape Cod lies a peculiar hiking spot.  The Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail is up here in a place normally associated with beaches, dunes, salted air ocean breezes.  Not swamps.  I’ve long wanted to check it out, camera in hand.

Last weekend offered a few unencumbered hours and so Joey and I headed out.  Across the street from the more typical dune clad Cape beach, we found our way from the parking lot down into the cedars and toward a boardwalk split swampland.  It was hot and humidity dripped into and onto us.

Before too long, it became clear to me that this must be quite the destination in the spring, when elevated water tables and snow melt fills the swamp up to near the level of the boardwalk.  It must be plush green then.

Or in the autumn, when oranges, yellows and reds spill across the canopy above and around.

Or imagine winter after a snowy dusting, white and glistening in the crisp and cool.

But not now, not the summer.  The swamp was mostly gone, the colors deep but singular green, and the air unwelcoming and thick.

All that remained for me was the light.

So, instead of looking for compositions, I searched merely for instances of light.  Splashes of it.  And there was plenty to be found.  I took it in.  It was a treat after the hours I spent watching the news earlier that same day.

And earlier that same day, you might have thought there were two completely different versions of it all.  Fox said it one way, CNN another.  Facebook posts were filled with perspectives, sometimes contrasting, often heated.

Regardless, there was violence.  Hatred.  Resistance to the notion that we are one race, one creation, all lovingly crafted by a benevolent Father who calls all of us his children.  It fell over me like a darkness.  Like a broken heart.

Then that same evening outside a nearby chapel, I spotted through the darkness this…

And I remembered.

Instances of light.

There is plenty of it.

Take it in.