Thoughts By the Water

The last few weeks have been replete with "toings and froings", with seminar after seminar and workshop after workshop on the finer points of putting together a small photographer's studio - accounting, marketing, advertising and business strategies, the pricing of wares and competition. Ho hum, the grizzled head is chock full of arcane bits of business lore and floating numbers, with balance sheets, income statements, sales projections and other related items too numerous to mention.

It was a great relief and a blessing to simply stand by the beaver pond yesterday and think about nothing at all for a while, watching riparian grasses in constant motion and spinneys of bright golden poplar reflected in cold clear waters full of perfect blue autumn sky. In October, it always seems to me that the populars and aspens by the pond are the golden coinage of a wild and perfect northern realm - a forest of the heart in which the air is full of cedar and the joyous music of migrating geese.

I was as happy as a clam yesterday in my heavy jacket with collar turned up, hands in my capacious pockets and camera (as always) carefully draped around my neck. For once, I got the light and the angles right, and there was no reflected me to ruin the tableau of leaves and blue water. As I turned to go back along the leaf drowned trail, I remembered that once upon a long ago time, I owned a corduroy coat the exact color of the golden poplar leaves in this photo. Perhaps that is why I have always loved the color so.

I owe most of you a message, and as this day promises to be full of heavy rain and blowing leaves, I shall be catching up on messages today with a large mug of tea in hand, or rather several large mugs of tea.