Alison: Misty summer morning meanderings

The dogs and I walked along the rail trail which runs through our town. I love this time of year because lupines are blooming along the trail.

This is Misty - or Mistopher - or Twisty. I like to make new names out of the given ones for our two dogs and six cats. She is blind. When a stranger is allowed to pets her she likes it, but when one of us pets her she licks her little black lips over and over again.

There are two abandoned houses near the rail trail. I don't know why. They're just empty. These two benches are in the back yard of one, in the unmowed yard.

For a short time we rented a house on a dirt road about 5 miles from the Village. I loved it so much. We had chickens that lay little blue eggs. One day I came home and they were all gone.

I love cemeteries. And old churches. I am not burdened by guilt from a religious upbringing. I like the peace in those places. I am most at peace sitting on a rock in a river being pummeled by rushing water barely warmer than snow melt. I can open up when I am walking through a damp field studying turn of a dying leaf, or the composition of trees to water to sky.

I love the smells of the seasons. I need to touch these things I see. To hear the sounds and the quiet.

I love weather. I love the buried emotions that surface when I am in different kinds of weather.

I spent early to full blown spring photographing this barn. One morning near the end of my photographing venture I wandered the field behind this barn. The grass was heavy with dew. The morning fog was thick. Old rusted farm machinery lay in brush and grass behind the barn. I am at home here, in the grass, soaked with dew. I wish I had touched the rocks so their imprint had stuck in my brain. I will have to go back to do that.

There is an old fire station in town that has been a number of things since its fire station days, most recently it was a hardware store. Now it is for sale. Upstairs are floor to ceiling boarded up windows. Wouldn't it make a wonderful studio? I wish I had a studio with light, so my mind could expand through the windows. And high ceilings so I wouldn't feel trapped. This one has a curved ceiling made of wainscoting, as are the walls. Then, place this studio in an old field (logic be damned), where cows used to roam, and tractors used to plow.

And music made from the wind, the rush of water and the songs of summer birds back from the south would fill the room. I would bathe in the river, sleep in the field, and eat berries the birds and I would find near the woods. I would on the earth that fed animals and people long gone.

That would be my heaven.