Desperate for more
I was right about one thing, I would be fighting my own schedule for time to get out. Weeks of switching between job and construction projects I undertook mostly alone make me feel like I don’t exist at times — I’m too busy to enjoy sentience. Eventually it catches up with me and I realize just how exhausted I am. I need a recharge.
Despite being in the home stretch of building a chicken coop, thinking it needed to be finished in only three days as the inspector was scheduled to come and do his thing, I took a single day off, and brought my camera into the Adirondacks for the first time in about a year.
Let’s take a pregnant pause… I didn’t realize how long it had been until I wrote that. I really needed a break.
We got a family friend to watch my chicks and feed my fish for the day I was gone, though we packed enough for three days just in case I couldn’t stomach returning home. I got to see my sisters for the first time since before covid began, swim in the lake, and offer my flesh to the mosquitoes. I could write about those experiences more but that isn’t the purpose of this short blog. I will say that it was altogether a good reunion.
But as for photography, I woke up at 4:30AM to board a kayak and paddle out onto the lake to capture the sunrise. The lake always produces a heavy fog as the temperature hovers around the dew point, and the sun beaming through it is haunting. The Canadian wildfire smoke had also just turned back to plague New York for a second time, so it was sure to amplify the reddish coloration of the sun. I say this instead of providing a photo because it was pouring cats and dogs and the only source of light for the next few hours would be the occasional flash of lightning. Needless to say I was upset, but sleep is good too, so I did that instead and waited for the rain to subside. In the end, I emerged from the woods drenched in sweat and itching from insect bites with only a couple poorly exposed images, happy for the experience to just be, and to witness these forgotten spaces.
I took a few family photos, and we departed, but on the boat back the clouds hung low over the nearby hills pitched around the valley the lake sits within. With some luck, I managed to shoot a decent panorama, handheld, on a moving boat. It was the cherry on top to a relaxing day away.
