The coast doesn’t come naturally to me.  I find it more difficult to enter into the spirit of place than say a woodland or mountain and hence more difficult to photograph.

Wandering among the small towns and back roads of down east led me to scenes of beauty and allowed me to edge closer to the sea.

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First light at Sea Level, long docks extending into the sound, boats at ready on lift and rope
the ever changing rendezvous of water and sand, a dance carefully choreographed and
performed in tranquility or torrent under moonlight and bright of day.  How are we to fit into this ancient rhythm, blend our voices in harmony with this element of nature.

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Once a thriving wharf and fish house now abandoned, desolate, returning inevitably to the sea as do nearby fishermen called by tradition and honor and love to try once again for a good catch.

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The End of the Road

Traveling 70 East in the early hours before dawn
more East than one can imagine
through the little towns with names reflecting
a time and culture
near gone yet preserved

through and across the vast salt marsh
refuge of otherworldly feel and feature
where meandering channels
reveal the brackish water reflecting
the last of the moonlight

The pavement narrows
heading ever more easterly
to become a deserted street and
then you see it the handwritten sign
nailed to a wharf piling

A dirt lot holding pick-ups with
first light barely on the horizon as
preparation is made to take the
boats to sea one more time
‘The End of the Road’ it says, as if one didn’t know

This is where I came seeking something
from the sea, a sea reluctant to yield it’s secrets
Precarious and unsettled our relationship with nature
as if we have forgotten the steps, lost our timing
especially here at our origin

It is a long road, longer in attitude and
tradition than miles
from the sleek yachts of Taylor’s Creek
to the beaten down fishing vessels of
down east plying these early hours

from the sea walls, jetties, breakwaters and
groins trying in vain to hold what we build
on sand to the generations of
understanding, accommodation, and love
embodied in these coastal fishermen

from a culture of carefree recreation
unmindful of storm or tide
unaware of the relentless movement of
ocean and sand to the intimate
knowledge of every current, every schooling, every weather

It is a long road, most of it too late
stretching all along the coast
stretching from those years
long ago when nature was alone
to this time of man

I will find treasure here
in images the sea provides
some are captured in the camera
more are captured in my soul
providing peace at the end of the road

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The coast is about where one stops and the other begins, the interface, the intersection;  but also where two come together, the joining, the binding.  Perhaps it is the latter concept that can guide us.

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Incoming tide and wind over sandbar, oyster beds

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Time and Place *

I have been trying to
find something lately
something I seem to have lost
It is here somewhere
just out of reach

Why it was lost I don’t know
too sensitive perhaps
easily distracted I guess
but then how can you not
respond to these things

Sometimes I feel close to it
unable to articulate the thought
it remains elusive
seen fleetingly from the
corner of the eye

It is difficult to be in
the right time and
the right place
to be fully present with
all of who you are

all the skills and wants
the assuredness and the fear
the confidence and the timidity
becoming one with all that
surrounds what is surrounded

Sometimes it seems a spectre
magical this Creativity
can it be learned and summoned at will?
Is this that which was lost
searched for now in earnest

*inspired by an article by Don McGowan

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The beautiful line of intersection between one and the other.  The end of the road can be a new beginning.