In 1968, about 20 years after coming to America, and living deep inside urban Buffalo, NY, my parents had finally saved up enough money to build a house in the country. They actually built it, except for the basement concrete foundation and the red brick outer shell. I watched them and all my aunts and uncles every weekend drive out to the little idyllic town of Eden, NY. 2x4 by 2x4 slowly they built our home. A big beautiful 3 bedroom ranch style house. My memories fade, but I can still sorta see them crawling all over those joists and rafters.
In the 1970’s I saw a moose swimming across a vast lake, as my canoe paddled along side of those massive palmated antlers, and his big brown eyes giving me a sidelong glance.
I’d open my dad’s bee hives with him and have hundreds of beautiful little lady bees, gently exploring my hand; all golden, brown and black. They tickled. I’d go up into the pigeon loft, where our racing pigeons gently coo’d as we’d spread their feed. These pigeons stood tall. They were proud. They were athletes. With their iridescent neck feathers, they were quite handsome. And they knew it.
In the 70’s I played in a deep gorge, cut through an old, old forest, at the bottom of which was a deeply shaded creek, cut through sedimentary shale and slate. This type of rock forms the most wondrous mini-waterfalls and black steps by the thousands, along its long miles. I took for granted, having such a magnificent geologic wonder, as my playground. Covered in ferns, the 80 foot tall walls of the gorge towering up each side, packed with mighty oaks and beech and elms.
On the way to that gorge you had to run across an enormous field of wildflowers and tall grass, and fly down a quarter mile long hill. It was the place to fly kites. And in the winter, all the neighborhood kids would have a permanent winter-long fire pit, so we could have hot cocoa at the top of the hill, in between runs of our sleds down the super-fast long hill. Saucer sleds. Roll-up sleds. Plastic molded sleds. Some of us even had the dangerous, metal bladed, wooden sleds; a constant threat of amputation. And of course the beautiful curled-front toboggans. Every winter, young and old alike, on that hill.
A little later, I had all my adventures as a teen with my ’67 fastback Mustang. A classic car, before it was a classic car, when the car was barely a teen, itself.
In the 80’s I was in the Airborne Infantry. Traveling to far-away places across the country, to Europe, to Central America, to Asia. Hearing the call to morning prayer as the sun rose over the spires of mosques. On the solid, navy-gray deck of a warship, with the same blue view that was seen by ancient mariners on the ageless Mediterranean. Many exotic wonderful places. Sometimes first stepping foot in them after having fallen from the sky with a silk parachute above me. I remember my brothers crushed against me, the anxiety thick in the darkened plane when the door was opened, and the moon was seemingly right outside the plane, beckoning us to try to touch it as we jumped from the noisy craft into the silence of dark nothing, 800 feet above the world. Oh, the sights I’ve seen!
For a time I lived on a bayou in Louisiana, and would tease the alligators that bumped my rickety flatboat, while drifting in tea-colored water, under the Spanish moss, under the stars. Oh those eyes. Those alligator eyes.
In the 90’s I was in Florida. I was a lifeguard on a busy, wide, tourist beach. But I started work early, at sunrise. The beach at sunrise is magical. And often staying late, having a drink at the tiki bars… the sunsets over the water were stupendous. I was surrounded by palm trees, or pelicans, or shark fins, or just fun times with the tourists. And dolphins! Yes, the dolphins all around me. I also had my baby girl, Dakota, in the 90’s. Every second of watching her grow was priceless. On the swings. On the carpet. Tucking her into bed.
I also lived in the Poconos Mountains in the 90’s. Big fat black bears a daily occurrence in my back yard, front yard, on the narrow roads, on the porch, in my hammock. One monster weighed in at near 600 lbs! They ambled. They lounged. It was a fascinating time, watching them from my barn-loft bedroom window.
