STARDUST ROSES

We are stardust, we are golden

And we have to get ourselves back to the garden…

Sixteen years ago, I went to the Atacama Desert in Chile to spend Christmas with my son.  We rented a cabin from a French astronomer who had a dozen large telescopes.  That was our first glimpse into the enormity of the colorful heavens above us.  We discovered the Tarantula Nebula, the Orion Nebula, Eta Carina and the brilliance of the Pleiades.  I photographed them every night through the telescopes.

Years later, after a career as a photographer working in East Africa, India and Asia, I settled in Point Reyes Station on Tomales Bay and started to grow roses.  The coastal climate is perfect for roses and brings out the intense colors and variations of this amazing flower.  I started to see parallels between the ever changing nebulae in the skies and the folding colors of the rose petals with their star shaped stamens and pistils.

Looking more deeply, I learned that every atom in our world is made from stars.  Exploding stars exude all the elements that make up our world, and gravity eventually draws the stardust together to form planets like Earth with its rocks, water, animals and plants.  Every atom of your DNA is made of stardust, as is every flower, bird and stone on our planet.  We are all made of stardust, as connected to each other as we are to the dust of distant nebulae, in galaxies far, far away.