I love this picture: Shoshone Falls, 1911

The one sits pertly on the limb: smiling, at ease, an arm embracing the tree, her other hand lightly holding her purse. She is the picture of vivacity and confidence. She acts as if she were born as part of the landscape. She sprouted with the tree. She grew along the river bank, always existing on that teetering edge of the falls. She isn't a daredevil, she is merely herself: natural, strong, and unafraid. She does realize she is beautiful. She knows the weathered bark of the tree will off-set her smooth skin, and the darkness of her dress will echo the weed's shadows at her feet. She will be the link between the rising mist below her and the meeting line of sky and cliff above her. She sees herself partially through the photographer's lens. She sees her courage and calm beauty replicated in the image that will always mark her moment there on the cliff.

Then there is her friend. She isn't quite ready when the photographer snaps the picture. Her eyes look hesitatingly, while her hands latch onto the nearest branch, and she gingerly tests if the strongest part of the tree will support her. She is not thinking of her beauty in this moment. Instead, she imagines the tree, after a century of growing there, breaking. She may not express it exactly like her friend, but she too loves life. Only she sees and feels her frailty in the vastness of nature and reacts carefully, appropriately. After all, she didn't wear her favorite necklace to pose in a tree today. She didn't picture her patterned silk blouse amid sagebrush or her hat, erupting with flowers like her friend's, immortalized with the scenery achieved only by risking one's life.

But she still goes out there. She feels pressure to do so, from the glamorous yet unnerving poise of her friend and, especially, from the insistent artiste behind the camera.

Perhaps in the second after this-- in the image we don't see-- she did alight, a natural-born sparrow, confidently on the branch. Perhaps she embraced her friend and put on her best smile. But the artiste became an artist because he did not succeed in capturing that moment. Instead, we see a more revealing fiction of two women feeling their way through this experience. The fraction of the story we have shows aplomb and doubt; self-confidence and self-consciousness; friendship and competition. It exposes the silliness of posing in a tree on the edge of a cliff. Yet, it reveals the natural impetus, the predictable idea of doing so.

Perhaps I love it best because it's easy to feel like both women, often in the same moment. A part of me often feels confident that everything will be jolly-good fun, while the other, saner half asks nervously, what the hell am I doing?

Evidently, I'm sitting in a tree on a cliff, and nothing could be more idiotic or splendid.