Sometimes life is so overwhelming. I do so much, move so fast, and get hit in such waves that to deal with it all I stop experiencing life. I was reminded tonight while talking with my dear friend Sarah that life is worth feeling. Ironically enough earlier today I told another friend to go take pictures and remember why photography is so wonderful and restorative. I decided to take my own advice.
I made a detour on my way home to a cotton field in the country. I parked my car on the side of the road, grabbed my camera from the passenger seat and head off across the field. Even harvested cotton fields turn out to be difficult to navigate in the dark.
After a bit of walking when my car was a small spot in the distance I laid down and trained my camera toward the moon. It was beautiful. The jovial man was smiling down on me. I hadn't come prepared for a night time photo shoot. No tripod, fill light or flashlights were employed. It was my camera and shaky hands. But I preferred it that way. Not having to worry about equipment allowed me to enjoy the scenery myself and once again appreciate the simplicity of pressing the shutter button and stealing a moment of time. A single moment completely unique. No other place or time on earth has quite the lighting, smells, or sounds of that breath I caught on camera.
The leftover cotton smelled earthy and sweet. The ground was hard and dry. The light cool and crisp.
I began to hear movement across the field. I stopped for awhile and peered into the dark treeline. I couldn't see anything. I trained my camera in that direction and pulled up the exposure. It saw nothing either. So I moved deeper across the field. My car shrunk smaller behind me. I reached an ocean of Kudzu on the other end of the field. The light fell dramatically over the rolling waves of leaves and a tree that from the other side of the field had seemed big now seemed monstrous. It stood lonely and tall in the kudzu, saved from the smothering vine's blanket by its immense size. The top branches still reaching the light. I wish my camera could have shown the way the light spilled over the land or the way the tree stood nobly and dark in the night. But alas! those were for my eyes only and the inadequacies of my camera could not fit the pieces together.
I struggled to take a few more pictures and pull a little more of time through my lens. Wails and howls broke through the silence as I worked. It sounded as though something were dying in the woods beyond my vision. I was reminded of another friend who claims an irrational fear of werewolves (of the gory violent sort, not the muscle-bound Taylor Lautner sort). It was an interesting thought for sure but only begged me to capture the sounds and mystic mood of the moment that much more. I was unsuccessful. My skill and my camera fell horribly and tragically short. But where's the fun in the easily attained? I'll try again and again. More likely than not I will never be successful but I enjoy the moment and the hyper-awareness the effort brings. The moment is mine and while I can not produce a picture to post that truly shows the moment there is one in my mind: full of textures, smells, sounds and sights.
As I walked back across the field to my car I noticed that the moon seemed to shine brighter at my back, lighting the way before me. The trip back to my car was easier and I gave a silent wave to the jovial man for his help.
