A fair! There is nothing like it to stir the imagination. I've loved fairs since I was a young boy on the boardwalks of the Jersey Shore. Fairs, carnivals, circuses and boardwalk, they will forever gladden my heart.
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You can feel it in the air the day before. There's a undercurrent of apprehension. No one will admit to it, everyone seems a little too cheerful. But, little things give it away.
With lots of time and open space, my imagination expands. The North Kaibab Trail has led me here. I started the morning seeing my frosty breath and now, after descending into the belly of the earth, it's nearly 100 degrees. Ponderosa pines have given way to gnarly little cacti that are nipping at my ankles.
An artist knows how quickly light changes. Landscape painters are keenly aware of shadow movement. Painting outdoors is a humbling experience. Nothing stands still. The universe speeds up and becomes elusive, as if it were aware that someone was trying to capture it.
Gasping for breath on steep inclines, I tend to chatter to myself on the trail—especially when the trek gets tough. Maybe it's the endorphins, the energy drink, an over-baked brain, or simply oxygen deprivation. Anyone who listens gets an earful.
Legs wobbly from the fourteen miles of the previous day, it takes a new mile on this new day to get the rust out of my joints. There's little warmup. We're heading straight up the ancient Vishnu Schist. Almost two billion years old, these rocks are the strangest I've ever known. They vibrate with a kind of heavy energy. Gnarled in black and magenta, the rocks sucked us into them and the release from their pull takes much effort. One is silent in the compressed heat of the inner gorge. It's as if the energy that forged this metamorphic rock were still present, still glowing. The base of an ancient mountain range, these rocks were gashed by the upstart Colorado River in recent times (from a geological perspective). It's almost like they resent the intrusion. They seem grumpy this morning. Or is it just my legs?
There are spots on the Tonto Trail where the path fades to nothing. Experienced guides tell us to follow the path of least resistance, it's where the Tonto always goes. In the constant heat of this rolling plateau—halfway between Grand Canyon rim and Colorado River—the trail morphs into a sentient being. If it were a person, it would be skinny. Very skinny. I find myself talking aloud to the Tonto. Curiously, it talks back.
Deep in Grand Canyon the sudden realization hits us. We smell it. We look up and see it. Rain clouds. Early September means monsoon season—we get a taste of it most every year. A sudden ghost wind confirms it. We swallow hard and wait for thunder.
The clouds grumble at first, like a grumpy lion who's been awakened from his hot-afternoon nap. The ghost wind hits us again, licking us with its cool wetness. The desert sucks the wind dry and stillness returns, but the clouds grow by the minute. Dark, Darker, Black. Stillness always precedes thunder. We wait.
It is time to migrate to a warmer place, at least for a few weeks. Regular readers of La Macchina Fotografica have probably noticed a drop-off on the regularity of our posts as of late. Life has become complex and it's time for a vacation. When we return at the end of September our posts will resume with vigor. We promise to resume our prolific nature.
The confluence of major life events has had my head spinning with a special kind of disorientation. It is hard to keep track of where I've been, where I'm going, and exactly where I am. Contemporary life does not allow us to feel the passing of loved ones, nor appreciate aging and illness. More likely, it merely forces us into task-based activity.
Banks, lawyers, doctors, creditors, insurance agents, advisors, and accountants. Oh my. I dream about them and not in a good way. When someone dies, gets sick, or infirm, it activates an entire industry, like switching on an silent-and-ready, gigantic machine. Those of us left in mere mortal state navigate through the morass, unable to deal with the actuality of loss. There are too many forms to fill.