This week I did Day Ten’s assignment, which is to take photographs representing earth, fire, water, and air. I walked along the stone wall where I did Day Twelve for the book, a place I enjoy revisiting. It’s on top of a hill, so rain tends to pour off of it and not collect. Water I photographed in the forms of a leaf, fox scat on a rock, and a discarded fast food cup. In the old stone wall I found chunks of quartz I hadn’t noticed before, near the red stalks of pokeweed, of which there were numerous, acting as border plant at the wall. For earth, in addition to the quartz, I also photographed the ground I sat on for Day Twelve, almost naked ground next to the maple tree.

For fire I could have photographed an electrical station and its danger signs. This station is at the bottom of the hill and serves a health facility. But its noise and warnings make me ill at ease, and so I took this photograph:

The jet stream represents the fire of the plane’s engine. Not an image I would have imagined for fire, but that’s the fun of doing these assignments, the unexpected results.

For air I saw a white spore blowing in the wind and I followed it. The spore almost seemed alive. It fell down to the grass and got corralled between blades, but then a breeze came and freed it once more. It dropped again, only to move along its filaments, and the filaments resembled feet as the spore balanced on the end of one and then another, always one at a time, turning precisely. I photographed it turning on top of grass

While walking the hill, I thought back to my home, and how much more regulated the four elements are inside than out. Homes are where we have gained power over the four elements. That power is easy to forget until something goes wrong with it–until we spring a leak in the water heater, or the electricity goes off in a storm. Fire is the gas burning on our stove, or the heat in our radiators. Air is the fan keeping you cool or hot; treated water is in our kitchen and bathroom. Earth is the foundation of the home and its footprint. Identifying the four elements outside takes more work–and controlling them outside, if we need to, is much more of a challenge, whether that’s making a fire or being able to drink out of a stream.