I was asked what my most-prized possession was today and after fumbling around a bit with boring answers like "the hard drive all my stuff is backed up to", I tried to think about what singular objects I have that I couldn't just replace. One nice option was a sketch of Canada Geese that my friend @wayward sent me once but I think the answer has to be something that isn't nearly as meaningful or good.
About a decade ago, I was walking in the wooded area around me and @iiiiiii's old apartment and I found the above photo lying face-down on the ground. It was the only photo there. I've always felt there was some resonance both between me and this mystery person walking through some trees and me and the unseen person photographing it. Maybe there was some unseen photographer witnessing me in that moment too.
The composition of the shot has always made me think of the Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film. Inadvertently, the photographer has created for me my own lasting enigmatic photo (albeit a much more mundane one). I'll never know who this stranger is but I can only assume they're still wandering those woods. If I wander enough maybe I'll one day meet them
A few years ago, I came across these two photographs under cairns in a wildlife management area in southeastern Vermont, perhaps two feet apart and sun-blanched beyond recognition to anyone, I expect, but those who placed them there—only a centimeter of sun-damage away from losing all the emotion you or I can still read in these photographs. The cairns were off to the side of a twenty-foot-wide open area of ridgeline—probably a natural treefall site that had been occasionally cleared as a vista in the following years. A small firepit had been assembled in the center of the clearing, with a few tufts of grass, bramble, and lichen holding on to the sheer cliff-edge facing to the south.
It felt rude to interrupt their view, so I placed them back under the cairns in as near their original positions as I could manage before heading back down the mountain.
(I wrote a bit more about the geology and ecology of this particular mountain and its basin here.)
