Scooter in the Sticks

Exploring life on a Vespa Scooter and Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle.

Destination Ohio

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James D. Williams hunting snakesHunting Snakes and other Memories of a Father

My father has been gone almost 14 years from the world.  In my mind and heart he never left.  I see him in the mirror, hear him in my words, and sense him in the places I travel. I believe he and I are quite different.  His background and circumstance put him on a different path and despite the gulf between our interests and experience, there is a common ground.  Perhaps it’s something programmed in our DNA that allowed a closeness despite the differences, my early departure from home to seek my fortune, or the gulfs between connection.

I’ve not visited since his funeral.  Memories and thoughts of days past surface at this time of year.  And I want to go to Ohio.

There have been more than a few plans to ride the Vespa to Ohio to visit his grave, say hello, and talk about all the things I never learned about the man.  Like snake hunting. The image of him with his foot on a boulder was etched in my mind at an early age as I loved to sit with my mother and page through the family photo albums.  She knew as little about the snake hunting as I did though in her case by choice.  And I never got around to asking dad about it.

I neglected to ask about a lot of things.

Destination Ohio — it’s where I want to go.  Probably won’t find this trip outlined in any tourist promotion brochure on on the “Ohio. Find it Here” website.

***This post is part of a blogging challenge…***

2017 Brave, Bold Blogger Challenge

A Challenge of Commitment, Ingenuity and Storytelling

Toadmama has once again unveiled her challenge to bloggers to post every day in February on a specific topic. They’re listed on a post titled Brave, Bold, Blogger Challenge.  I participated last year and found the exercise instructive and creatively emancipating from the regular tyranny of blogging.  If you have a blog and need a sudden, rapid injection of writing mojo, try it out yourself…

Talking with God

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Portrait of Steve Williams at Waterfront Tavern in Lewistown, PennsylvaniaReflection at the Waterfront Tavern — Lewistown, Pennsylvania

There are things to learn looking in the mirror, or at a photograph.  Especially when we’re the subject. I’ve always felt some mystery or lesson lurked just below the surface, just out of reach but close enough to sense that there’s more there than meets the eye.  My friend Paul Ruby made this picture while I stared out the window toward the Juniata River as we arrived for breakfast after 94 miles on the road. Looking at it now I can see I was somewhere else, lost in thought in a manner that riding can produce and can leave me drained.

Long before I parked the Vespa outside I had been having a conversation; one I call talking with God.

Ducati motorcycle and Vespa GTS scooter along route 45 in PennsylvaniaOn the Road

Like so many rides they begin with the shimmering joy of being on the road.  Morning, sunshine, cool air and a road rolling out ahead, I feel a sit up straight and ear to ear grin excitement of being alive in the world — a world that seems to belong to me and no one else.  In this solitude, even when riding with someone else, I find myself making observations of the landscape sweeping by, puzzling over imagined route choices ahead, and entertaining questions that during most other times remain unasked.

Just beyond the curve at the end of the road in this picture a friend lost his leg in a motorcycle crash some years ago.  I’ve often asked if something like that will happen to me.  What would I do?  How would I react?  And before long I’m open to a host of existential questions — those concerns of human existence.  Riding provides space to ask “Why?”.  Questioning ourselves, our existence, that’s nothing new.  Human history is filled with examples of questioning in art and literature.  It’s one thing to read about the experience of others coming to terms with existence.  Another matter when you’re doing it yourself.

Regardless of your personal beliefs, avenues of spirituality or any other process of questioning or enlightenment, I suspect many riders find themselves coming face to face with themselves on the road and asking questions that don’t always have easy or comfortable answers.

I call it talking to God.

Vespa scooter and Ducati motorcycle along a winding roadWinding Roads in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has an incredible diversity of roads through myriad landscapes and geography.  It’s estimated that there are a quarter million miles of roads in Pennsylvania ranking it 11th in the nation. I don’t suspect I’ll travel them all.

Paul and I stopped to admire a small stream gently tumbling through a gap along Bearpen Hollow as we rode down over Stone Mountain and into Belleville, Pennsylvania.

Just 12 miles to the east is a faster route, one with four lanes of controlled access that allows for speed and efficiency.  Speed and efficiency.  For me, something I choose to escape from rather than embrace.  I have few thoughts save for how to deal with the boredom of riding on the super slab.

Vespa scooter in Amish CountryAmish Country

Rich agricultural scenes and thriving Amish communities make Big Valley almost seem like something from another time.  I don’t bother the Amish with my camera but I can say I never tire of seeing horse drawn wagons and buggies trotting along the farm lanes and paved roads.  I’ve wondered many questions about a life I’ll never know.

Vespa at scenic overlook in central PennsylvaniaView of the World

The view from the summit of Jacks Mountain is always breathtaking.  I look out over the expansive space and feel the tiny space I occupy in the world.  The sense of anonymity also creates a bit of freedom in my head to address the fear and regret that inevitably shows itself during a ride when you talk to God.

I’ve spoken to riders who claim to never question themselves, past, present or future, but instead travel through life sure and certain what the road ahead will bring.

That’s not me.

Ducati and Vespa along RT 103 in PennsylvaniaDucati and Vespa

With four times the horsepower and little additional weight Paul’s Ducati Hypermotard seems a fine riding partner for the Vespa GTS 250 I ride.  I’m often asked about the scooter’s ability to “keep up” and from first hand experience it will keep up with any motorcycle traveling the legal speed limits.  Anything else is, well, not important.  To me at least.

What was to be a quick route to breakfast turned into a long route to lunch.  Parked here on the east shore of the Juniata River not far from Mount Union there was still 31 miles to Lewistown along lovely winding roads.

The weather was perfect for riding.  And the ride was perfect for talking with God.  I asked a lot of questions and released a lot of baggage.

