Recollections 1: An Introduction (A Day in Autumn)
Ben Ashby
These are the recollections of days well spent, of trips that will live forever in the deep cavernous depths of one’s mind. Days that stretch on from the first rising of the sun to long past the purple hazy light of the long set sun. These days dance through the halls of memory and inspire the adventures yet to come. I am one of the lucky ones here on this earth, I get so many of those days. I don’t take that for granted, not for a single second, but it does drive me to document those days well spent with the most tenacious and tedious of detail. Journals to live vicariously through when you’re reading this on a screen or when I am anciently old and looking back on my very own past.
We search for the themes that carry us through this life. We search for those fibrous threads that link us to the humanities around us and to the souls of others. For me the landscapes often drive that quest. Be it driving down one lane roads, interstates, or the cobblestone streets of old New York the quest for new views drives me as much as my slow life on my little old plot of Kentucky land drives me to stop this writing and photograph that way the sun is rising against the October sugar maple leaves.
Twenty minutes later I have returned. The light continues to climb up the front of the house and flood through the windows. The light seems especially golden as the morning fog and copper leaves meet and light fractures beyond the screens and onto the white washed floors.
These are the memories of those days from the road and here at home. These are the journals of a life well lived, right here, wherever here might be.
On this day we drove somewhere through Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and the central parts of New Hampshire, south of Mount Washington down towards Maine, I suppose. Time has a way of blurring the maps of the different days, but the landscapes and conversations tend to stand out. The camera roll says the day began with donuts, delicious donuts from an old fashioned grocery in Vermont. Lunch was pizza at a place near the Canadian border. As I type I remember we then went on up to see the border. We found a lavender farm on a hill that had vista like views of the Canadian landscapes across that manmade arbitrary line that divides us. From there we journeyed on as it began to rain, or perhaps continued to rain. The rain seemed to be ever present on that trip, but the clouds made for the perfect light to shoot photos of the landscapes with. We found lakes around curves that seemed to be formed between the mountains, we found creeks that flowed over long fallen rocks, we found tiny towns that time seemed to have forgotten, but we were lost in the quiet discovery of it all. Places marked on the map for future returns. The rain fell heavier as the day grew on. The Maine border brought pouring showers that persuaded us to stop for the night, and as I recollect the destination for the following day was to be Acadia out there on the coast.
