isn’t really wishing your life away. During the five long days between Sunday and Saturday, while I wish for the weekend to be here, I’m living. Every day, every minute, I am going about the daily grind that is a big part of my life. I wish for 5:00 on Friday starting first thing Monday morning. I know that once Saturday comes, I will be up and out before the sun, doing, living, moving and embracing a beauty that otherwise lives in my head.
Occasionally something comes along that distracts me even from wishing for days off. When that happens, there is little to do but hang on for dear life and ride the wave until it either drowns me or dumps me out somewhere; broken, blessed and sometimes disheartened. Each failure and triumph is a lesson and my purpose is to learn them. I have no illusions, however, that there are not others who feel this way. Some call us weekend warriors, some call us wannabe’s, some call us weird and unsatisfied and others just call us nuts. I don’t consider myself a warrior on the weekends, nor a wannabe, nor unsatisfied or nuts; I am just somebody who wants to see and do and see some more for the vastness of creation can never been fully experienced in a single lifetime. I have difficulty staying in one place when I know there is somewhere else to go … and there is always and forever, as long as time lasts, somewhere else to go.
Some days I wish could go on for weeks and others cannot possibly end soon enough. But inevitably, I know that if I can hang on for a few days, (because once I’m set free I will be rewarded by one amazing thing after another) I will be set free as a bird from a cage. I don’t mind working, not overmuch anyway, but there are many other things I would rather be doing. A disheartening thing for me is looking out the window and seeing the light change and knowing that, for the most part, I am missing it; as a photographer, watching the light change without me becomes, at times, physically painful. At times like that, I wish even harder for time to pass. I don’t feel bad about it and have no intention of not wishing for weekends. The drum I march to may not be the same rhythm as others’, but it suits me just right and, at some point, they meet up anyway.
I’m not much of a joiner. Where I am, for the most part, I am there alone. I, unlike many, however, don’t mind being alone. It would be a fallacy to say there was never a time I didn’t wish for company, for someone special to share the beauty that embraces me, in the recesses of my mind, like a lover … but there is something so serene and renewing about being in the middle of a beautiful place in nature with nothing but the sound of the earth mingling with the music in my head to keep me company. If anyone has ever stood on the top of a mountain, feeling the wind, lifting their arms and face to enjoy the sheer freedom of it … or lying down in a field of blooming flowers, letting the sun warm their body even as the fragrance overtakes them … or standing close enough to a waterfall to feel the mist as it moistens their hair and skin as it plummets to a clear pool below, or feeling an intimacy that moves the soul and spirit in ways that were never expected or imagined; they understand. They know what words can never describe.
These days, my time off is spent hiking in and around Southwest Virginia, not just because it’s where I live, but because it is a spectacular sight to see. I pack my gear, put in my earphones and listen to the beauty of music while I immerse myself in the beauty of nature; a Pentax around my neck and my eyes always searching for what I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t been looking. That is part of being a photographer at the core of my heart. Everything is beautiful, everything is alluring, everything is a photograph and nothing is too small to stop and admire. During every moment, every adventure, every triumph and every disappointment, I know that I have been blessed beyond imagination by a loving God who knows what moves my heart and soul. There are lessons to be learned and joys to be experienced. It’s too late for me to change now, being as I’m getting old and set in my ways, so I’ll just go with it. So far, it seems to suit me just fine … but eventually, the need to photograph will overtake everything else. I feel, as I have for years, that this is God’s will for me. He has encouraged me when I became discouraged and opened new doors into photography. I am humbled that He would use me to encourage His people by doing what I love. I am truly and excitingly and reverently and beautifully and gratefully blessed.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
~Robert Frost
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 