But we need not wander far

10 years a road warrior.  

In 2008 I worked briefly as a retoucher for a senior picture studio in York, Pa.  I was fired after a month.  It took me about a month to automate their retouching needs down to two actions.  This is no coincidence.  

Following that the great recession came, and I found myself desperate for work.  I applied to a temp agency where I was placed with Electronic Data Systems (Ross Perot's company) doing data entry processing medical claims.  The work was intensely boring and intensely repetitive, but I was good at it.  So good that when we fell behind they let me log 80+ hour weeks sometimes working from 7am to 1 or 2am.  Every weekend I would drive down to Philadelphia where I was still keeping a cheap apartment, shoot photos, and I would edit those until sunrise, sleep for an hour or two, then head into work.

I was lucky.  I paid off my student loans, bought the camera equipment I felt I needed and then quit.  10 years now I've been doing photo full time.  10 years of wandering around the country has landed me here.

The closest old growth forest to us is out our backdoor 100 yards.  4 acres of trees that survived the logging boom that built Portland, and gave it its nickname "stumptown."  Here we are in a nature I've traveled thousands of miles for more times than I can remember.  A nature that still is vanishing in our world.  Its hard to express what this proximity really means to me.  

Its hard to express what this proximity will mean for my work.  10 years sleeping in the "Ion Suite" or "Impala Lodge" at highway rest stops, trail heads, walmart parking lots, floors, friends couches, guest rooms, hotels, motels, campgrounds, and it could end tomorrow if I wanted.  It won't.  I still have so much more I want to do.  But it could.

That is a freedom I write about wistfully in indecipherable metaphor.

We will continue to wander, but now we need not wander far.