you can lead a horse to water

you have to know two things here. first of all, when the hurricane ran itself inland last summer and pushed a river through the freshtown over in margaretville, i knew that store would come back. i say this because when it happened we were a month or so past a visit to the homeland, to tornado alley, to joplin. and what i know about that place is that the most important promise anyone made was to come back, to rebuild. no matter what. because people have enough to do without having to drive forty miles each way for food. so when i see that highwater bear welcoming cars into the parking lot again, i am not surprised. there is always something unexpected happening in that parking lot.

the second thing, maybe more important to this story but not more important to the larger world, is that horses and i regard each other with a healthy distrust. not the big old belgians, the draft horses bred for work and gentleness, but the horses bred for prettiness and cantering and riding fast. i am suspicious of their huge round eyes that always seem on the verge of rolling insanely back into their heads. i am uneasy around their hoof stomping and teeth gnashing and their constant nervous motion. they are equally suspicious of my timidity around them, my own nervous motion. they know i do not know what i am doing. this has led, several times in the past, to me clinging to a rearing, angry horse, to me tearfully clutching to the saddle of a runaway animal while someone else leaps onto the horse behind me, cowboy style, to steer the monster. this has led to my avoidance of mounted police, certain stalls at state fairs and some parades.

but donkeys are another thing altogether. donkeys, like draft horses, have been bred to work, to carry weight without tiring. they have sturdy legs and soft eyes and round bellies. and unlike horses, donkeys are eye level with me. which is why, when we pull into the freshtown parking lot, i see the donkey first. because of the grand re-opening of the store there is a stand selling locally made soap and another for a nearby produce farm and then, over at the corner by the water that looks so innocent and low these days, there's a pen with a donkey, two white chickens, something that looks like a baby yak and a horse. the animals are milling around in hay and a little girl stands with her father outside the bars of the pen, reaching through to touch the animals.

i am halfway there before the sweetie is even out of the car.  i reach out to the donkey and make a clicking noise i've heard people make around big animals. horses and donkeys do not ever make this sound as far as i can tell, but they seem to like it. i suspect they connect the sound to food. the donkey hears me and looks up a bit from the hay. i hold out my hand, steering clear of the horse that hears me, too. the donkey puts its stubby neck over the bars and i scratch its ears. if you've never been up close to a donkey i can tell you they've got the best attributes of a good dog in a size and shape you can ride. this particular donkey goes by beauregard, although his red halter is stitched in white with the word jack.

the chickens ignore me, ignore the little girl. we are of a similar mind, both of us unsure about animals so large but willing to risk losing a limb to touch the soft monsters. a man comes out of the grocery store with a large box full of produce. bruised peaches, scarred pears, a dropped apple, brown bananas. he hands me a green apple and tells me to hold my hand out flat. i put my hand over the bar and hold it flat, trying not to think about the slabs of teeth moving toward me. my hand stays steady and i look at the donkey but it is the horse that pushes its nose up to me and gobbles up the apple. the man hands a peach to the little girl and she cautiously feeds the donkey. the man hands me a pear. the horse leans over the bar and i offer the pear. he chews slowly and stays where he is so i scratch along the sharp bone of his jaw.

i know this animal is standing here because he is waiting for more food. i know this. but when the horse finishes the pear he stays where he is a moment, then leans toward me, resting his heavy jaw on my shoulder. his giant eye is right there next to mine and he stays there, the weight of his jaw holding me to the ground. no horse has ever been this still. no horse has ever chosen to do anything other than try to kill me. but this horse leans against me like the small brown dog tends to do, like he doesn't even care about food. and i am not afraid at all. not even a little bit.

lens, with occasional kayak

of course it's blurry. it's a flying bird.

one frog

we've been taking the kayaks over to a fat part of the east branch delaware river the last few weekends. the water is slow and wide and shallow, full of green waving plants that tickle the bottoms of the kayaks. overhead there are hawks, herons, red winged blackbirds, eagles and the occasional osprey. underwater are pickerel and not much else. roaming around at the edges are the best of animals. frogs and turtles. 

because the sweetie trusts me more than he should, given my track record, he has encouraged me to bring along the pretty new birthday camera. it lives in a very nice waterproof bag that clips onto the edge of my kayak and it is safe as long as it stays there, sealed up and still. but that is not the point of a camera.

two frogs

this is where the struggle begins. taking the camera partway out of the bag, slipping the neckstrap over my floppy-hatted head, getting the camera the rest of the way out of the bag, removing the lens cap without dropping it into the water (i've only dropped it once) and remembering to turn the thing on takes up enough seconds that most of what i want to take pictures of has already flown, hopped or swished on past by the time i get the focuser focused.

that's just fine, though. there's enough wildness out there that something else always makes its way in front of the lens if i just sit there a minute or two. and that is what i do, mostly. paddle along a while, then sit back and float with a camera pointed at nothing in particular. it is the sort of kayaking i like. it is the sort of photography i like, too.

