Today I finally feel I am on vacation. It’s been a trip of family visits until now; however beneficial and bonding that may be, it tends to mostly engage my sense of filial responsibility at the expense of feeling connected with a place and a moment. Now I am in another state and another biome from my central Pennsylvania origins. I’m in Maryland, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake.
We’re staying at an elegant yet casual country inn, the Inn At Huntingfield Creek, outside of Rock Park in Kent County, one of the more northerly Eastern Shore counties. It is lush and beautiful, in a way different from the lush and beautiful of Pennsylvania. There’s a hint of southerness in the buildings, in the landscape, in the forest that I’m not familiar enough with to talk about in specifics, except that it feels different in some natal sense of what southern means to a Yankee. I’m not going to be here long enough to say anything sensible or cogent about the locale, but I can talk about my own immediate experience.
It has been pouring rain all night. In the morning I seal myself in Goretex and wrap my camera in a ziplock bag (holes for the camera strap and the viewfinder), and go out. The wind and the rain are to my back as I walk along the sorghum field to the row of trees bordering the bay. I stop to admire the row of spent sunflowers, and to identify the multitude of sparrows feeding on the seedheads (Field Sparrow mostly). Mockingbirds call in the distance. An Osprey crosses over with a fish in its talons, flying directly to its nest on the microwave tower in the next field. There is no quicker or surer route to the moment than through birds. Through them I sense my surroundings with heightened tension. There aren't a whole lot of birds around (it was pouring rain), so it is not hard to transfer this attentiveness to the camera.
It is maybe 300 yards from the inn to the water’s edge. It has taken me about an hour to cover the distance. Now I am at the forest edge, and then bulrushes and saltwater marsh. Chickadees and titmice call overhead, a flock of Cedar Waxwings flies through the trees. A Hairy Woodpecker calls, and I spy it after some searching. The air is tangible as a mass, full of water as it is, and at the edge of the land the gray of the water and the sky match in tone. Everything is lovely and very, very wet. I am finally feeling a sense of connectness with this landscape, after searching for that sensation for many days. It is almost tangible in the feeling I’m having as I make these photographs.
Photographing thusly, in the landscape, is both a means of getting connected with where I am, and a record of that connection. Yes, birds help, and I often bird without bringing along a camera and I feel quite content. But there is another order of intensity to the moment when I am able to engage it within this discipline of seeing. The conditions here are hard, I’m pretty much wet everywhere, the camera is hard to manage and keep dry (this is the first time I wish I had my old 1Ds Mark II with me—it’s pretty impervious to the elements), but I’m having a great time out here. When I look at the work (within the hour—isn’t digital grand?), except for the shots where the ziplock bag opening is in the frame, I can feel that I really got this place.
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