Meditation on Mark Making

she's at it again...a celebration of Earth Month

White River, Green Ice 2023 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

Frozen water floats down a river,¹

White River, Crystals 2016 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

and a branch intervenes.

Double Drop, 2026 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

She writes with baubles and bubbles;

Ice Bubbles, 2022 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

She holds light and creates geometries, thousands of miles and years apart;²

Frozen Geometries 2022 & 2026 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

She paints with smooth strokes and delicate designs';

Frozen & Frosty Wire, 2017 & 2021 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

She draws with sticks between rocks by a river in Vermont;

Stick Drawing, 2025 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

She draws with sticks in an empty parking lot in Idaho three years earlier;

Stick Drawing, 2022 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

Angles and ripples.

Frozen angles and ripples, 2023 & 2025 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

Like expensive cut glass,

Grass & Ice, 2022 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

or the pattern of a broken windshield.

Angled, 2025 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

She marks in blocks and in cursive.

Curves on Rocks, 2026 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

Only a gentle hand,

Bounded Curves, 2025 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

in a moment of repose,

It’s a Flower, 2026 Photograph by Lyn Swett Mmiller

could create such offerings - - a bauble or a bird.

Speechless.

Rock Drawing, 2026; It's a Bird, 2025 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

With gratitude for you being you,

Lyn

Can We Fetch With an Icicle? Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

A Gift, Many Times Over Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

Happy Earth Month, my friends!

1. My first playdate with ice occurred in February 2016, on the White River in White River Junction, Vermont (where the White River meets the Connecticut River). I remember being in awe. I’d never paid attention to the rivers around us in this way before.

A few weeks earlier my life coach had asked me: “Lyn, you’ve accomplished a lot - - but who are you?” and I’d replied, without thinking “A photographer” - - which had been off limits to me, because in our family my brother was the photographer (Benjamin C. Swett) and aren’t families like pies and you divide things up, or else it becomes a competition? Or at least that’s the myth I absorbed from my parents, who seemed to want to label us…

But at that moment, when the ice on the river seduced me for more than an hour, I couldn’t stop. This is a thing I love doing…and it turns out I’m still doing, a decade later. How cool is that?

Oh, and in terms of families and pies? Well, we’re all writers and photographers and makers of meaning of things - - my father writes books making sense of family history (and he was the one who introduced us all to the beauty of black and white portraiture back in the 1960’s and 70’s); my mother created books of her flower and mushroom photographs; my sister creates with fibers of all kinds and writes about what she makes on her Substack The Gusset; and my brother is in the thick of it as well.

So if there was a family ‘biz,’ I’d say we’re all in it. No divided pies. Just a hub of curious, exploratory energy.

2. There are morning walks that captivate. When visiting my sister in Moscow, Idaho in November 2022, there was a parking lot filled with frozen puddles…I was there for over an hour, transfixed.

When taking Lilly for our morning meander across the road, along the Ottauquechee River, there are puddles in the field and puddles left on the beach after the river rises and then falls…and when the temperature is just right…well….hours later, we return home. Geometries present themselves. In awe.