Air travel can be so discombobulating. You are whisked out of time and out of geography and abruptly dropped someplace else. I am having my recovery day figuring out where I am.
In this case it appears to be upstate New Hampshire. I am suffering from too much and too little information at the same time. And my typical Libra indecisiveness. There’s a dance in Greenfield, Mass, the fast, modern urban contra kind(MUCky dancing, in the perjorative). I really like those. There’s a rural barn dance in the deepest woods of Maine Saturday night, with Dudley Laufman calling, about as traditional roots contra as still exists. I decided I could do only one, and for the sake of my photo project I should head to Maine. On the way I’m going to be a leaf peeper. But where?
I zoomed north on I-93 until the trees looked like they were at peak color, then zoomed off to a state road, then to a smaller road. I felt like I was just skimming a place, unable to get any purchase. I didn’t take any photos for hours. I didn’t feel here. I didn’t know what I was looking for or where I wanted to go or where I wanted to end up tonight.
I have a file folder full of photo location information, of the "Pretty Little Villages Dressed in Fall Foliage" variety. The best of the bunch is Robert Hitchman’s "Photograph America Newsletter," where he’ll cover a single location in depth for 12 pages. I was in a contrary mood though, and I was not inclined to take anyone else’s advice regarding where to stand to get the best picture. So I was off the guidebook path and wandering. Fruitlessly, it appeared.
A hiking trail. Finally, a place to walk. I pounded through the woods until the road was spent from me, then I slowed and looked. At the amazing spectacle that is a Northeast forest in fall. I was in a yellow forest, not a green one. There was a small brooklet along the trail and there I took the first photograph of the day of any note. The spot didn’t need to be in a guidebook. It wasn’t a particularly scenic locale. It just needed to be a place where I could feel my feet on the ground, and not metaphorically.
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