to lose, very suddenly and without warning, someone you love or are very close to? To put it bluntly, it is like no other feeling in the world. It supersedes all the other OMG moments as it settles into our bones like the chill of December. It takes shock and disbelief to a new level. I found out first hand a few years ago when I came home and found my husband, who was very much alive when I left to go to work, dead. The shock was profound. What in the world had happened in the hours I had been gone and totally oblivious to what was happening at home? The instant feeling of emptiness will always be somewhere in the back of my mind and likely continue to show its ugly face at the most inopportune time. It has been three years, or will be in a few weeks, since that fateful day, but there are times when I feel like I’m walking in for the first time. How odd, that sensation, when I feel so vulnerable and so alone and so focused on my own loss and loneliness; how thankful I am that those times are now few and far between.
It’s difficult, in the best of times, to come to terms with the sudden and unexpected loss of someone you care about, be it a family member or dear friend or even someone that you remember fondly from your past. It doesn’t matter who they are if they meant something to you. Artists who paint will either paint as if tomorrow is a myth, or stop; photographers will take chances they would have never have taken or they will simply stop photographing for a time, musicians will either write as though their life depended on it or turn from their music completely. We artists don’t deal with things the way other people do; that is often hard for the “others” to understand.
In my own experience, photography became nothing more than a reminder of what I had lost and it was months before I could come to terms with it and be able to pick up my Pentax and look through it without a blinding fog over my eyes. There was, I now know, nothing wrong with that. At the time, I thought I was past weird and well on my way to the funny farm, but looking back, I realize that it was all part of the process. There is no right way or wrong way to grieve. There is only the way that feels right at the time. If you go against what you feel in your heart, then the only recourse is regret. I try very hard to not do things that I will regret; sometimes I do them anyway, but then, I think I speak for most of us.
Losing someone we care about doesn’t change who we are but it does make us wonder if we could have been more. That thought, though, should not consume us. There will always be more that we could have done, could or should have said, could have made happen; dwelling on these things will not change anything. I choose to dwell on the things that I did and not on the ones that I will never be able to do. I am happier, and saner, for it.
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 