one more frog

the sweetie fixes himself in some spot he determines is attractive to fish and he casts and reels in, casts and reels in. he will do this for hours if left to his own devices. and while he sits quietly i paddle around, eyes peeled, looking for wildness and trying to make it stand still.

forget-me-nots

what you need to know is that i am not at all skilled at wildlife photography. i cannot believe the animals i see don't want to sit themselves still and pose for me. i take hundreds of photos each time we go out, insisting that somewhere in all that volume will be a perfect photo of a dragonfly resting on a twig. i have, at last count, close to fifty photos of dragonflies. none are in focus.

the sky in the camera

but i do not care. i press on. i am the sort of person who wants to touch and hold and cuddle up on all the animals i see and this is my compromise, keeping them in this fashion, slightly out of focus, not quite properly composed, unevenly lit.

the sky looking like it does in real life 

i am, after all, taking photos from a moving craft. from a moving craft powered by mostly me and a little bit the most sluggish current in the entire catskills. i do what i can but when the paddle is lying still across the kayak and the camera is squished up to my eye, the water makes its own decisions, floats me by swamp irises just starting to bloom, by masses of forget-me-nots standing knee deep in still water. i snap and snap and snap pictures until the sweetie says how many pictures of forget-me-nots does one person need? all of them, i think.

the sweetie suggests i try the polarizing lens. i am supposed to turn it while looking at the sky to grab those clouds and make them look real, to bring out their ominous glory. it is one more thing to add to the whole routine that starts with balancing the paddle across the kayak and ends with a blurry photo. i cannot convince the sky and the land to work together yet, but i like parts of every picture.

lens

click and enlarge. the camera wants you to.

the sweetie got us a new birthday camera. because our birthdays are right up next to each other. now, i love the cameras and we have most forms of the technology from start to finish. pinhole to digital. but i am a lazy photographer. i have been uninterested in learning light and shutter speed and apertures. the sweetie does not believe this at all and so the birthday camera arrives with enough dials and buttons and lights to maneuver a space shuttle through a fairly sophisticated obstacle course.

he tells me about all the camera words, about how to make a dark room light and how to slow down a speeding bird. i do not listen. i set the button to auto and the camera rears up like an angry horse. this is not what cameras do and i am surprised. the camera is unhappy. it refuses to cooperate. my photos are dull. uninspired. mean. i recall something the sweetie said about opening the eye of the camera. letting in more light. making decisions about things. i try it, reluctantly. petulantly. i sigh and use the viewfinder which does not give me an automatic practice version of my photo before i shoot. my face is up against the little rubber eyepiece and there are numbers in there all along the bottom. the camera tells me things. it wants to help, but i have to do a little my own self.

i am not perfect and this is disappointing. all my photos are a little soft. i take countless pictures of swimming ducks and floating ducks and flying ducks. all of them are just smudges against sky and water.

 the sweetie changes lenses. he gives me an old lens from a real live film camera. i now point frankenstein's monster camera at everything. the two pieces communicate in broken images. halting. unsure. everything becomes a guess and attempt and another guess and attempt. the sweetie says i will get a feel for it.

he gives me a lens longer than my own arm that pulls birds right out of the sky and turns water droplets into whole worlds. at first i cannot see anything through the massive lens. i cannot take a picture of any object in the same room with me. not even in the same yard. i try to show the massiveness of mountains and get three trees huddled together. i do not understand the lens and its awful grabbiness. until a snail moseys by. slime-bellied and slow-moving, he is trying to figure out a flower. and the camera does what it does which is let me see right up inside the snail. it scoots up so i can see the dark lines of the thing's blood or maybe his optic nerve. stalk inside a stalk. 

i learn about depth of focus. i learn that the long lens has a very short depth of focus. probably. that is likely what i learn. two scraggly weeds living right next to each other cannot both be in the same shot at the same time with the same focus. no way. i learn that it is pretty to have one tiny thing sharp as a needle in front of the rest of the soft focus world. 

the sweetie shows me how to use the pretty lens. he catches two bees considering the same flower. he gets one of those same bees seconds later shaking grains of pollen- actual grains of pollen- into the air. each grain flying loose on nothing. floating out there. all of them separate dots of honey. 

i try to do things the camera doesn't understand. it is upset when i try to focus on a fish hook dangling in front of some roses but after twenty seven attempts, the lens bends to my will. and then i run wild. i capture every flower, every snail, every butterfly and bee in my little section of the world. nature is no match for me. i capture things i can't even see.

but my photos still are a little soft. i am not yet able to frame an image, think about light, dial everything in and then click without something slipping a little. something gives every time. birds still fly just a bit faster than my finger can hit a button. i am better with unmoving flowers and slow-moving snails. but the sweetie, as always, is right. i am smitten. i click the shutter when i exhale like a sniper.

i will not throw over the pinhole camera sitting on the kitchen table in front of four packs of polaroid film. i will not always want so many choices. but this new camera, with so many lenses and gadgets and buttons and dials is not what i thought it was. it is not a set of rules. it is not a new pile of ways to be wrong. it may be more choices than i'm ready for just yet but i will figure it out.  i am learning to see things with new eyes.