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One of those "Conjuring" mornings

Conjuring what I am thankful for!

 

Just sipped into the first lick of Pike Place and felt the tang in the taste buds on either side of my tongue.  Sunday mornings around here in Shangra La South are generally quiet and this morning is no exception.  That leaves me with the computer, a blank slate at this point, a warm cup and the constant ringing [more like a buzzing] in my ears.  Doctor says nothing to do about that.  Tinnitus or some such fifty cent word for ya had your bell rung too many times and your hearing now isn't what it should be.  Sort of like a white noise background that doesn't and will apparently never go away.

 

Makes your thoughts turn inward and as we all now that is not a good thing for me to do.  Makes me conjure!

 

There's that 40 degree morning on the big lake in a borrowed canoe.  Salmon flies dragging

about seventy feet

behind.  Nothing but crystal clear nature all around.  The salmon even left me alone that morning....more conjuring.

 

 

I have been blessed!   Despite all the rotten things I have done in my past.  There was that wild and turbulent morning on the Outer Banks, more years back than I wish to admit.  Not totally alone, but placed alone by a storm that the night before had been a hurricane.  That morning I put the nose of the Ford Explorer into the wind and driving rain, sat on the open, protected tailgate and watch mother nature tear up that famous spot called Cape Point.  North Carolina's premier surf fishing spot that day held one crazy cameraman, his wife and a far crazier lone surf fisherman.  Just the right spot to conjure.

 

The Chesapeake bay was for fifty years conjure central for me.  I was blessed again in having a camera and one hour lab business for a bunch of years.  This allowed me to buy film wholesale, which I did, and burn it I did.  There is so much to photograph on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and I had the first and last hours of each day to go out and conjure.

 

So, as it stands this morning I took the chance to wander back to the index of my mind and drag out a few memories for which I am ever thankful.  As a photographer, I am beginning to understand more and more just how much each image means to me.  It is personal even if at the time the camera was on super burst taking six frames per second.  It's not because the pictures are pretty, striking or even award winning.  No, it's more about the remembering and the "Conjuring" of the event for which I am thankful.