HOME

I need to make the distinction between, “Home” a house and, “Home” the place that's more about your identity. I am at home right now, the house where most of my things live, most of the time. It belongs to me and I’m quite comfortable here, when I”m here. For me, travel is not a departure from routine, it is the routine. So when I’m home, it’s sort of like sitting in traffic at a red light. I check mirrors, adjust the volume on the radio, readjust my wallet so it’s more comfortable in my pocket, all the while keeping track of the light. There are times when I could use more time at the light but that’s another story. I will be leaving in a couple of weeks, for several weeks but for now, I am checking mirrors and my wallet.

I really like to cook, fix food. While I’m home I have a well equipped kitchen but nobody to cook for so I rely on the salad bar and deli for most of my needs. I decided a long time ago that food is not my friend. I need to keep a well defined emotional distance between friends and things that only make me feel good. Friends won’t beat you up just because you are vulnerable. When I do a good job of managing food, I eat well, sleep well, it tastes good and nobody gets hurt. Sharing food is near the top of the list for rewarding, social behavior and I love to go there. So I never pass a chance to fix food for my friends. I may indulge in too much or too rich but it doesn’t happen often and I understand the price I pay.

With cold weather coming on, stuck here for a while, I have a chance to cook for myself. Today I skipped cold cereal in favor of steel cut oats. Not like fu-fu, rolled oats that cook up in a minute or so, steel cut oats take half an hour on the stove top or hours in a crock pot. Near the end, I throw in a handful of toasted pecans, some dried fruit and a shot of honey. Breakfast was good with enough left over for lunch or a snack later on, or even breakfast in the morning. Last night I put lentils in the crockpot to soak overnight. This morning they are cooking with carrots, sweet peppers and curry. I’ll add some turkey pastrami later; whirl in the blender enough to juice it up and soup’s on. Strange, if I eat from a bowl, with a spoon, I don’t overeat. Finger food that comes from bags or boxes are not my friends. 

I got the leaves mulched the other day. Patio chairs and umbrellas need to come inside and I have several wood shop projects underway. It seems like there is always something more important at the time than practicing guitar and I need to change that. So while I’m sitting here at the red light, there are things to do. Last week I made a comment on FaceBook that, "Home is where the feet is." When I arrive in two weeks, there will still be “Home” work left undone at the house but my feet won't notice. When the light goes green you need to move along. 

DEER HUNTING

A long time ago, when I was attending writer’s retreats at Glen Lake, Michigan, I discovered Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore. It’s a stretch of lakeshore that reaches back into the eskers and moraines, left there from the last ice age. They are steep sided hills and ridges, covered with maples, oaks and ash and their flanks stretch  down onto the shoreline. I go there when I can and walk the slopes, talk to the animals and make believe I belong there. Once, for my small writers group, I wrote a piece about walking this one particular high meadow. I called it “Deer Hunting.” I was hunting deer, early in the morning before the fog burned off. I was wet from dew on the tall grass and had seen deer beds and fresh droppings. I explained how I finally found the deer and began shooting. Shot after shot I took aim and squeezed. In the end I revealed that my weapon was a camera with a big lens and that I had several trophies to take home with me from that hunt. 

Now, over a decade later, I’m still deer hunting every time I go to the “High Meadow.” Day before yesterday I was there in the late afternoon. I drove three hours to get there before sunset, that magical hour of low angle light. But clouds blew in and my magic hour turned into an ordinary cloudy afternoon. I still walked the meadow. I have a better camera now with an even better lens and I was searching for deer. Not even the animals can move through the grass without leaving a trail. You can tell which direction and how fast they were going and I got into a spot where there had been a lot of traffic. Then I saw the large, beaten down circle with a deer’s shoulder and leg. The hide had been gnawed away and stripped of flesh. Chunks of deer hide were strewn about but all of the red meat was gone. Across the way an eight-point buck’s head was set aside, undisturbed. Behind it in the grass was the ribcage and spine. Blood spills looked recent and the bits of flesh still left on white bones had not yet dried. I was fresh on the scene. I reasoned it was probably a mother coyote and her young; they would be six months and between them, they could take down a buck.        
A few minutes later, cresting a low ridge that rimmed a bowl shaped depression I had to look hard but there were five dark spots in the tall grass some two hundred yards down range. They were moving toward the trees. I thought immediately about my writing and about coyotes who were probably sleeping off their big meal. We get nostalgic with the Bambi concept and think of them as nature’s darlings but coyotes need to eat as well. Certainly, cars and highways are a new danger but the struggle to survive is timeless and grim as it might seem, the buck was just recycling the food web a little sooner than he might have wished, if he wished at all. Park Rangers protect wildlife from hunters with guns but the true hunters sleep in the same tall grass as the deer. The high risk business of survival is everyday stuff for the deer and the coyote. I live a charmed life, no worries about hungry predators outside my door. Our predators cheat us out of our money but we get to wake up in the morning.

