Night Journeys 6-10-10

Hoskins Creek, Virginia

There is something utterly enchanting about playing at the edges of day, especially in the southern summer that is just now becoming incendiary. The middle and hottest part of the day was given to work, ‘my’ project to transform a little old house, literally fastened together with an admixture of duct tape, masking tape, electrical tape, and nylon cord tape, into a house of some substance and historical value. I am finding the substance of the house to be very good, even if I have to excavate the most amazing accretions of cockroach guano, mice pellets, and other unknown matter that accumulated for 72 years. Two loads to the dump have helped clear the air greatly.

I have a curious mixture of people monitoring my progress on this house. Faculty and staff from a prestigious boarding school are curious if one of their department heads is going to become homeless because of my destructive activity. Relatives and friends in British Columbia may be wondering if a favored niece is going to be looking for a reason to travel 3,000 miles for a place to sleep. Siblings and parents in Richmond may wonder about the merits of asking a guy from an e-mail thread to come ‘work on my house.’ Fairly quickly, I will need to start putting something back in. We bummed a dump trucked from the school and bought a load of sheetrock and other necessaries after making the guano drop at the landfill. There is an inkling of hope this house will be sort of habitable before winter sets in again.

The cooler dusky edge of a hot June day was given to a wandering down along the Rappahannock River and then a drive a bit further on to Hoskins Creek. A couple of days ago I saw a grain elevator at dusk near Hoskins that had great promise for interesting photos. I was not disappointed. The elevator almost seemed as an apparition in the thin pink and blue light of late twilight.

While up on the bridge over the creek with a fine view of the grain elevator, a Great Blue Heron proved quite willing to pose in the fast fading light. While ‘collecting’ this grand icon of soaring flight, a harbor cruise boat pulled up at a nearby dock, affording some wondrous images of transition to night. A large group of alumni from a nearby girl’s boarding school filled the night with their happy joy of seeing each other after a hiatus of years. Twenty second exposures allowed me to capture the great light of lives being lived in the brilliance of renewed friendship and school day memories.

The odds are 100% you will find beauty, if you but look for it.