I am going to back post a few unfinished stories. I hope this will give me a push to pick one of them this is asking to be finished. These are very rough first or 2nd drafts, and just the beginning thoughts. I may regret the post and take it down later, but for now, it is reminding me that when I write regularly, I do have ideas. Sometimes when I get wrapped up in the daily routine of life, working a job I've done for 19 years, walking my dogs along the same route, sleeping in a house I the same region where I have always lived... I start to think that I am incapable of new thoughts, or any creative imagining or opinion outside of my current lived experience. The current situation of the 2020 pandemic has exacerbated that. There are some people who have managed to take a lot of road trips, I guess they are jobless but still have money. good for them. The rest of us are on hold, seeing even less of the world than we usually see. We are dreaming of the future when it is safe to travel without worries of bringing this virus back to our older relatives and friends. For now, we must cultivate our imaginations and our ability to dream.
Here is one back posted story. It was started in response to a photograph. It was not just a photograph really, but a representative of a certain type of photograph that elicited my response.
A Simple Line of Trees
A simple line of trees Nothing else is needed why is this so? Possibility. Your eye is drawn into "the forever." There is always something beyond the trees just outside of the frame. What that is, is left up to the viewer. 100 people may look at the same deep line of trees each of us is pulled in to a different imagining of what lies just beyond the page. Even a small row of trees captured in the right light leaning in to encircle the path of standing straight to run along the edges to quiet becoming of a peaceful stroll. The invitation to step out to go forth without the knowledge of what lies at the end.
Here is one imagining elicited from such an image.
A simple line of trees. Snow not yet melted morning coolness still hangs around the edges of the day. The air is crisp on her face as she follows the path into the simple line of trees. The morning coolness hangs around the edges of the day cementing the snow to branches. She pulls her scarf a little tighter and buttons the top clasp of her coat. Striding forward with determination, book clasped tightly to her chest with a gloved hand. The tree-lined lane to the old house is much longer than she had imagined when she set out on foot this morning. She planned to use the walk to collect her thoughts. She found herself distracted by the stark beauty of the trees – the sparkle of ice crystals hanging in the air, the joy of having the time to walk rather than drive to her destination. Now she finds herself halfway down the drive and she doesn’t feel at all prepared for the next hour. She contemplates stopping to take a few snaps but that is dangerous as the camera has a way of setting her outside of time so that she loses all sense of structure and responsibility to her day. Five snaps, then back to the path, that seems reasonable. She sets her book down on a rock and frames the first two shots, one vertical and one horizontal looking at the path ahead. Only three frames left if she is to stay on target. She must make them count. For the next shot, she steps off the path a bit into the grove of trees on the left looking up looking down, letting nature lead her intuitively to the next shot. A few steps in she finds a small clearing where some deer appear to have made their bed the previous night. The ground is dry and just a little warm. She gives thanks to the family of deer and lies on her back, staring up at the overhanging branches. She is fascinated by the way the sun is filtered, creating beams from the East. Maybe a few bracketed shots before she leaves. A few flurries begin to fall, she is not sure if this is new snow or a cloud knocked from the trees by the slight breeze. She switches to her macro lens to capture a few flakes in the air, and the contrast of the snow against the remnants of moss on a stone at the base of one of the trees. How many shots is that? She has lost track but it is most certainly more than the 5 that she told herself would be her limit. Now she must hurry back to the path and be back on her way.