MAN WITH A CAMERA

Grand Haven, Michigan; the beach is in winter mode now with rows of snow fence set up to keep sand on the beach instead of migrating to the street below the bluff. The light house may have some new paint but wear and tear on the pier itself can’t be covered so easy. Freeze and thaw eat away, little pieces, one at a time but the cracks and cavities are too big to miss. After so many years it’s easy to take the place for granted. The last time I was here there was a great festival going on. The beach was crawling with people of all ages. Sunset found the pier with tourists, shoulder to shoulder, waiting, watching the sun sink somewhere beyond the horizon, into Wisconsin. I'm by myself now, walking up and down the beach, out to the light house and back, then repeat the process again and again. Walking the beach should be worth college credit; you learn something important, every time. As much as it stays the same over years it changes minute to minute. Subtle changes in light, different angles, creatures in and out of the picture; I’m not sharp enough to catch them all but the lens doesn’t miss anything. 

There is an edge on the wind, just enough to push small rollers up onto the sand. Where the pier was full of people last time, this morning only three guys and a dozen fishing poles. The perch are there but nobody’s having any luck today. They are quick to remind anyone who will listen that a bad day fishing is better than a good day at work. Down the beach, gulls have congregated at water’s edge. Before I can check them out a jogger and her dog come up on them too fast and they explode into a flurry. Some settled back in the shallows while others circled for a few minutes and came back to the wet sand. As I got closer, hoping for another flurry and a chance to shoot them on the wing, they noticed me alright but chose to walk away rather than fly. In the sand, with a heavy camera around my neck they can walk as fast as I can so I headed back up to the rows of snow fence. There was a healthy dune behind the first row with wind ripples on top. The wind has packed the sand and that makes for easy walking. So I walked there, looking for lines and angles, color and contrast. Photographs don’t just happen, you have to look for them. Even then you have to figure out where you need to be when you trip the shutter. 

I have other things to do today but maybe I’ll still be in town when the sun gets low. If I can get a low angle sun in the same frame with the light house and be lucky enough to catch a few gulls flying through, I wouldn’t want to be somewhere else, doing something mundane. Fall colors are past their peak and I need to go up north tomorrow if I want fall photos. Some of you have been with me to the high meadow on M22, just up the road from Glen Arbor. That’s where I’ll be tomorrow when the sun comes up. If you haven’t been there, you need to go. 

FARMER

When winter starts to wain and the promise of spring gives you hope, you bring home with you, green growing things and great expectations. I do it every year. But this year I was far away, returned late in May. With perennials in front of the house I didn’t have to put much stuff in the ground but all of my containers were stored. Everyone I knew had their plants established while I rummaged through left overs at the lawn & garden store. There were some good buys, plants that weren’t perfect, passed over and now just hoping to drop their roots somewhere before being recycled in the compost heap. It was the fist week of June before my plants were all in. Two weeks later everything looked fine, except for the tomatoes. 

Flowers have always been good to me, give them a drink now and then and pull a few weeds. But my luck with tomatoes has been nothing but bad. If it’s not caterpillars or white flies it’s blossom-end-rot or mold. But they had great deals on healthy plants that should have been in the ground a month earlier. So I bought six, made them at home in 20 gallon pots. By the time they acclimated and got their roots in gear it was July. Everybody else had little green tomatoes and mine were still growing a root network. I figured they would come late but with a little luck, I would get some tomatoes.

In September, as green tomatoes began to turn, yellow first then into orange, I discovered that neighborhood squirrels had been watching them too. There was a yellow-pink tomato that would be just right in two or three days. When I checked again, it had been gnawed on, through the skin into the meaty flesh, just enough for flies to gain access and torpedo the salad I had planned. So I started harvesting firm, yellow-pink fruits keeping just ahead of the squirrels. They ripen on my countertop instead of vine ripened, like the samples down at Farmer’s Market. But I had tomatoes. 

So now it’s October, short days and cool nights, what’s left on the vines will not ripen in the sun. Plants aren’t stupid. They know, at least the annuals, when nights turn cool and sunlight goes away, they look in the mirror and say to themselves, “OMG, I’m so old. I don’t have much time left.” It’s programmed into the DNA, when the odds go against you and your time is short, reproduce. Bloom again, make new fruits; it’s all about the seeds. “If I”m going to perish, at least I can seed a new generation.” So that’s what they do and they spend all of their remaining energy on new blooms and whatever tomatoes are left, are left hanging like orphans. Then I come along and see the new blooms, tell the late tomatoes, in tomato talk, “You guys have been disinherited, you get nothing from now on. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll spread you out in the kitchen and you can ripen there, listen to the radio, watch me eat cereal in the morning.” They are smart enough, know that however their destiny plays out, they won’t be back in the spring. I collected all of my October tomatoes today, leaving the parent plants to fret over blossoms that will never set fruit. Between slicers and summer salad, my little harvest will last a week or so. The green ones may not make it to ripe; may have to do the fried green thing, dredged in garlic and pepper flour. If I had bib overhauls and a straw hat I could look the part. 

THE ROOSEVELTS

Every night for the past week I have been watching a TV documentary about the Roosevelt's, made by Ken Burns. Fourteen hours of photographs and film clips were enhanced by compelling story line, tracing a hundred years of a family’s legacy and a nation’s journey. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and Eleanor were the main characters but it embraced their extended family as well. 

I remember when FDR died, I was five years old. Even though memory is subject to err I always understood that the name “Roosevelt” was larger than life. The program was about people more so than the history they lived. It brought up an idea that has been with me for a very long time. The question is, do people rise of their own volition to make history or does history propel people into the mix and their destiny simply plays out? It begs many questions. History, in the short term for sure, is written by the victors and they frame it in their own favor, whatever the case. We use dumbed down, sound-bite logic to explain cause and effect when it comes to big ideas and complicated stories. Most of what we come to believe is based on what we want to believe or what seems to validate our prejudices. The Roosevelt’s were very private people, thrust into a global arena and they lived up to their ideals consistent with how they had been shaped. Their place in history is fixed but their reputations depend on which side of the political divide you stand. Franklin and Eleanor were either loved or hated; they betrayed their own class in favor of a fair, just society that protected the weak and the poor. 

It is interesting how some families, over generations, accumulate not only wealth and power but also assimilate an overarching consciousness that extends beyond that wealth and power. In the Roosevelt’s case it was a responsibility to promote and advance the greater good. Other families amassed great fortunes but never stretched their own purpose beyond the acquisition of more wealth and power. 

Teddy, FDR and Eleanor all realized they were not only in a unique position to influence the path of history but were by nature and disposition, compelled to spend themselves in that cause. I can imagine what that might be like but I can’t imagine myself in their place. The idea that any person can rise to that level of readiness is naive at best. Somewhere in the balance between heredity and acquired personality, equality is an ideal. We are not equal. Dedication and worthy purpose are not enough to insure anything. It’s not that simple.

Franklin and Eleanor identified with and protected vulnerable people from exploitation by the rich and powerful. I don’t think it was a choice as much as it was simply, who they were. I believe we all do that, be who we are. I am simple and small but life has been good to me and mine. We will not make news or history but a hundred years from now it won’t matter. We were here and it was good. 

KEEP COMING BACK

     Back in the days of Kodachrome 400 film I spent forty dollars on a workshop, Photographing Nature. It was at a hotel on the Plaza in Kansas City. I have forgotten the expert’s name and most of what he talked about was beyond my experience. I didn't have a darkroom so that part didn’t help me and correlations between settings were too much to remember, even if I did understand.  I thought I’d take notes but that was naive of me. He had thousands of photographs and a Kodak Carousel projector that flashed images on the screen, one after another, on and on. They were awesome but he went too fast for me to appreciate the object lesson. My eye wasn’t seasoned enough. It’s notable how some sounds are so unique you never forget them. The projector was on a tall stand beside the podium microphone. Everything he said was accompanied by the sound of the cooling fan on the projector and punctuated by the anticipated, three syllable action of slides being changed and advanced. I can hear it inside my head now as if I had one here beside me. 

      In the end I absorbed a couple of good ideas which is pretty good for any workshop. Enough was getting through to keep my attention. When he finished there was an open ended, question and answer session. Someone noted that there was a particular tree that kept popping up in the stream of photographs. The photos were taken from different angles,  different distances; some with the tree a lesser element in the design and others it was the main feature. Even I had noticed the frequent reoccurrence of that tree. Off the cuff he said he had noticed the tree in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the 50’s. He kept taking photos of it over the years and it gave him a chronological index on the same subject where he could see for himself, how he was growing as an artist. That really resonated with me. It’s when I stopped thinking of myself as a man taking pictures and started thinking about photographs as an art form. 

     I began to think, ‘That’s what I need, a special place to keep coming back.’ Now, thirty years later, I have several favorite places that present wide ranges of opportunity and challenges as well. I keep coming back. Every time, there are changes in the landscape, different light, new angles and the camera sees with new eyes. I spend as much time as I can, reacquaint myself with the setting and look for compelling elements; lines, shapes and color. I don’t know how many photographs I’ve taken of the beach and lighthouse in Grand Haven, Michigan, or in the high meadow just north of Glen Arbor on Michigan Route 22. At Crow Agency in SE Montana, Little Bighorn Battle Field is a powerful place. I’ve only been there four times but it’s on my favorite list and I’ll be taking photos there again. Then in Alaska, where the road splits to either Seward or Homer, Tern Lake is a spot I can not drive by, I have to frame it through my lens, look for flashes of color, reflections in the water or a new array of shadows on the mountain side. I keep coming back.

     North of the river in Kansas City I noticed a hillside that was groomed like a golf course with well spaced, mature trees but it wasn’t a golf course. Behind the hill was a seminary for wannabe preachers. I stopped and took photographs. That was three years ago and I now have a file full of those trees. The way the hill slopes in two different planes makes framing tricky. There is no horizon for reference and the tree trunks lean into the hillside; nothing vertical or horizontal to show level or perpendicular. The whole scenario changes from one extreme to another as the light changes, early to late. I went there this morning to get early morning light and late summer foliage. Someday I want to hang a grouping with that tree through the four seasons. Before I could get the first frame my socks were soaked and my shoes full of water. I made more noise sloshing than the traffic down on the street. Changing lens’ and shuffling things in and out of the camera bag was tedious at times but there were a few photos worth keeping and that’s a good start for the weekend. I be coming back again.

ROADHOUSE

When I’m on a road trip I pay attention to traffic and drive safely but I also look for photo opportunities. Like a moth to the flame I can’t resist lines and angles, something about edges and shapes layered over and under. When I notice something it’s usually too late for scrutiny or a second look. Sometimes I just drive on, other times I juggle possibilities with logic weighing the inconvenience of getting turned around, where to park and the value of the time I’d lose. A well conditioned gut reflex responds in parallel; “. . . was that as good as it looked or were there things in the frame that would spoil it all?” It can take a few seconds or several minutes; I let it go or we turn around and go back. Maybe half the photographs I take on go-backs are worth the trouble. Yesterday I went back. 

Mid morning I was making my way north between Forrest and Carthage, in the middle of Mississippi. Highway 35 is a good two lane with narrow shoulders and deep ditches. Farms and homes, neat and well groomed, you would think the area to be properly gentrified. Traffic was light and I was stretching the speed limit by a few mph. There it was, and there it went. A glance in my mirror didn’t help, too many trees. So began the dialogue; was it as good as it looked or do we keep on going? A mile up the road I saw a turnout in time to slow down. I am a story teller who plays with a guitar and takes photographs. A photograph is a razor thin slice of a greater story and it’s better than nothing but why settle for a slice if you can have it all?

There was a building near the road, under pine trees. It was well maintained but it was old, unpainted. It looked like the office to a camp ground or a store straight out of the Great Depression but there was no camp ground; only a blue, Pepsi Cola machine on the porch to suggest any commerce. A low roofed addition had windows that were boarded up and I couldn’t help myself. I remembered the movie, “A River Runs Through It.” Two boys, sons of a Presbyterian minister, growing up in Montana just after World War I. The older, serious and grounded one goes off to Dartmouth College while the younger, prodigal son (Brad Pitt) stays and becomes a rebellious journalist. Looking for the younger, they found him in a remote speakeasy where people of all races and classes mingled, where whiskey and poker were righteous and the saints left their haloes at the door. But this was Mississippi, nearly a century later. Still, it was all there. Come friday night, I can imagine music of Son House and Robert Johnson from the far end of the boarded up addition. Musicians of another generation but their legacy is still part of Mississippi’s foot print. Baptist deacons and Pentecostal Elders from neighboring counties drive long miles so they can tip long neck bottles and bourbon shots with local sinners. Everybody dances, nobody fights, girls go home with the guys that brought them and the devil’s in the deal. Sunday comes soon enough. 

If it’s not a road house, I still like the story. 

p.s.  Nearly two years ago I posted my first blog entry. It was from Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia. Today, "Roadhouse" is my 100th blog post. I have several regular followers and I think of you every time. The website records over 5000 hits, from all over the world. I'm not sure how that works but those of you I don't know, I hope you like what you find here.