Haint in the window pane
Short takes » Subtle humor, a reflective sense of place in history as photographers
I’ve been on a ghost kick lately, and the Smokies have a way of making everything seem ghostly. I really wanted this direct-on angle for this shot, and for the life of me I though I had positioned myself out of the frame (on two or three ways even) and, salt to the wound, could have sworn I’d finally cleared my reflection from all the panes. But that bottom left pane tweaked me all the same!
“Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.”
≈Jean Cocteau
This cabin was built in 1861 from very large hand-hewn tulip-poplars, one of the toughest woods to work even when green. A small six-panel window reveals nothing on the inside of the cabin, but reflects as a mirror that which is directly across from it, a large tree standing just 20 feet away. And in the lowest left pane the haint form of a very cold photographer trying to diminish himself unsuccessfully.
There’s Photoshop for that!
The chimney is mud-daubed, hand-laid split stone, relatively flat. The width of the fireplace centered in the interior living room is about eight feet. The stillness and beauty of being here on a cold winters day was surreal. Walking into the deep darkness of shadows inside the cabin was close to being transported suddenly, like that feeling at times on a fast elevator when your stomach rises suddenly to your throat. I used the words “shadows” above, I should not have done so. The inky blackness of the interior was one great, all encompassing shadow which seemed to have a singular and relentless purpose—to envelop you into its being. A black hole? Porous dark matter? Another portal perchance?
Again, the spookiness of the old hollows of the Smokies came into mind, and I shivered again, not so much from the cold as the thought just released in mind.
Reflections in glass panes are the bane of a photographer. When faced with six of them, each skewed at different angles of placement in the lights of the window frame, it feels as though you've fallen into an old-world kaleidoscope. On the outside, the blindingly clear white light of the Sun on that Winters day is your friend, your associate, your photo-assistant.
I looked up as soon as my eyes began to make out shapes inside the shadow. A sleeping loft above my head. I then saw the rungs of the ladder, probably made from locust trees, each rung expertly wedged for all time into the vertical rails, all of this wood was hard as stone. All portions of it were polished to a sheen by seven sisters’ feet and hands through the collective years of their lives and travels up and down that one ladder to rest, to sleep, to enjoy the way the heat from their great fireplace would rise upwards, then be directed downward, bathing them in the warmth of a perfectly designed and engineered loft.
This cabin is truly a work of art. The small windows on either side of the fireplace (the photo above is one of the two) small enough to retain heat, just large enough to illuminate. It was hard for me to leave the interior. I kept seeing more and more evidences of their lives, small and simple elements of distinct purpose most likely, some of which I could not ascertain as I am not of their world.
I need to go back in Time again to the Walker cabin during the off season and carefully look into its depths to record those small indentations and protuberances. To allow the viewfinder and my eyes observations to create simple and nearly abstract maps of the persons’ artistries when they set to building this incredible dwelling. Every one of them dwell there still, for it must be so; so many shared lives, each and every day until the last of them departed the homestead and the Walker sisters were no longer seen.
As I finally found it in me to consider walking back into the sunlight, I caught a glimpse of late afternoon shadow play on the trunk of a tree in the distance. I sped up, for light and shadow play such as that can be fleeting, and as my body prepared to cross outward over the threshold of the door, my brow found the heavy hewn upper crosspiece of the door frame, bringing stars into my eyes brighter than the white light I was just shy of entering. I fell to my knees, stunned, for that was quite the shock to my system. I had to smile all the same, for I had broken the solace of that room with rank haste, and was walloped into embarrassed submission.
My head hurt for hours afterwards, but my heart had swelled at walking those grounds and finding one of the most beautiful remnants of an age, and of lives trajectories.
I have a series of works I’ve been creating for years. I named the series in 2011 as ‘America: Lost & Found.’ It’s one of my favorite bodies of work. In it, I record various guises of that which is left behind, discarded, damaged, or tapped out over time. It is a sequence of studies on entropy in America. It sprang to mind one day when suddenly my memory recalled a quote by Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French social philosopher making his way across America in 1834.
"It is odd to watch with what feverish ardor Americans pursue prosperity. Ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they may not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die. And yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before they had relished them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them."
≈ Alexis de Tocqueville, 1834
‘America: Lost & Found’ is a series on entropy; what we leave behind us in our rush to the next find, or, climbing to the next rung up the ladder.
Not one iota of the Walker Sisters homestead has any entropic quality to it. Theirs’ was the antithesis of entropy. They loved all of their long lives together, anchored stolidly, even withstanding the pressures and many offers the National Park Service made to relocate their family. Theirs’ was a chorus of seven “No’s,” always gracious, always embracing the intent to remain in place, and to enjoy the lives they built so well, once. As a person whose life has been spent traveling and moving, often buoyed and bolstered by the experiences I have had in my nomadic existence, I admire these women immensely, and their home is now a hallowed place in my heart.
One can clearly be the Other, and yet still feel a great sense of appreciation for what you are not.
For years I’ve seen paintings in Asheville and the surrounding little towns of a mountain range called Seven Sisters. Is the mountain range named after them?