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I have a life to figure out.
Plans to make.
Except…that’s not me. I can make a to-do list for the next few hours, but making a plan for life and sticking to it? No. That’s freaking torture. I want to jump into life with both feet so I can keep moving forward—forward!—toward the next great thing.
Iwantto jump on top of Lake and experience that branch of his.
Which is the moment I realize insanity is creeping in.
I carefully pull the blankets back, slip out of the bed, out from under Lake’s hand, away from my snoring pup and attempting not to wake him.
To wakeSteve.
I pad away from the bed, out of the room, but something has me stopping in the open door, glancing back, feeling…
Something I never had with George.
Something I’ve never felt at all.
Like I want to turn around and crawl back in beside them.
It’s so intense that I actually take a step toward the bed before I remember myself.
Down that path lies madness.
I spin around, walk down the hall, grab my boots, my coat, my camera, and…I step outside into the siren’s call of Snowmageddon.
The snow is coming down rapidly,the soft hiss and hum dulling the rest of my senses, encapsulating the world to just me in Lake’s back yard, walking through the trees, looking up at the gray sky.
It’s late afternoon, so I didn’t sleep all that long, but I’m energized, ready, wanting to get lost in these woods, to go off on an adventure.
To look forward and move forward and not think about—
To not think. Period.
If I wouldn’t freeze to death and leave Steve to fend for himself, I would just tromp off and not look back.
Never look back.
But Steve is inside, and I’m not loving the idea of turning into a human popsicle, so I stay within eyeshot of the house as I shoot. It’s not the same out-of-body experience I had with the trees on the road, but I still get some good stuff. The flakes sweeping sideways across the landscape, falling so thickly it’s almost creating an opaque curtain. The sheer amount of snow that’s gathered, making everything look like it’s covered in fluffy vanilla frosting—clumped onto the branches, sloping between the trees and through the back yard, gathering in drifts near the fence line, sticking to my gloved hands, the top of my camera.
It’s quiet in that there’s no car noise or kids running around playing and screaming. There are no airplanes flying overhead or phones ringing or neighbors gossiping.
But it’s also noisy.
The snow falling isn’t silent.
The wind pushing it to the side isn’t either.
It’s like my ears are filled with cotton, insulated from the rest of the world, like I’m alone on this alien planet and it’s just me and my camera.
Up until the last couple of years when I moved in with George and began working for the magazine, when I thought I was settling down enough to get a dog, make a future, I made my living shooting nature shots, traveling the world and living through my camera lens.
I’ve shot in extremely isolated places in foreign countries, national parks that take days to hike to under dangerous conditions (animals or terrain or locals who may not want me there). I’ve shot in a volcano, underwater with scuba equipment I barely knew how to use. I’ve shot on mountaintops and in historic locations.
But my favorites are spots like these.
A random road. A quiet back yard. An unexpected slice of beauty found, not miles out in an isolated location, not at an Instagram-worthy beach.
