Ok I'm really having way too much fun with this hobby

I had a free morning today - nothing planned - so I planned on shooting a sunrise with Snook (he does not know it but I'm a little intimidated by his skill and general know-how, not to mention his great portraiture skills), and after that hitting the gym with Jonathan. The sun did not greet us, nor did the gym open its doors - so we all went on a photoing adventure.










Our 45 minute sunrise session turned into a five hour tour. Pictures, music, hiking, mud, old equipment, fields, dirt roads, scat - lots of scat, uncured pork made from contented pigs, organic beets, expensive chocolate, the Co-op, Moscow, Pullman, water towers and over cast skies - it was a busy day!








I keep coming back to that line from Chesterton dealing with courage,

.. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying...

I was reminded today that for anything to succeed, to truly succeed - failure must be a possibility, that we can't live life afraid to fail, so afraid that we don't live. And that when I'm at those places where life requires action, where it demands action, and I find my feet and spirit hesitant and reluctant, it's this "strange carelessness" I find myself drawing upon. It requires that I turn a deaf ear to myself, and listen to something deeper, older, wiser, stronger and quieter. It's separating what you know from what you feel. And so the process starts - examining what you know, and testing what you feel. And in the midst of the storm, the howl of the gale, that "strange carelessness" finds its source - when you can paddle no more, when you "drop anchor and pray for daylight"

All in all a really good day!