The Volcano House

   The clerk who has the early morning shift at the Volcano House comes in to poke the fire in the great fireplace of volcanic stone.  On the wall a framed page from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, circa 1935, reports that this fire has been kept burning continuously since 1874.  One likes to think the same fire still burns today.  And what a journey it must have been to get here in 1874, to the lodge that stands in this place, when some man laid his kindling in the hearth and set the fire that crackles gently here, adding just a touch of smoke to my morning coffee.

   After breakfast we head out onto the trail behind the lodge, through the tropical forest, down into the Kilauea Iki Crater.  We walk across the broken, black surface of the crater, picking our way up and down jagged ridges, bathing our faces in the warm steam that rises from the crevasses and broken mounds of cooled lava, snapping photos of the ferns and the flowering, berried plants and small trees the grow, impossibly, from the smallest cracks in the lava crust.  The morning fog and a light mist give way to pleasing sun and, on the higher ridges in the crater, a perfectly cooling wind.  The crater is a mile or more across.  Less a portion of our hike than some fantastic, outsized playground.

   Someone in our little band of four wonders aloud what time it is.  For the first time in a very long time, no one knows.  Or cares.

Summer night in Williamstown

    A warm, hazy summer evening in Williamstown.  I roam the roads that wind around the village proper, windows down, camera on the passenger seat, inhaling the countryside.  It feels, not surprisingly, like Vermont, which is just up one of these roads.  As the light finally fades in the summer sky, I roll back in to The Orchards, have a cold pint of Berkshire Brewing Company IPA in the bar, before strolling across the lightly creaking boards of the lobby and the lounge to my room. The plain girl sitting behind the reception desk says "Have a good night" as she rubs lotion into her hands.  I wonder if she and the maids make use of the little bottles that the guests leave behind, the ones that have been opened.  I wonder if she wonders who will hold these soft, soft hands.

An Eastern Comma butterfly

... visiting the little herb garden I put in behind the house a few days ago.

You are here

   People who are more serious and thoughtful than I am debate whether a photograph can truly be true.  Some say a photo is true if it just depicts what was there when it was made, if it is just a "light drawing" -- the literal translation of the Japanese word for photograph) of what exist?.  Others say that a photograph by its very nature does not depict any singular truth, but instead is unavoidably a version, a story about the truth, which is dependent on the angle, the aperture, the shutter speed, and all the other choices, conscious or not, that the photographer (or editor) has made.  

   I don't know whether a photograph can be the truth.  But I do know that a photograph can say something that is true.    This one, which I took in a playful spirit, now seems to me to say the most important true thing of all.   

A dog and his man

   On a fine Saturday at the end of May, when the whether finally is warm enough, and you finally have enough gumption to get up and do it, this is what you do:  you get your human to take you out in the kayak.

Motif Number 5 - Nubble Light

Postcards from the Acela - No. 3

    One wonders what they make at this little plant, somewhere along the train line in Connecticut.  No doubt this place looks defeated in the middle of the day, in the winter, in the rain.  But early in the morning on a clear, dry day, photographed in good light, it looks ready to soldier on, proud to be still standing.  

Postcards from the Acela - No. 2

     A photograph of a rowboat in the early morning fog.  A cliché to be sure.  But like most clichés it is harmless enough.  

Postcards from the Acela - No. 1

   If you have ridden the train between Boston and New York even once, you know to nab a seat on the East side of the train (that's the left side heading south, in case you are directionally impaired).  It is on this side, during the middle of the trip, as you roll along the Connecticut coast, that you get priceless views, of marshes and bays, little beaches and boats, tidal creeks and the Long Island Sound.  Some are long views, but some are just glimpses between the trees.  Mind the view, and not just your laptop computer.

  This last trip down, early on a Friday morning in June, was a revelation.  The train was nearly empty.  Instead of these furtive shots with my Blackberry, I could have brought a proper camera and fired away without embarrassment.  I actually had it in my bag the night before, but took it out.  Who takes real pictures on the train?  I do.  Next time.