Lessons from my Summer Vacation

Thoughts on my early-summer walkabouts

To everything a season, of course. I’ve suddenly myself in a season of thoughtfulness and slowness, of contemplation and aloneness. ¹

Not lonliness. No, definitely not loneliness. For the first time in the 20 years of my family life, most of the days I find myself sharing a house with other humans and dogs. Even during Covid I was able to escape the family for most of my days, walking Seattle’s empty streets and huddling in my office or studio space while my wife taught her classes on Zoom and as my two middle-schoolers sat in front of screens receiving their’s.

This is my first summer without access to a physical space that’s separate from our house. I won’t romanticize this summer of domestic life — it’s not been a perfectly fluid transition. But my kids do their own things, my wife reads and gardens as she recovers from teaching hormone-ridden high schoolers, and the dogs sit on quietly outside my door, waiting for me to emerge from my study. And when we are all together over dinner or an outing, it’s been a blast.

They give me plenty of space. I’m spoiled and I have nothing to complain about. But I have to admit to the strangeness of having to navigate other sentient beings during the daylight hours.

So I’ve been retreating into myself. Not always in a good way — a few issues have come up that have been painful and challenging, and that I plan to share one day soon. But I’ve been retreating into myself in a necessary way.

My tonal mood of contemplation — if I can phrase it like that — is partly a result of devoting most of my photography time to film, which is of course a much slower and mind-intensive process than digital. It takes me hours then days to bring a roll of 36 exposures to full light. You can’t fast-forward the second- and minute-hands of the clock tracking your exposure times. And each step is a tip-toe for me, partly because of the extra attention film demands that I’ve not yet habituated, and partly because I’m a slow learner. Film photography requires a constancy of carefully measured and intentional actions.

My feeling of aloneness has been magnified by the walkabouts I’ve chosen to take with my cameras. In early spring I set out on a project that involved walking early mornings and late afternoons along the length of a major thoroughfare near my home. I’ve mentioned this project before and how the pedestrian life of this strip has recently evolved from that of large commuter populations to mostly individuals and small groups walking and bus-jumping to get their retail and health needs met.

The highway is constantly abuzz with traffic, but the sidewalks are populated with long stretches of solitude and (mostly) broken people. I’m second-questioning this decision, but I’ve continued the project into the summer, with the added challenge of intense horizontal light that I haven’t yet figured out how to master. (Truth be told, wanting to master that light is the reason I’m still with the project.)

Don’t get me wrong — aloneness is OK. Throughout my life I’ve often reveled in it. But through a series of unfortunate events, I recently discovered how dangerous it can be. So I’ve been trying to structure my life around the building and maintaining of small, human communities I can cavort with. My darkroom community has been especially valuable. The workouts at the local YMCA bring me close to men and women my age, and my beers at the neighborhood tavern give me a little buzz and a few happy hours with familiar faces.

In other words, so far it’s been a summer to remind myself how necessary other humans are to my well being. It’s never too late to learn that lesson, right?

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1. The first photo in this essay was taken with my now broken Olympus OM-4 and HP5, the rest with my unbroken Leica M6 and Tri-X.