WANDERABOUTING THE FIRST SNOW

... john called, "it's going to snow, i'll pick you up and we'll go wanderabouting and find some pictures" ... there're two types of new englanders, john's of the variety who still get excited when we get the first snowfall of the season ... we skidded around the landscape until we found ourselves alongside a familiar field in liberty ...

   

... this is john's favorite tree ... of course, that makes it one of my favorite trees, too ... yes, i admit it, i did think to edit out the hay bailer ... compositional reason prevailed, however, so what-you-see-is-what-i-saw ...

   

... leaving the field i challenged myself to do something interesting with the distant buildings and the faint traces of farming equipment ...

   

... we stopped at the mill pond in—well, i can't remember where ... i can recall that the old mill is going to be disassembled and moved to another state where it will be a working museum ... good that it's to survive, i suppose, but sad that it will have to leave its lifetime home ... i hope that over in vermont the other buildings are friendly ...

      

... i had the old olympus 50mm f/1.4 on the camera ... considering the wet in the air, i didn't want to change lenses and risk mucking up my fuji's sensor, so i made the effort to snap a landscape picture using what on my camera is effectively almost a 2x telephoto ...

   

... the door to the old mill ... i think this is my "shot of the day" ...

Here from the brow of the hill I look,

Through a lattice of boughs and leaves,

On the old gray mill with its gambrel roof,

And the moss on its rotting eaves.

I hear the clatter that jars its walls, 

And the rushing water’s sound,

And I see the black floats rise and fall

As the wheel goes slowly round.

I rode there often when I was young,

With my grist on the horse before, 

And talked with Nelly, the miller’s girl,

As I waited my turn at the door;

And while she tossed her ringlets brown,

And flirted and chatted so free,

The wheel might stop or the wheel might go, 

It was all the same to me.

’T is twenty years since last I stood

On the spot where I stand to-day,

And Nelly is wed, and the miller is dead,

And the mill and I are gray. 

But both, till we fall into ruin and wreck,

To our fortune of toil are bound;

And the man goes, and the stream flows,

And the wheel moves slowly round. 

THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH