Greetings from the hills above Putney, Vermont. An old friend of Therese lets us stay in her beautiful home for a few long weekends every so often. We have not been here in several years. When we rented the small, very small house during the first few years we lived in Rhode Island, getting away to these hills and this large, spacious home was a luxury. Once we had purchased our home along the shoreline of Narragansett Bay, we lost track of what a privilege it is to come up and be among the maples, birch and pine trees. The home has large windows providing a commanding eastern view. This morning was overcast and grey, but mist hung in the valleys, and low-hanging clouds sat on some of the ridges.
Conner, our aging but still-game dog, and I took a long walk this morning along the dirt roads behind the house that provide access to the blue and green plastic tubing that connects the maple trees to the sugar house, where the sap is boiled and processed into maple syrup. Hundreds of plastic tubes run for several hundred yards, all heading down the hill, reminding me of a circulatory system where the tubes act like veins and arteries, carrying the forest's lifeblood down to the heart of the sugar house. The trees are largely bare of leaves here, while some trees in Rhode Island, just 85 miles south, still have leaves—amazing how much difference less than a hundred miles can make.
Despite the loss of leaves, the woods have beauty, but it's a beauty I find hard to capture in images. I have done my best, channeling my inner Eliot Porter, and I hope the images below give you a sense of this morning's walk.
Looking back on my recent trip to California, I have struggled to find the words to capture what I felt, saw and photographed. It was a return to the homeland, of sorts. Long ago, I was a sales rep for the Schwinn Bicycle Company. I was based in Montecito, California, just south of Santa Barbara. My territory ran from San Luis Obispo to the north of Santa Barbara, down through the San Fernando Valley and from there several times a year up through Palm Dale, Lancaster, Ridgecrest, and then up US Route 395 to Mammoth Lakes. US Route 395 runs through the Owens Valley on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is a very scenic drive through an area with a lot of historical interest. It remains my favorite drive of anywhere I have been. If you've read the posts I put up during my travels, you have a sense of what I saw and experienced.
In many ways, the trip was bittersweet. I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have traveled a great deal and lived at various times in Florida, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, and now Rhode Island. And despite those travels and living in other states, I have spent just under fifty years of my seventy-two years living in California - it was home for most of my life. My sister still lives there, and I have several good friends who do, too. But, as the old saying goes, “You can’t go home again.” The geography is the same, the beauty is largely unaltered (too many new homes and big-box shopping centers), and I loved being there again, but the feelings, the sense of wonder and belonging, were missing. I still enjoyed the trip immensely, but I felt like an outsider, or worse, a tourist. That was very uncomfortable, and I am still dealing with that sense of disconnect - California was my home. Still, while I called it my homeland, it no longer is; it is just a place I lived a long, long time ago. As I said, it was bittersweet to recognize that.
On another topic, I have sold all my cameras, yes, all. I still have an iPhone, which is a camera of sorts. My goal is to use my iPhone as my only camera for the foreseeable future. I have mentioned before my plans for a 2027 365 project - one photograph a day for the full calendar year 2027. As I mentioned before, to make taking an image every day a habit, I started the project early. I began on September 1st and have successfully made an image every day up until the day of writing this post - November 6th.
Soon after starting this effort, I watched a YouTube video by photographer Peter McKinnon. Beyond being a very successful and quite talented photographer, artist and YouTube creator with over six million followers (yes, 6M!!), he is a somewhat obsessive journal keeper - Peter obviously has challenges with ADHD and OCD, which he freely admits. Peter keeps several journals and is always looking for new ways to journal. His photo journal method/style resonated strongly with me. Using a notebook, he places the photo on the right side, and on the left side he places an old-school library envelope, and in that he places the check-out card. He types the image details on the check-out card and dates the entry with an old-style date stamp. I have started working on a version of that type of photo journal.
I am currently participating in a video storytelling workshop at the Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. I am making a video about my photo journal work and will post it as soon as it is ready for public viewing.
Time to go for another walk.
