Camping, with Sara. Last summer.
It was dark outside, and the crickets were singing in the woods around us, and the campfire was just embers anymore. Both of us were getting our own selves ready for bed when we met on the path that lead up to the house.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing upwards at the canopy of tree branches.
I followed her arm and looked up, and at first I didn’t see anything, and I said so. She helped me, until I was standing where she’d been standing a moment before. Perspective shifted. Objects in my personal foreground seemed to move more than the things that were farther away- from the tree trunks to the interwoven branches to the sky.
And there it was.
A gap in the trees, with a patch of starlight framed inside of it. The smallest detail, the easiest kind to walk past with your gaze pointed downwards and never see at all. But so lovely.
“Look at that,” she breathed, again. “Shit like that keeps me alive.”
I’m not sure if I completely understood what those words meant, then. But I absolutely believed that she meant them.
In Europe, I started taking photographs – not for the sake of photography, but because I wanted to remember where I’d been. Every travel blog, every backpacker I met on the road, everyone told me that memories fade, and many had experienced the regret of not having kept a record. So I was doing my best.
In the middle of a handful of UNESCO world heritage sites in Potsdam, Germany, I stepped outside my door in the morning and hadn’t made it half a mile down the road before literally stumbling across some ancient palace grounds, now a public park, that I didn’t know existed. I spent the whole day taking pictures. There was no way I could do justice to that experience with words. There were elements of Auschwitz that I also don’t believe I will ever be able to write down, but I might be able to allude to them with pictures.
But then – fast forward to a time when I’m not traveling. When I’m trying to adjust to the massive shock of coming home. And I did come home, but I also got stuck in the Doldrums.
Since the day my dad called and helped me get up off the couch, I’ve been walking almost every day. I’m not running a 5k every morning. I’m doing a halfway decent job being at peace with myself on the days when I don’t get outside. And every time I go outside, every time I’m walking, I reach into my pocket and open the camera on my iPhone 6s and start to look at the world through a different lens. It’s a habit.
When I was standing with Sara and looking up at the gap in the trees, part of me was acutely aware that she’d noticed it and I hadn’t. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing touch with reality and worldly things because I’m too caught up in my thoughts to see them.
But when I look at the world through a camera lens, everything clicks into focus. And I begin to notice the little things, so easy to miss.
Bubbles on the surface of the water, or the texture of moss or the curves of the mushrooms growing on tree trunks. Intricate shapes of unfamiliar seed pods, a trail of footprints, or the twining of grapevines and wire.
The gaps in the trees.
Taking pictures is pulling me back to a place where I feel like I’m almost a child. It’s grounding as fuck, and it helps me. So much.
This shit keeps me alive.