BIO
Levi Huizenga is a Senior at Redwood High School. He loves to read and write fiction, listen to classical music, trail-run, road-bike, backpack, and take photos of nature. He will be a philosophy student at Calvin College next year. His favorite book series is far and beyond The Lord of the Rings.
PORTFOLIO OF WORK
Photography by Levi Huizenga
DAYDREAM
I turn pages I’ve barely read
My eyelids grow heavy
My chair cushions sink beneath my weight
I’m gone
Images flash
A lake made of blue glass surrounded by emerald pines
A daytime moon hangs pale white in the sky
A forest path snakes between trees and thickets of all size
They shift and rustle in the wind
A mountain track straddles a ridge
Far off is a chalet, white smoke puffing into the air
I walk forward, and my world changes with each step
My eyes open
My book is on my chest
Nothing has changed
WALKING
Our built world is easy to conceive
It’s made of straight lines and straight buildings
Clean walkways and level paths
We do not have to conceptualize what is miles away
Our needs are met within the reach of an arm
One day
I’ll put on some shoes and walk away
My life on my back
I’ll find a trail
And start walking
The world around me is unknown
The map is incomplete
This land is mysterious and volatile
Prone to adventures and excitement
No day is like another
A little man alights on my shoulder
Clothed in gray robes and spouting common sense
You’ll die
Get lost
Go hungry
Or feed a bear
I brush him off my shoulder, a dusty puff of smoke
I reach the mountaintop and the ground gives way
The world spreads out for hundreds of miles
I should feel alone, but I don’t
The world’s arms are open
I descend, and receive the embrace
GO AND SEE
In the wildlands of the North American continent, there is beauty
I have walked there, and I have seen it
I walked in great crevices of the earth, the ire of water etched into rock
I walked on knives edges, thousands of feet above the earth
I walked in great cathedrals of wood, millennia in building
I walked among the stone spines of sleeping titans,
rising and falling as they shift in their slumber
I walked in places the sun shall never see, the dank places beneath the earth
I walked on the bulwarks of the coast,
spiked forts defending against the crushing sea
I walked among the quiet places,
where the meek fawn nestles into the doe’s bosom
I walked through coursing water, surging forward and teeming with salmon
I walked through silent explosions of ochre and maroon,
trees who begin their slumber with muffled fireworks
The beauty does not hide nor does it flatter itself, it merely is
Beauty that exists for no reason except to be beautiful
Our planet did not have to be amazing
It’s flora did not have to be colorful
It’s fauna did not have to be brimming with beautiful life
It could have been monochrome, uniseasonal, and one dimensional
But it ISN’T
I devote my joy to the wonders of nature because they are there
I celebrate the beauty because it DOES NOT HAVE TO BE