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(Brown’s Tract Inlet, Raquette Lake NY)
When you are broken, goals are a healing thing. They range from great ones beyond your ability to small ones that are attainable. At some mid point you travel farther afield than local parks and brave small hikes, but getting to them puts me near favorite vantage pointsa that I will visit when I am in their neigbborhood, just because they are always pleasing to this photographer’s eye. Such is the view down one of Raquette Lake’s inlets, a spot of openness from the bridge that crosses the mouth of the stream, a teasing view way back into the wilderness it emerges from. I’ve covered this place before. It’s autumn again, and a damp mist settles downward. The main channel carries the oppression of fog and cloud, but darker and deeper, sliding through wetlands on either side. There is a vertical testament to what can grow out there, but underlying it all is water and more water, and to walk into that meadow would be a wet, spongy proposition. Longer nights have slowed the chlorophylls of summer, rusted the low bush, bleached the reeds, and flamed the hillsides. I wish I had a canoe to paddle into the polychromasia. I’d let the full color of it soak into me like an infusion after my forced inactivity of late, the by product of a rebellious body. We think we’re invincible, that nothing is wrong with us until something is wrong. Long ago I was baptized in wilderness, and longer ago than that, in faith. For both I have little fear, but a deep respect. Until our faith is tested, it is an abstract, a theory. And perhaps testing the wild is a test of faith in one’s self. At times, both have caught me off guard. Either one will heal me, and maybe I need each of them these days, while I wander to reconnect to stronger times, drinking deep until my soul is recovered.