The Journey

Grand Forks, North Dakota 1981

 Since Harley Straus’ photojournalism class at the University of North Dakota I’ve been a photographer.  Assignment 2: capture a ‘style of life.’ 

Exploring Grand Forks’ fading downtown I met this waitress. While on break, resting her feet, I took her photo.   

Harley taught me to burn the overexposed window, making print after print until I got it right.  Counting seconds my prints were in solutions, hours flashed by.  As an English major, struggling with classical literature,  this tangible language appealed.  Now in my virtual darkroom I do nothing and the glass is perfect.  When I see this photograph, though, I am back in that school darkroom with its smell of photo chemicals  whiffing to the exhaust fan, the chatter of students, the sweeping second hand of a large clock and the essential-for-good-printing--according to Harley--Willie Nelson on the tape player. This mad mix made magic of the developer’s oily slickness, swirling  between my fingers, as a hint of exterior window frame finally appears.
  

Self-portrait Grand Forks, ND 1981

After receiving my B.A. in English, with an emphasis in photojournalism, I produced audio-visual slide shows in northwestern Minnesota . I worked on issues facing many rural communities:  limited access to medical and social services, job creation, low wages, transportation, school closings, aging populations.  Living on the Great Plains was the wildest, most remote place I’d ever lived.  It suited me.

I was born in Washington DC, moved to St. Louis at age nine, and in my mid-twenties, moved to England with my husband Jim and our toddler daughter.  We lived near Jim’s family in Lancashire, then Cheshire for the richest period of my life.  When the economy tanked--double digit inflation, miner’s strikes, rolling blackouts, terrible unemployment--we left England for North Dakota.  At the rim of the American West I planted the seeds of the person I am today. 

Leaving England was the hardest move we’ve ever made, striking out all on our own while losing the tapestry of family and friends the likes of which I’ve never found again.  I discovered what it’s like to be an emigrant from and an immigrant to my own country, finding surprising gains and profound losses, like nomads everywhere.

Ten years later we left North Dakota, for Boston, then Galveston and finally Virginia, just outside Washington DC.  In 2005 I completed the foundation year at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington DC.  My favorite course was Resources taught by Raya Bodnarchuk.  Each place has added a dimension to how I navigate the world.

Deerskin purse with bobcat trim, silver trinket & glass beads

This odyssey has brought me nearly full circle.  The place that evokes the most wistful resonance to my life is North Dakota, where the possible seemed closer to earth.

After we moved East I dreamed--in color--of the Great Northern Plains we’d so cavalierly left for the bright lights of the East.  In sleep I navigated freely beneath a cerulean sky and endless horizon with an incessant wash of wind.

            This was the road over which Antonia and I came on that night when we
             got off the train in Black Hawk...I had only to close my eyes to hear the
             rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that
             obliterating strangeness.  The feelings of that night were so near that I
             could reach out and touch them with my hand.  I had the sense of
             coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man’s
             experience is.  For Antonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny;
             had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for
             us all that we can ever be.                             
                                                                 My Antonia,  Willa Cather 1918             

Sunflowers near Grand Forks, North Dakota 1996

Ode to Wildlife Rehabilitators

Walney Road (in autumn)

Friday, July 29th was the last morning of my granddaughter Daisie's vacation Bible school.  I was driving home on Walney Road, through E. C. Lawrence Park, when I saw traffic had stopped ahead.  Grrrrrr, my last few hours of free time hit a snag!  I slowed to a stop.  There was one car ahead of me.  The problem:  A woman was meandering back and forth across both lanes (Walney's only two lanes, no shoulders) then I saw why-a white bird was fluttering on the ground, leading her in a Conga-like dance.  Every time she tried to scoop up the bird it would leap up about two feet in front of her then drop. 

At that instant I knew what to do.  My children had taught me--The bird needed a lightweight cloth dropped on it so the woman could pick it up.  For many critters out of sight is out of fright.  As a child my middle daughter Molly spent a lot of time in this very park, doing her share to help lost critters, such as finding a giant domesticated rabbit or a Dalmatian named Boomer who got lost when it's owner was out of town, etc. 


Turning off my car engine I got out to open my side door to look for something to help the bird.  Most of my bags are cotton grocery bag size--too small.  The huge plastic-coated Ikea bag would be too heavy and noisy.  There it was, a large, lightweight bag from William Sonoma that came with Molly's Mother's Day present.  Ugh, but it's a great size, very large, so all my other bags, umbrellas, first aide kit etc. fit in it, helping me to keep the car tidy.   Duty called.


I walked over to the bird.  It was on the ground in the middle of the opposite lane (by this time about 10 cars were lined up in each lane.  That's when a man jumped out of the car ahead of me with a silvery window reflector in hand.  One of the waiting cars elicited a halfhearted honk but otherwise the drivers were surprising tolerant.  

The man used the reflector to guide the distressed bird over to the grassy side of the road. Then I dropped the bag onto it and scooped it up in my hands.  I then presented the wrapped bird to the Conga woman.  She looked a little shocked.  I know that look.


I told her Walney Nature Center was only 100 feet down the road.  "They'll help you there," I said, pointing to the little house.  As we looked in that direction a Park naturalist was just then walking toward us.  The woman, holding the bird gently, started walking toward the naturalist.  The man and I got back into our cars.  He drove very slowly, keeping a cautious distance behind the woman with the dove.  Another sweet surprise.
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Recuperating dove

After picking up Daisie from VBS she and I stopped at the nature center on our way home to see how the dove was doing.  That's when I met ECL park naturalist Tony Bulmer at the Nature Center.  The dove was recuperating in his office.  Bulmer said the bird was a dove.  It took several hours to calm down.  Birds are like dogs, they pant when they're hot and stressed.  It was also dehydrated.  Northern Virginia is in the midst of a heat wave.  Today's temperature got up to 99 degrees Fahrenheit.  I also met park worker Hayley, who had taken the bird from the woman.  That's when I heard the rest of the story.   A park volunteer had been in the line of waiting cars, but because her small child was sleeping in the back seat she couldn't get out to help but she did call the park.  I'd wondered about Conga woman-how did she get there?  I can only presume she was a passenger in a car so got out to help the bird.  When the road had cleared the driver must have driven down to the first cross road to turn around as there was no room to do that on narrow Walney Road.

 

Hadley told me that the park was often used as a dumping ground for unwanted animals.  This was heartbreaking because Fairfax County Animal Control has an exceptional network of trained people to rehabilitate wild animals and a healthy number of groups to adopt unwanted pets.   

When my husband was a grammar school student in England, years ago, someone at his school tried to save an injured hawk.  Unfortunately it died.  Wildlife rehabilitators have studied what works such as what you can and can't feed critters plus the signs of certain failure involving unnecessary suffering.  Their efforts enrich our animal neighbors and us too.  I commend their dedication and wisdom.