Out, With the Sunrise

 

 It's hard to get a complete sentence written in September. I have to start well before it gets light. Because as soon as the light starts to rise, I'm running back and forth to the east-facing front door, looking to see if there's a sunrise happening. Luckily my hormones, such as they are, are perfectly in tune with my need to see the sun rise. I wake up well before the birds do and lie there thinking, waiting for the first faint traces of light to appear in the east. I consider it a great personal victory when I wake up after the light starts. Good going, Zick! You got six hours! For awhile there I was running on three to no more than five hours a night, a prisoner of my over-charged brain. I decided that, in prehistoric times, women my age must have been drafted for the wee-hours shift, stoking the fire and watching for the cave bear, while everyone else slept. It's a bore.

We've just passed the autumnal equinox, and the shortening days are already working their magic on us all, whether we know it or not. Those of us prone to seasonal affective disorder (SAD) go into compensatory mode. For me, that includes eating every dang carb that isn't tied down. I eat like a bear on its way to the den, grabbing as I go. I can't get enough. My pituitary is hellbent on ensuring that I have a nice reserve of belly fat to get me through the long, cold winter. I drive myself nuts this time of year. Apples and honey. Cereal. Bread. Crackers. Nocturnal ice cream. Aack! I have to quit! I'm telling myself that I'll clean up the carbs that are here and not buy any more. Time to switch to the high-fiber rye "crackers" that taste like pasteboard. No more Triscuit and peanut butter honey toast for you, Brenda Bear.

The weather hasn't been helping. We're completely saturated in southeast Ohio, with inches of rain each day lately. There's another downpour going on now. I'm growing everything hydroponically, whether I want to or not. It's all relative, of course, and there's nothing to complain about here, compared to the cataclysm happening in North Carolina. My heart's in my throat for everyone as the flood continues.

 

You'd think that running would help, and it does, but mostly with the mental state. I can't keep up with my appetite. But I figure if I cover some ground, I can burn some of it off. And man, do I see the sights. Running gets my head on straight. And how could I miss all this?

On this morning of September 19, the sky was iffy. I had an even chance of getting drenched. Which means that I took a Ziploc in my pocket for my phone, because you can't wear a raincoat running. The only thing that can't get wet is my phone!

I'll show you what I mean by "iffy." Panning left of the sunrise, there was a good shelf of rainclouds. I was planning to run right toward them.

 

There was a hopeful tinge of pink in the storm clouds, though, which gave me heart.

 

Here's a little video of the conditions as I started my two-mile run out from home. Leaving the sunrise behind, heading off into the mists of the unknown.

             

I decided to go for it. The clouds would be awesome, and worth getting wet for. And right off the bat, they were!

 

 I ran under the shelf and got to watch the sunrise behind me. The mists were still rising on the far hills.

 

I hope you'll click on the photos themselves, to get a larger version and more detail.

One of those rare times when plastic-wrapped haybales help the composition. They do smell pretty good as they ferment away inside.

I like to imagine this little cowshed is a writer's retreat. I imagine getting up and brewing myself a cup of tea so I can watch the sunrise  and think up the next transcendent essay I'm going to write. Isn't that what happens in writer's retreats?

It's probably full of busted tools and cobwebs, like my head. 

While you're admiring the pond, don't miss the cow on the ridge. Click on the photo to see her.  

  

I see things as I go, things you'd never see from a car. 

Not-so-lucky rabbit's foot. 

And an unlucky red eft who never had anyone to pick him up and carry him across.

I've found seven wooly bears this season, and ALL of them have been almost solid RED. You know what that means, right? Mild winter coming.

 

Being a Science Chimp, I couldn't help but wonder if the extreme heat wave that consumed most of September had something to do with their coloration. We were in the upper 80's and 90's for a couple of weeks. It was disgusting. And these caterpillars were growing up then, and red radiates more heat than black, so maybe their color has more to do with the conditions in which they emerged and grew than any prognosticating ability.

But maybe not.  We shall see!

It says, "BROMELAIN." Or CROATAN. You pick.

Speaking of prognosticating, here's a bit of folklore from the southern woodlands where persimmons grow. There's said to be a shape in the persimmon seed that foretells the kind of winter we'll have. You look for a knife, a spoon, or a fork.
A knife portends cutting icy winds.
A fork foretells light fluffy snow and a mild winter.
Watch out for the spoon: that means heavy wet snow.

  First, you've got to find a persimmon. Easier said than done this year. Ours fell almost two months early, fully ripe, and the possums got all but two of them. I was caught flat-footed. Dang it!! So much for the folk wisdom that they need a frost to be edible. Opportunities lost. I've never seen the persimmons fall in September, but this is an atypical year for lots of things.

Next, you've got to open a persimmon seed. Far easier said than done. They're small, slippery and hard as marble. The first time I tried it with my X-Acto knife, I cut a finger and thumb, and I'm still enjoying those nice gouges, every time I reach for a pinch of salt as I cook. I was determined to see the mysterious formation, though, so I set to paring away the brown seed coat and the rock-hard cotyledon. I could see the little piece of silverware formed by the embryo (the epicotyl), though, and that kept me going. Finally I got it pared down enough to see that I had a spork.

So I figure the winter will be somewhere in between nasty and nice.  Just like a spork. Not a good spoon, not a good fork. Just a spork. Sporky often describes our winters in southeast Ohio. If you're curious about the other shapes and want to know more, this is a good link from the University of Missouri.   (where my brilliant, funny maternal uncle Robert Ruigh taught Tudor history!)