In the 2000’s I lived in England. In a thatched roof cottage that was 400 - 500 years old. Gargantuan rock fire place with an iron hook to hang my cauldron. Castles everywhere. Stonehenge just down the road. Fields of yellow mustard miles wide. Blobs of sheep’s wool caught on thistles and nettles on every rolling hillside. The 2000’s were also the years I tracked wild jaguar through the mountains. I worked with caged black panther jaguars in the zoo. I worked all across Arizona, researching desert tortoises, trapping desert fox, catching wild songbirds of every species and color and holding them tenderly as we measured them and released them. I flew in helicopters through the Grand Canyon, to land and live on the river researching a special little fish, in truly turquoise water, more brilliant than the most authentic Navajo jewelry. One of my Mountain Lion encounters was down there. I spied pronghorn antelope herds flying across prairies, barely touching the ground at 60 mph. Tramped through hundreds of hours in the Sonoran Desert, coiled rattlesnakes at every other bush, Gila Monsters and jackrabbits, as constant companions, ancient Native American artifacts often sitting on the sand as we walked by, incredible convoluted Saguaro Cactuses everywhere, Rainbow Cactus, Barrel Cactus… bright-red Prickly Pear Cactus fruit everywhere. And ohhhh… the desert sunsets and sunrises. There are no words.
Then came the end of that decade, and…. something was finally invented. The camera phone! More than half my life was over. The adventures I’ve been through, the traveling I’ve done, the risks I’ve taken, the beauties that have fallen in front of me all across the world… all those came before my camera phone. Oh sure, there were cameras. But you had to buy film. You had to pay dearly for every print. You had to be conservative in what photos you took. There were cheap cameras eventually. Disposable cameras eventually. You turned the whole thing in at the CVS or Walgreens or the corner photo booth where some stoned kid told you you could have them in 24 hours if you were willing to pay $8 extra. Otherwise, you waited days, and hurriedly ripped open the envelope to flip through your 12, or 24, or sometimes 36 prints. a few were always a picture of the ground or the sky or your palm. Several more were posed group photos where most eyes happened to be closed. But there were a few gems that you stared at for a minute, trying not to get fingerprints on them, if you were foolish enough to order the “glossy” style. The smart money was always on the satin finish prints. Then you’d stuff the 24 (or 48, if you had ordered “doubles”!) prints back into the small envelope with the tiny negatives you almost never used (and when you needed them, you couldn’t find them), and then stuffed that envelope into a bigger envelope. And when you had money, you’d buy another film cartridge, or another disposable. You’d never have your camera when you wished you had your camera. No, you had to plan when to carry that bulky black plastic thing around. It was a pain. Lot’s of planned pics, some goofy pics at keg parties with red or blue plastic Solo cups holding the cheapest beer possible (probably Schlitz) when someone’s parents were out of town; always at family parties, cousins with their arms around each other smiling, grandmas washing dishes, turning around when you said “Grandma, look!”. And you had your camera for day trips and road trips and vacations. But never had it when “life” happened. It was not attached to your hand or always in your pocket. It did not have an unlimited number of photos you could take. And basically, like I said, you never had it when you most wished you did. It was on your dresser at home. Or in the car in the glove compartment.
Oh sure… people say… even I have said… that there are certain moments in life that are best remembered, and not by a photo; but only in your mind. And that is true. Sometimes. But most of the time… dammit, dammit, dammit… I wish the camera phone had been invented about 35 years earlier. What I have in my mind will die with me. Other than the few times I was able to have, or lucky to have, a plastic camera with me over all those decades… most of the most amazing life ever, that I’ve had, will die with me. No one will find a file, or check out a thumb drive 20 or 30 years from now and wonder at all the wonders I’ve lived and seen. I won’t be able to do that myself, to live again, the adventures I’ve lived through.
Yes, I remember. I cherish the memories. I hope I remember always… but who knows? I have the second half of my life to capture in pixels in pics. The rest is just electrical pulses, moving along and across synapses, and no more than that. They will eventually begin to corrupt. I remember because it’s my only option.
Sure, I have some photographs taken with those old cheap cameras, as you can see, below. Some photographs of my adventures. I have photo albums of most of what I’ve mentioned. The quality is just barely good enough to help me remember better. But relatively few of many things. And none, of most things.
Today… many of you, although you’ve heard this before, and wonder how it was without a camera at every second of your life, it’s hard to imagine how very different that fact made life. People of a certain age have every breath in a file somewhere. Their parents began that file at their birth, and they took over when they were deemed old enough to have a cell phone. What is that age these days? Six?
I wish I would have been able to start recording all the moments earlier. That’s what my technological regret is. It didn’t move fast enough for me, and I missed out on being able to leave a better record of the wonders that I’ve seen. I would have liked for future generations to better know who I was, through what I’ve witnessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment