Let's Start At The Beginning...

I nearly didn't graduate from high school because my truancy count entering the middle of my second semester of my senior year was somewhere around 84. I hadn't missed 84 days, but 84 classes. Still my mom was furious.  I told her that she should be proud that a number of my teachers would ultimately "vouch" for me because I was an otherwise 4.0 GPA student and that I was pursuing some "independent studies", for which she should praise my ambition and initiative.  She wasn't any more amused than she would be years later when I showed her the tattoo that I'd kept hidden for more than a year.  Nor did she appreciate my candor in explaining to her that it was imperative that our school have an underground newspaper and that I discuss and write its contents in the library or at the local coffee shop.  She maintained that I should have been in class.  I maintained that I would never use calculus.  She won.

By then my independent streak had become some cause for concern with my parents, who didn't understand the money that I was saving by shopping in thrift stores and weren't thrilled when I opted to leave my hair rainbow brite red after a hair dying mishap.  Thankfully I had an ally in, amongst others, my guidance counselor, who gave me literature about the University of Redlands' Johnston Center for Integrative Studies when I met with him to discuss college options... and to have a portion of the truancies signed off.  I was instantly intrigued. A school where I could design my own major and receive evaluations over grades?  It wasn't New York or LA, where I had ultimately envisioned myself landing, but I gave it a shot and submitted my regular U of R application and the Johnston Center supplement.  The center only accepts a limited number of freshman per year, so I was ecstatic when I received the letter saying that I had been accepted.  My parents when they discovered that there were co ed bathrooms in the dorms? Not so ecstatic. But away I went. 20 miles down the road from my hometown, close enough for my mom to bring me a gigantic birthday cake on my 18th birthday, but far enough away for me to create my own niche.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer and have often reminisced about my Kerouactic dreams.  What I didn't know was that I would find the safest of my havens behind a camera.  My first photography class was a whim for which I had to borrow a camera. After a semester the camera became a gift. And now, nearly 15 years later, the camera remains one of my treasured possessions, despite its gentle decline into antiquation due to the emergence of digital photography.  I loved photography from the first click and advance.  I loved the smell of chemical soaked hands, the eerie beauty of a safety light, and the calm respite of a darkroom at midnight. I loved closing one eye and emptying what I saw with the other into an orderly black frame, then watching the memory emerge again, drowned in developer then fixed for posterity.   My grain focuser was like a magical monocle, allowing me to see deeper into a moment or to give my life more clarity.

I have now forgotten the actual title of my degree, although it had something to do with telling stories with words and photographic images and might have been more lengthy than was entirely necessary.  Following graduation from college, I found it increasingly difficult to find my way into a darkroom and, although I continued to snap photographs, it didn't seem the same without developmental control. I briefly pursued a freelance writing career, watched as rejection letters slowly began to wallpaper my apartment, and then realized one day that I had been a college graduate for 5 years and only had a number of waitressing aprons to show for it.  Having sought all through college to capture and hold life with words and images, I found that once I became adrift from my creative port, life stopped pausing for me.

My husband, Josh, daughter, Ava, and I recently made a trip to Utah (a state that I had never asterisked for a planned visit) to visit family. Pleasantly surprised by the diversity of landscapes and seemingly endless horizons of perfect clouds, we opted to take a detour through Zion National Park on the way home.   Exiting the park, we followed the navigation system's directions for what we thought was the quickest way back to the highway and home.  Apparently the system was set to guide us to the closest route to where we were, as we found ourselves on a 10 mile stretch of dirt road surrounded on both sides by wildflowers and plateau framed vistas.   It was a stunning stretch of beauty uninterrupted by power lines and mailboxes, asphalt and sidewalks.  To make it even more idyllic, the sun had begun to set, casting National Geographic shadows across the land. At the same time, it was a dusty stretch of rutted road that made talking difficult and that agitated Ava, who was trying to put stickers in her coloring book.  My journey as a photographer has taken similar detours.   I have bemoaned digital photography and sworn that I wouldn't participate in it, as if doing so would be akin to selling my soul to the photography devil.  I have gone for weeks where the camera is practically glued to my face, like a fake moustache.  I have used a dead 6 volt lithium battery as an excuse to allow my camera to gather dust. And now, nearly 15 years later, I am back on paved road and sure of my direction.