Meanwhile…Life goes on. Time creates its own strange duality. As I perceive it anyway. It “flies” as is often said, and is certainly true for me, things, people and events are in constant forward motion. We grow, age and progress on with our lives at breakneck speed, everyone moving faster each day towards an uncertain future. Friends and family grow old and die, children grow and leave home, material things, buildings and property fall into disrepair and seem to be slowly reclaimed by nature itself. As I grow older this certainly seems to accelerate given my all too fixed position.

Years ago, I enjoyed caving and repelling, and have had the privilege to rappel off Virginia’s Natural Bridge several times and the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia once. A drop of nearly a thousand feet to the New River below. One interesting thing about that descent is that the drop is so long, once you have cleared the understructure of the bridge, you lose any close point of reference and the only way you have to judge your speed is by looking at how fast the rope is passing through your rack ( a friction device that regulates your speed on a rope descent). Everything seems to stop. Because you are only a small, small thing in the much larger picture, motion is distorted and unless you look at the rope to confirm you are actually making progress toward your goal of the sandy beach of the river below, you would think you were not moving at all!

I have to remind myself to check the rope. Slow progress is still progress. However there are clouds below and I’m not exactly sure of my destination. I think that’s true for us all. From where I find myself at the moment, I seem stationary, and everyone and everything else is moving around me. Is that the case for you too? I restarted this website and journal to try to bring some progress back into view. I began my wet plate photography journey in 2013 and was quickly sidelined in 2015 by my parents declining health and eventual death. Gradually I am emerging from that aftermath and find myself needing to create again. In the next year I hope to re gain my skill as an artist, I hope to find something meaningful to say, and I will do my best to make it meaningful.

Thanks for your attention as I descend into the clouds. Onward!