Onward! Mist was rising in the far hollers, and goldenrod lit the foreground.

I came upon the beautiful farm of my friends. Phoebe and McKenzie were good friends all through school. Now McKenzie is working on her masters in speech pathology at Kent State, and Phoebe's teaching school in the Canary Islands. Shaking my head in slow wonder. I remember them giggling at the dinner table together.

It was this morning that the clouds and the light and the silver maple leaves and the barn with the star on it aligned perfectly. Click on this one and run through them all, because this is the scene that started it all, got me heading northeast, toward the high ridge with the skies.

 

We'll come back to this beautiful farm in the next couple of posts.

Senior Picture Shoot: Heeere's Liam!

 Senior pictures. Lots of people spend a lot of money on senior pictures. Which is nice, because photographers have to make a living, too. The best photos of humans, in my opinion, are not the ones that are produced in a ten-minute session in front of a rolldown screen, when the subject is bathed in the glare of  hot klieg lights.

Formal photos have one thing going for them. They produce predictable results. You're going to get a kid in a borrowed tux with his head slightly canted and most of his teeth showing. He's enduring the experience, doing what he's told, holding a grin until its freshness date has passed.

As for formal school photography, I side with Dwight. 

"I never smile if I can help it. Showing one's teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life."  -Dwight Schrute, The Office

But what are you going to do? You're batch-processing high school seniors. You can't follow each one around grabbing candid shots. But psst!  Mom can...

 I've never been much on studio shots. Yes, each year, for both kids, I dutifully bought the smallest possible package of school photos, feeling I'd be somehow remiss if I didn't. For the big stuff, though (senior photos, prom, homecoming), I've always taken photography of my kids into my own hands. What I lack in technique and fabulous portrait lenses, I make up in sensitivity to who they are and in which settings they look their best. Which would not be against a mottled gray screen under floodlights. It would be in what nature gives us at the moment: low late winter light, weathered barn wood and the landscape in which they have grown up. I shoot them with my old Canon 7D, fitted with 70-300 mm telephoto, the same rig I use on Buffy and Flag, Jolene and the birds. This lets me get the photos I want without sticking a camera right in their faces. I'm standing 30' away; he's just doing his thing, and we get along fine.

 

 I give him a coat (Mine, a men's Kuhl) that I think will work with the hues of the timeworn wood.  We try a bunch of different settings. That's not the best, but it's already a lot better than the frightened chimpanzee.

We're both hugely enjoying ourselves, expending nothing but photons in a quest for a good shot.
 I'm being horrible, and he cracks up.

 

 I've seen something interesting in his direct stare. "Look at me like you're p-ssed off at me."
"But I'm not! I can't!"
I forget what I said to get this look out of my loving boy.  Probably something awful.

 Ooh. Now we're getting somewhere. Gravitas suits you, Liam!

I've always talked to my subjects. I talked constantly to Chet Baker, often mentioning animals with which he was acquainted. The ears would come up, the light would come into his eyes, and click!

We keep moving. The light keeps changing. I love his straw-colored hair against the hills, covered in fading little bluestem.

 

"Hey! You! Turn around!" Sometimes he takes my breath away. From whence came this creature?

 

 

Turn your collar up! Work it!

 

We keep walking to the old barn that used to shelter cattle.  I have the windows in mind.

 

I love the glimpse of pines and sun through its dark interior, as warm as his smile. 

In this setting, I feel I'm finally getting through to his Liamness. He's relaxed, enjoying the shoot

and all the different places we're exploring. 

And being Liam, he throws me a curve or two. Eeeek!! It's Pennywise the creepy clown!

And then he goes all Broadway on me, throwing those amazing hands wide. Hellooo world!

I ask him to pause in the doorway. "I have cow poop on my shoes."
"Nobody's gonna see that."
I struggle with the exposure. The camera's freaking out, and I'm not able to conquer its desire to expose on the velvet black interior. So they're all overexposed. I take a bunch of shots and finally give up. This is the best I could do. Gotta give that another go. There has to be a way to compensate, because I love this off-kilter shot.

The light is fading fast. We have to work our way back to the hillside where there's still a little sun. I can't resist working the Toothless Lady into a couple of shots. It's cooled down a lot, and we're fighting the natural tendency of one's nose to turn red in the cold. I'm sure it even happens to models. I forgot to bring face powder. Oh well.

I love the juxtaposition of my favorite barn, deliquescing rapidly, and this vital young sapling of a man. It would be hard to find a nicer setting. This is not the first time I've thanked the Providence that led me here, that opened my eyes to the landscapes all around me, that made me take the dirt roads and start a heart collection of such things and places.

 

I need a little bit of the road ahead of him in this shot, to give him somewhere to walk. The sun catches his eye, colorless but for the light refracting in it, scattering to blue.

 

"Stand up against that particle board there."
"But it's ugly!"
"It won't be in the photo."

If I haven't made my point yet about taking the time to let a person relax, so you can coax out his true beauty...

This one settled out as my favorite, but I love them all for different reasons. I can't pick just one. Do click on it and you can quickly scroll through them all at a larger size. So much is lost in the blog version.

 When we were all done, Liam jumped for joy! And so did my heart. Laughing my head off, feeling like the luckiest mom in Whipple, or the world.

What a guy, what a day, what a sunset, what a shoot!  This Do It Yourself Moment brought to you by Low Spring Light, Weathered Wood, Beautiful Youth, and Poverty.