Last post it was May. Now—it’s now. Again, I’m playing ping pong with time.
You know how they say that a really good photographer can get beautiful results out of the simplest camera? Because he – she – knows how to work with what she has. Me, I get so-so results out of even good cameras. But on this ride into the hills—simplified by dent of substituting the old tiny Cool Pix for the large, lens-cap-shedding, bouncing-off-the-saddle SLR—I define myself as something less than an artist.
Big camera or little—off the back of an impatient horse, nothing is under control. But add the odd sky—there was a sort of pall over the mountains, haze—smoke from far away fires? High pressure air full of the detritus of civilization?—and a teensy, tiny, ten-year-old-tech lens, and my hope of showering you with Marilyn/Ginna quality images of what we saw on our ride is just another grim shortfall.
But does that stop me from publishing them here? Of course not. And you are welcome—again, I limited the number of images to something under 200, all for your viewing pleasure.
On the way up the south fork.
More of what we have to watch out for as we drive up this narrow, winding road – a favorite with bikers like . . . G!!! They’re all nuts, with rigs like ours raging up and down, and like me in college—young, frisky and driving a sports car—whipping around these mountain curves with the confidence of immortality.
As the passenger, I try to grab glimpses of bucolic charm, but the tiny camera doesn’t think as quickly as the car can go.
What if you lived here?
You’d see this out your back window.
We headed up early on Saturday, knowing that there’d be phalanxes of horse trailers jamming the parking at the foot of the hill. If you aren’t careful, you could end up locked in all day. Some of these trailers have launched very long rides, rides that last two days or three. Campers and hunters. But we aren’t that kind of adventurer. We’re short term trekkers.
You’ve seen this road before. And so have these ears. It’s early in the ride, and the ears are forward, ready to go.
These ears are eager also. G is not on Dustin because there is a story to Dustin. But Sophie is glad, I think, to be up here. She went nose to nose with Zion several times—without pitching a fit even once. Just sweetly, as though they were finally, after almost ten years, making friends, trail buddies.
Looking down on the high little valley where the trailers wait.
The ears are beginning to look around.
That tiny camera just can’t gather enough light to capture anything along the path sharply. So we are left with abstract impressions.
So many colors. The same tree – like that middle one – can be red, yellow and green all at once.
G, knowing my sadness over the images, captures a wild leaf and holds it still.
This was supposed to be a portrait of that orange tree. But Sophie kept inching forward. G is trying to tuck his face back, but he’s no match for her inching.
And they inch past –
This looks like: “So – how do drive this thing?”
This was the most astonishing place. The leaves aren’t so much red and orange as fuschia and intense pink. Some leaves are ghostly and pale, some are vibrant, burning. In this one little place there is a tiny creature trail and the leaves around it are of every crazy shade.
So many maples, but they change so differently. Does it have to do with species or soil? I don’t know.
Sometimes the scarlet is intertwined with the green—
It’s always a surprise to come around this corner and catch sight of the grassy valley below.
You can’t drive here. There are locked gates on either end. The one time we saw a vehicle up here was the time we were almost all killed—about eight of us all at once. That was years ago. But we remember it sharply at the oddest times.
Zion just has to make this a self-portait.
He and I have so much in common.
Having come down the side of the mountain, we enter the valley.
Sophie is a water horse. Not a hippopotamus; a stream-walker. Not all horses are. The first time we tried to take Hickory across the water, he stopped dead, puzzled by the moving surface. He put his nose down to the water, jerked it back up again in surprise – put it down again and began to strike at the water with his hooves, splashing all of us.
But Sophie just walks across it. And Zion will, too, as long as she goes first.
This is one of my very favorite paths; if we lived here, I’d call it The Enchanted Forest and go there to read and eat my lunch.
On the way back down. That’s a Girl Scout camp peeking through the forest at the far end of the valley.
There. The shot is better with ears. Very happy ears.
The steed that pulls the steeds.
Always remember: at the end—there will be apples.
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