It would seem that this past month, since my trip to Wisconsin, has been spent mostly in a cushioned chair in front of the computer editing work or downstairs printing prints and greeting cards for gallery display. My skin is bleaching out to white for lack of sunlight and my "mouse" arm is cranky and tired. Of course in the film days, you know...back when there were no cell phones and memory cards, I would be complaining about tired legs and wrinkled fingers from processing film and prints in the darkroom. So, with this technological advancement in photography we've just traded one set of aches and pains for another. With all of that I freely admit that the digital age has been both rewarding, fun and mind expanding.
That being said, it's time to get the truck out for some running around on some back country gravel roads. There are prairies to be scouted and flowers to gaze upon with a little day dreaming to be done between shutter clicks. I feel like I have been sequestered in some tomb and my spirit is in need of some roaming and taking "the road less traveled" and also making a few wrong turns. In my years in photography and rambling the back-roads of the U.S. I have found wrong turns to be quite successful in their photographic results. Although my wife rarely goes with me on my cross country journeys, when I do manage to find that less traveled bi-way I still can faintly, ever so faintly, hear her question me about consulting a road map. The nice thing about traveling by ones lonesome is that during the occasional misguided turn, no one knows it has occurred and I'm free to take the journey that my friend Mike so often reminds me to do.
It has also become abundantly clear, as occurred last evening, that trying to plot or plan the next days journey is a complete waste of time. Such an organized activity rarely results in anything more than a headache and confusion with no results for the effort. Lately, wanting relief of brain trauma, I pretty much let the truck point its own direction and assume that something, anything, needing photographic testimony will show up. In all the times that I've chased hither and yon to find fog banks over languid lakes or massive cumulus clouds hanging over some flower laden prairie, all I've really accomplished was fewer gallons in the gas tank and the disappointed feeling that I should have went the other way. In my retired state of mind I have tried to give up second guessing, and to be more trusting of the hand of the Great Spirit. Let's face it, It knows and I don't.
The job of carrying bags of photo gear, mosquito repellent, tent equipment, etc. is made all the more pleasurable for the opportunity to look down all those gravel roads and around a goodly assortment of bends in the road. Add to that the blooming road ditches and bright splashes of birches against a backdrop of pines and spruce and it really becomes difficult to make the 180 degree turn to come back home. This is a quandary whether I'm 10 miles from home or 1,000, because there is always one more corner to peak around or one more hill in the forest trail that needs to be scoped out.
As always, grab the family, the tent and a can of beans and go find a gravel road of memories!
For more views of my work visit:
"A Piece Of Work", Spirit Lake, Iowa
Art Of The Vine Gallery http://www.artofthevinegallery.com
"Art On 16th, Spirit Lake, Iowa
Artisans Road Trip www.artisansroadtrip.com
"CR Gallery", Milford, Iowa
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