If I get up from my writing table here on Windham Road and put on some boots I can follow a trail from the house through the moist air of a hot summer afternoon past fields of wildflowers and fragrant hay to a nice hardwood bottom near  the rear boundary  of my property ending on  the lush green banks of Pinchona Creek.  I wear boots because the land is low and swampy near the creek most of the year.  The insects hum in undulating patterns while cardinals, blue jays  and red shoulder Hawks call in the canopy above.  I see here before me a world that, in many ways, looks something like it did over two hundred years ago, when Indians walked these creek banks (Creek Indians it turns out) and the forest was much enlivened by bear and alligator, rattle snakes, copper head snakes and water moccasins.

Today, Margaret and I live here in the house we built some thirty years ago.  We raised our two girls, Emily and Collins here, and now live for their visits with our three granddaughters.  Over those years, I have tried (though of course failed) to freeze life with my cameras and lenses.  And although I cannot bring back those phantom days, there is no denying the bittersweet joy of having the images I have preserved, and these images do comfort me.  I  believe that some of the images are more than keepsake memories.  The best, I  believe, go beyond the personal, and perhaps are strongly seen and skillfully enough crafted so as to be far broader, reaching at their best a power that does reconnect me with the fugitive past, and perhaps allows others to find a similar experience, and hopefully joy, even if also bittersweet.