~Upstream and Down~

I wished the recent snowstorm had hit during the day so I could have watched it unfold. Instead, I woke four times in the night and moved from window to window to watch the snow pile up. My husband slept through the excitement—not that he considers a snowstorm exciting. He doesn’t share my love of storms. Not many do, it seems. They wreak havoc, of this I’m aware, and I don’t want to have people or their homes harmed. But still, I look forward to storms from the moment the TV meteorologists begin their warning hype, and I feel gypped somehow if they fizzle. When the power went out in a recent storm, my husband gave me a grumpy look, as if my love of storms somehow had the power to stop electrons from flowing through wires. “And you like this?” he says. I do! We shoveled, kept the woodstove burning, lit the gas burners on the kitchen stove with matches, so we were warm and well fed. But by afternoon the power had been out for 12 hours, and it seemed less and less likely th...

Last March I had a freelance photography assignment in Gloucester, MA. When I was done, I headed up the coast to take some shots of the waves crashing on rocky shore, windswept beaches, and the beautiful homes in the area. I drove to Rockport because I wanted to get some shots of Motif #1—the “most often-painted building in America,” according to Wikipedia. I’d know it when I saw it, I’d thought--a red fishing shack built in the 1840s, the subject of so many paintings from the artist’s colony in Rockport that painter Lester Hornby dubbed it Motif #1. But, like overlooking a celebrity walking the dog without her hair and makeup done, I dismissed the old fishing shack I saw as a second rate look alike. That faded, old thing? Couldn't be. Where, oh, where was the real Motif #1?    Recently I had my chance to look for the shack again when a group of photographers met to shoot some winter pix along the rocky North Shore coast. Rockport was on the agenda. And what do you kno...

Sometimes a thing can be right in front of you, but you just don’t notice it for some reason—too busy, too distracted, or maybe there is something else that catches your eye instead. I’ve driven by this willow countless times in the past thirty years… and never once noticed it—not enough to have it register ... as anything special, anyway. Just an ordinary weeping willow among others on the edge of a lake. If I saw it at all, I looked beyond it at the view of the sparkling lake, reflecting the life on its shores, the island in the middle, and of course, jet skis, motorboats, and kids fishing on the banks. But in the midst of a recent snowstorm that was busy erasing all familiar landmarks--including the lake--the tree stood alone against a background of white. I saw it—really SAW it--for the first time. How had I never noticed this tree with its delicate, graceful branches spread protectively over its two small companions? Despite the fact that it was snowing heavily, and plows...

Here it is again. That turning point called the NEW YEAR, the start of which is considered a perfect moment to try, try again to do whatever it was you’d vowed to do at the start of last year, but failed to maintain for 365 days. Why is it so hard to stick to goals? Especially when they are good for you? And even when you really WANT to stick to them? I don’t know. When I was slim and trim (and young), exercise was a reward in itself. I loved the relaxed feeling after working up a sweat in an aerobics class, the feeling of power after weight training, the slim, trim body with defined muscles. I exercised routinely for years and years. Then, when I was forty-six, I had some minor surgery and had to stop working-out for a while. I discovered how nice it was to come straight home from work and sit with a cup of tea and the newspaper. Somehow I never got back into consistent daily exercise. I'd start and stop, start and stop, with longer and longer times before I started again....