Rest and relaxation, indeed. It’s on Twitter, Facebook, Google + and nearly every other social media network on the planet. Everybody is talking about rest and relaxation. A few days just to themselves, with no interruptions to their complete and total relaxation. They stress the relaxation so everyone around them gets the point loud and clear that they are not to be bothered. But the reason they can’t be bothered has little to do with relaxation. I wouldn’t be afraid to guess that at least a third … and that, in my opinion, is being conservative … of women and a significant number of men will be spending their relaxation time pouring over websites, rss feeds, alerts, news feeds, email, texts and papers; planning, getting their strategy down and their mojo up … mapping and trying to decide where it is, out of the half dozen places the list has been narrowed to, that they intend to make their first stand. Of course, there is the agonizing and relaxing decision as whether to go at Midnight, or be there a few hours before.
This is the same midnight that will follow Thanksgiving Day, another time of rest and relaxation. It starts with rising extra early to prepare the turkey and dressing for baking, making rolls, rolling out pie dough and cooking up some giblet gravy. In the midst of all this is trying to find a way to cook a casserole in the oven that is currently housing the twenty-three pound turkey that barely fits by itself without hitting the burners. But that’s not all, because there is an urge to constantly look at the clock and think over and over that there is no way in heaven or earth that everything will be ready by dinnertime. This restful behavior can sometimes be associated with emotional outbursts and mad fits, so it is best to delegate some of the relaxation to others so that an overload of relaxation doesn’t cause a total system shutdown.
After half the people that are expected and one hundred that weren’t have arrived for Thanksgiving dinner, the food devoured, the kitchen and dining room all but obliterated from the rest of the house, the second phase of relaxation begins. This phase usually takes about two hours as most of the partakers of the prepared feast head off to relax after dinner. The husbands and their cronies … well, what do they know? But the sisters, mothers, daughters and ex-friends have gone off to pour over the papers for one last glance at the game plan while somebody has to stay behind to clean up. This thought will bounce around in their head the entire time that the cleanup process is in progress. Once it is completed, all that bouncing usually causes a mood swing that leads to a mad fit and an all out argument over nothing at all but has the potential to become an all out brawl … but it doesn’t matter in the least because this is a time of relaxation.
A half an hour before midnight, armed with phone and a credit card, the most important part of the relaxation begins. The storming into the midst of warriors who have put just as much time, just as much thought and just as many hours of research into the strategy they came up with. Suddenly, everybody is on the same ground and the urge to punch somebody in the face just for having the same idea is so strong, visions of jail cells and the embarrassment of friends and family who had done nothing to deserve it will float vividly, like a floating balloon, through their minds. Better to save it until it can be effectively used as an excuse for self-defense. It’s funny what goes through the mind while it’s relaxing.
After thirty-plus hours pushing, shoving, yelling, pulling, jerking, grouching, crying, stomping, stalking off and finally crawling to the car with a silly grin and a look of the insane, the relaxation session is finally, blessedly over. The next two days will be used solely to recover from the relaxation. By the time work begins again on Monday, the first words out of everyone’s mouth will be now i need a vacation … some relaxation time … but don’t worry overmuch …the same opportunities along with a dozen you can’t possibly go to but simply must find a way will clog calendars, pda’s and phones. Knowing on Christmas Eve that the most important gift is locked at the office which has been locked down for cleaning and won’t be accessible until after New Year … see, there are countless opportunities for relaxation near Christmas. Don’t give it another thought.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
My dad is an avid gardener, farmer and all-around jack-of-all-trades. He has a thumb so green that it makes the grasshoppers sigh with envy. Everything he touches in his garden grows like wildfire. While that is, on most occasions, a good thing, there is one part of it that makes me sorry he even knows what dirt is. That part is bean-picking. I put bean picking right up there with being staked to an anthill.
So while the rest of the country was caught up in the celebration of freedom, I found myself caught up in the lives that live under the beauty of that freedom. I spent the Holiday weekend with a bunch of rough, cigarette smoking, tobacco chewing men, tough, driven women, brave 
kids of varying ages and a myriad of horses, mules and dogs. A small group they were, but nonetheless, an interesting bunch of people who held a common interest. On this particular weekend, they brought their campers, horse trailers, wagons, bridles, saddles, grills, tables and vittles and set up camp. In a flat piece of bottom land in Scott County, VA, what was just a bare place became a starting point for the week ahead. Each day, beginning on Independence Day, the riders planned to mount their horses or mules and the wagon masters to hook their equines to their wagons and take off for the day. There was friendship alongside friendly rivalry, but at the root, there was a love of something that bonded like glue. Photographs can only take me so far and without the intimate knowledge of how a group of people thrive together, the story stops at the image.
fortunate enough to have an invitation to this event and was, after a few hours, accepted as part of the gang. My main goal, secondary to photographing the happenings in and around the camp, was staying out of the way. I asked questions when there was something I didn’t know, and kept my eyes open for anything that could be used to document what these people were about. Though there was plenty of coming and going, I was drawn, not inexplicably, to the lined faces of the older men, the laughing smiles of the children and the
character of the animals. Shadows, shades, contrasts and light have always fascinated me and here, with these people, there was no shortage of real life happening right before my eyes. No one posed for photographs or changed their habits in the event that they might find themselves caught on film. They did what they had come to do and paid little mind to the gal with the camera around her neck. After three days trolling the bottom field in the hot sun, I had a “tog tat” around my neck in the outline of my camera strap and a collage of photographs that reminded 
me, as I developed the RAW files in Lightroom, why it is that I so love being a photographer. In each face, line, smile, grimace, frown and laugh, there was evidence of a Creator who is able to take the same features and make them different millions of times over. I am thankful for the opportunity to, for just a little while in a span of time, be a part of something that previously had been foreign to me. These people work hard, live hard and play hard. They have lives outside of the wagon train, but for this stretch of days, they come together to share what they love.
And this time, I was allowed to be a part of it. So to those who made these images possible by doing what they do and being what they are, I am grateful, for without a subject, be it human, animal or nature, a photographer is just a person with a gadget hanging around their neck. I don’t want to sit by as life happens around me and let lessons that I could have learned pass me by. I don’t want to regret not learning what makes people tick, what makes them laugh or cry and what makes them want to work so hard to accomplish something. I don’t want to let the colors in the world blind me to the brilliance of shadow and light. I want to be more than just a gadget rack.
A Photographer's Heart 