I admit that I think I am younger than I am. I mean, my 57th birthday will roll around next week but because I’m a hiker and a cyclist and a sometimes-runner, I feel fit and healthy and, yes, young.
I recently admitted to my mother-in-law, however, that I’ve been young for very long time.
Several days this week I had early-morning commitments that had my yawning, sleepy-eyed, soon-to-be-a-year-older self out of bed, dressed, and driving through nearby small towns and headed toward Seattle as dawn broke. I realized that my cameras and I have been watching places wake up for more than 30 years.
In my newspaper days in Ohio, I’d work on picture stories about small towns and I often felt I'd get my best sense of the community by being there early, watching it wake up. I’d be at Suzy-Q’s Breakfast Bar or the Sit-n-Sip or the Chatterbox, and the working men would come wandering in for a cup-a-joe and they’d gripe about the weather or the boss, and off in the corner of the restaurant a TV would be tuned to the Today Show but nobody would be watching because the men were sick of hearing about the Watergate tapes or Nixon’s problems with the Special Prosecutor.
(Oh my, I am going on, eh? Sounding, I suppose, like a man with a touch of Birthday Melancholy?)
Anyway... the mornings I witnessed this week were particularly beautiful, and I made time to stop and take landscape pictures before I continued on toward my commitments in the city.
If you click on the pictures, you can see them at a larger size.