Suddenly she is a little disoriented. Snow has started to fall at a steadier rate. With the renewed cloud cover the forest has fallen into shadows almost as if time had moved backward to the pre-dawn blue-grey hazes. Fog is lowering itself back into the trees limiting her vision but imparting a stillness on the grove. She pauses to swap out her macro for a wide-angle lens then props her camera on a tree root for a makeshift tripod – taking just a few more frames – this atmosphere is too good to be missed. A few minutes later she looks around only to realize that her footprints have been covered by the fresh snow and the settling fog has lowered visibility such that she has completely lost view of the path. Her heart begins to race not only is she way behind schedule – she may in fact be lost in the woods only a few feet from her path. She reaches into her pocket – her phone has no signal and the battery is low. She turns it off to conserve what charge remains for any emergency all she might need and slides it into an interior pocket to keep it warm, because cold, she remembers, can drain batteries. What else does she remember that could be useful in her current predicament? When she was in her 20’s she went on a women’s retreat and three whole days focused on survival and self-reliance. To be honest, even after the retreat she did not trust her sense of direction s she had a habit of relying on other people’s sense of direction when navigating the wilderness. But this isn’t the wilderness, this is just a heavily wooded property and she is sure she is only a few feet from the path. She curses her wandering mind and proclivity for self-indulgence when it comes to photography. Look where it has landed her. It seems ridiculous she could freeze to death or at least lose fingers or toes to frostbite just steps away from the path due to her wandering mind. “Collect yourself” her inner voice of reason whispered.
One lesson from the survival training was to think before you react. Don’t panic and get more lost. Analyze the situation -but do it quickly because you have someplace to be. How many steps do you think you took from path to clearing? Is someone else likely to pass this way soon – if so should you wait in place? No, no visitors expected back to the steps. How many steps do you think you took from path to clearing? You walked a few steps, then when you saw the clearing you felt excited and ran a few paces to get there more quickly. Overestimate a little bit but not so much as to waste effort. Mark your origin point then test out paths in a spoking pattern. The distance guess is important 25-30 paces seems like more than enough. How to mark the path? There is plenty of loose brush and fallen branches. If I line the branches end to end? Or sweep the snow away to form a path? She opted for a mix of the two using the branches she would clear away the path in front counting steps, and laying branches end to end, always on the left-hand side of the path she was making. One two three four this could take a while. Five six seven eight nine 3-5 paces per branch six or seven branches per spoke. AT the end of the seventh branch if there was no sign of the path, follow your line of branches back to the center. She just had to pick a direction to start. She remembered the sunbeams from the East but she hadn’t paid attention to direction when she first veered off the path. She was on her third spoke when finally, the fog started to lift. It was no longer snowing so the sun again was filtering through the trees, but the direction has shifted. Why hadn’t she paid attention to the direction of the sun when she started on the road? Wait, the pictures she took of the path…She had turned and looked behind and noticed how the place from whence she came was hidden by shadows – she shot in the direction of her destination because there was a warm glow from the rising sun to the front and left. This means the path to the house leads Southeast. She took a left off the path, so she …. Needed to draw this out. Using the snow draw a directional diagram with NSEW and the directions in between.
She walked North East off the path (in her estimation with her first spokes she walked further away from the path because her instinct was to walk towards the rays of sun. Of course, this was wrong, that was why she took the lefts side of the path for her photo detour – to take advantage of the light. Eureka! To get back to the path she needed to go South West. If she was right to get back to the path she needs to start off between spoke 2 and the point opposite spoke three. Just walking South (opposite spoke 3) might get her further along the path but she needs to re-enter near the same point if she hopes to find her book, which she left on a rock near the path. Katie put a marker on the spot she was guessing as South, then counted paces between her Rock and Circle marker to find the halfway point, the SW leading spoke. She collected up some more branches lest she be wrong – took another look around the clearing to be sure she wasn’t leaving anything essential (like a lens cap, how many of those had she mislaid….) She then started counting paces for spoke 4. Give it 35 paces if it comes to that, because we feel more certain of this direction, an educated guess. At about step 20 she starts visually scanning for the book. This is not an exact science, but it is hypothesis testing. At step 35 she feels deflated – How can she have been wrong? Her theory seemed solid. Just as she is taking a last scan of the area before retracing the steps of spoke four she notices in front and a bit to the right a flash of color at the base of a rock. She is glad she chose the purple cover – if she had gone with green her usual favorite) or brown, it may have been lost amongst the branches. That is more than 35 paces, she had significantly underestimated how far she had run. IT seemed like seconds. Just in case that glimpse of purple wasn’t her book -she continued to lay down branches to mark the fourth spoke. 57 paces. It is a good thing the fog had started to lift of she would never have seen it. There it was at the base of a rock – her book wrapped in a clear bag, covered all but the top corner in snow and dried leaves. And there, just beyond the rock, was the path.
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