200

 

On September 16, 2012 I hit the ‘Publish’ button and posted the first piece to go into this blog. I was in Nova Scotia taking photographs at Peggy’s Cove. Looking back, it was a wonderful day and the piece I wrote still feels good. The photo I posted was a great shot but after many reviews, there is another one that I like more. It was from farther away and as luck would have it, the sun came out for just a short minute and the first light popped against the white paint on the lighthouse. I hung an art show of my photographs last year and the Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse was well received, one of the better pieces. Collectors were interested and several had been there, had similar photos of their own. I’m glad it didn’t sell as I enjoy it daily on my living room wall. 

That was the first ‘Stones In The Road’ post and this one toady will make 200. Thinking about creating blog posts, this 200th piece is sort of a milestone. I thought the same thing about 100. It occurred to me then something like in Grimm's Fairy Tales, Hansel and Gretel dropping crumbs along the path as they went deeper into the woods. Their trail of crumbs was a futile effort to return by the same way. I on the other hand, have no intention of retracing my steps. My crumb trail is little more than graffiti, on the chance someone will notice and sample it. If I were selling subscriptions it would be a total bust but it gives me reason to write. Sometimes I have something to say and other times I just need to process. In James Taylor’s, ‘Rockabye Sweet Baby James’ he aludes to the future and to his journey with the line; “There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway, a song that they sing when they take to the sea; a song that they sing of their home in the sky, maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep. The singing works just fine for me.” So it is, the writing works just fine for me. 

There is a point in time when a good idea transends and becomes a plan. I’m just about there. I want to go back to Nova Scotia this summer. I have an invitation, a sofa to sleep on and I won’t have to learn a new landscape. If I can manage it for sure, I’ll go back to Peggy’s Cove. Maybe I'm more like Hansel & Gretel than I thought. I can follow my blog posts all the way back; I’ll take photographs in the first light, eat fish cakes and beans for breakfast like everyone else and I will write about it.