Along Sourdough Trail

They said two days ago the rivers were cresting, but I’m sure the water was higher today yesterday. The flow must be at least 10 times what it was a week ago. At Limestone Creek the approach trail was under water. So was most of what I’m calling Limestone point, once I’d made my way there, feet still dry thanks to various trunks and branches that made serviceable (though slippery) boardwalks.

This whole neck of the woods had become a swamp, and delightful it was. The shallowest puddle has a reflective surface, and even a gray day—in fact, better a gray day—offers all sorts of visual play. The carpet of leaf litter was visible not in the light, but only in reflections too dark to show their source.

I was surprised by a patch of bright sky lying in the bend of an inundated path.

Intervening branches cross-hatched ghostly echoes in an overflow stream course.

The artistic significance of the water was the opportunity to explore the emotional influence of texture. Locating the focus at the water, beyond it at reflected elements, or before it at the nearest objects, allows manipulation of the viewer’s attention. Though technically similar to the depth of field experiment discussed before, there seems to be a difference in that those images were easy to read, appearing quite plausible even if slightly unusual. Reflections tend to be more of a surprise; we’re startled by some discrepancy and it takes us a moment to figure out the spatial relationships. The first impression can be surreal, like tree trunks with the texture of leaves, or a clear sky on a dirt path.

Is it always the unexpected that leads to new awareness? At any rate, I can say that the spots pictured above I will see differently from now on. They each have a memory attached that didn’t exist before, and wouldn’t now if I didn’t enjoy gray days and walking on logs, and if it hadn’t snowed and rained like it has here lately.

In considering this project—circularly defined as whatever this blog is about—I’ve sometimes thought that what might be nice to create, and probably more useful to more people, would be a documentary record of what this place is like now, to serve as a reference in future. So it’s a bit of a shock to realize how boring, even depressing, that idea is to me. Am I that narcissistic and anti-social?

True, the reaction (my own and others’) to simple images like the saplings in the previous post suggests that an “objective,” affectless image is almost impossible to make. One might posit that maximum sharpness throughout makes for the most “accurate” image, but it’s clear that it gives rise to an inevitable emotional response that may not at all represent what a person (in particular, the photographer) experiences in the actual setting. I’m not so pedantic as to argue that the idea of documentation is therefore fatally flawed. Indeed, I’m quite certain that a competent photographer could produce a set of photographs that would be far more useful to the historical record than mine will be.

Except maybe that’s not quite right, or at least not the full story. After all, history is not merely about the changing configuration of physical objects. At bottom, I think we’re mainly interested in history because of what we learn about other people and their behavior in situations that resemble ones we have been or might be in. What I’m interested in now is my own thoughts and impressions as I engage with this micro-landscape. I’m interested in the process of developing a sense of place. How better to begin such a study than with myself? In fifty years, will it be more important to know what trees were where, or what it was like to someone hooked on this spot?

I’m comfortable calling this project a personal documentary, understanding the subject to be as much the person as the place, and especially the relationship between the two. The “my place” in the blog’s tagline is not about legal ownership. It’s about the experience of place that enfolds each individual like a self-woven cocoon. That analogy may not work for everyone, but I sometimes feel wrapped in a magical cloak when I’m walking along Sourdough Trail.