What more could I ask from a ride?

Memento Mori

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Memento Mori: a reminder of mortality…

an old brick in a frozen bird bathWitnessing Life

Save for the photographs I make for Scooter in the Sticks and a few family snapshots I’ve been an idle photographer.  The darkroom is shuttered and I’ve sold almost all of my “serious” cameras — the Leica is gone along with the view camera.  And with them my desire to seriously pursue any more photography projects. Finally free of the torment of camera work and creative irritations I could relax and enjoy each day as it unfolded.  At least until I found myself picking the camera up each morning as I wandered the garden with the dogs.  Without intention or goal I pressure the shutter on whatever provided interest.  Or not.  I was engaging a photographic process that I knew, at least subconsciously, would stimulate desire.

A desire to see again.

garden details and dogLearning to See

I can’t remember when the camera became a means to see beyond what was revealed to my eyes.  There is more — sometimes wonderful images reflecting the soaring joy felt felt witnessing a magnificent vista, the grin on a granddaughter’s face, or the loving eyes of a faithful dog.  Make enough photographs and you may find something else, something not everyone is comfortable looking at — the march of time.

Writer, filmmaker, teacher and activist Susan Sontag eloquently described a part of the photographic phenomena.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
― Susan Sontag

Wandering the garden with the camera I’m stricken by what is passing away.

bamboo grove closeup of culmsStride with Grace

My lovely bamboo grove — planted 20 years ago and growing into a dazzling array of culms and shimmering leaves.  Such a graceful plant (though wildly aggressive lest one wield a shovel continuously). And then, seemingly overnight, it passes its peak and begins to fade.  The camera sees it.  There is less life ahead. The Phyllostachys aureosulcata surrenders to time’s relentless melt.  Evidence is everywhere.  In the garden, along the road.

In the mirror.

A Belgian Sheepdog in a gardenDear Friend Junior

There are dogs and then there is something more — canines of myth with mystical power to influence behavior.  Junior, our Belgian Sheepdog, has wandered with me for almost seven years now and submitted to frequent encounters with the camera.  Photography can make some knowledge almost too much to bear.  But it also reminds of what is happening constantly.

A dog’s stare — a quiet mesmerization whispering, “pickup that ball”.

sunlight illuminating the hairs on a staghorn sumac branchA Photography Project

Fine hairs on a Staghorn Sumac branch as the dawn comes to the garden.  I work with the camera each morning.  Sometimes for only a moment, a nod toward compulsion that I can check off a commitment to work. Kim loves this tree and her enthusiasm has rubbed off on me.  I’m slow to change in almost everything, including trees.

After a few weeks of making exposures with the camera in the garden I can sense a simmering desire to do something more — a photography project that stares at the memento mori.  Friends have suggested my heart attack last spring has influenced an outlook toward mortality but I know I’ve been photographing that feeling for years, long before the heart attack.

I’m uncertain where the photography will lead but I’ll share evidence here as it surfaces and provides a glimpse of time’s relentless melt…

 

Meet Yourself on the Road

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Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

— a passage from Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”.

View east across the Nittany ValleyIf you spend much time alone on the road your mind will wander into the weeds. It’s messy, you can’t see where you’re going, and things stick to you.  Despite being considered recreational vehicles, I’ve found riding scooters and motorcycles stimulate curative powers for the soul.  On a nice line through a sweeping curve, a smooth rise over the crest of a hill, or a walk through a field you’ve decided to explore and suddenly you meet yourself on the road.

New Year’s day — a cold ride with the temperature hovering at the freezing point made worse by a brisk wind that kept the ride going when you stopped never allowing the typical feeling of warmth when the air stops pounding.  Walking through the remains of volunteer weeds in a fallow field I stand face-to-face with the fears and joys of the past year and a heckling self pointing out the challenges ahead.

Sometimes I wish I were still sleeping through life.

Vespa GTS scooter on muddy roadA Vespa is not particularly well suited for wet, muddy roads — particularly with street tires which turn mud into something akin to slush covered ice.  There’s no compelling reason to be on that track.  It’s just the kind of place you end up when the rules and “should”s are left behind.  I want to believe everyone comes to understand Thomas’s poem about dying and death at some point in their life.  I only wish I embraced the meaning long ago.

I heard an interview with poet Patricia Jabbeh Wesley where she described how she survived the Liberian Civil War and used that experience to survive cancer.  In both cases she credited a strong belief that she would survive as keeping her alive.  While I don’t believe a person can will themselves to beat an illness like cancer I think there is a lesson in being aware of the desire to live, and live strongly, or as Thomas would write, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I should note right now — I’ve met people who believe people do control the outcome of their disease — diet, exercise, prayer, whatever and when they don’t survive somehow they didn’t try hard enough.  That blaming victims for not trying hard enough, of not doing all they should do with a disease, or anything else for that matter, is evil in my book.  No one can know what another suffers.  People need your love, not your criticism or judgement.

As I embrace the days ahead I want to burn and rave at the close of the day.  Good or bad, they are magic and will never come again.

Vespa GTS scooter on Allen Street in State College, PAI made my (nearly) annual pilgrimage to State College, Pennsylvania to see the First Night ice sculptures on Allen Street.  Those blocks of ice have been transformed into forms and ideas and represent the ephemeral nature of things — here today, gone tomorrow.

And there was an ulterior motive at work — a late lunch at Panera and a chance to warm up.

2016 First Night ice sculpture in State College, PAFamilies build memories one iPhone picture at a time.  And build traditions.  I’ve become a better observer since I started riding, not just on the road but of life in general.  Riding in more severe conditions has allowed me to become more courageous in almost every area of my life.  And when I feel resistance and fear I know I’ll meet myself on the road for a little chat.

Or more.

Ice sculpture in State College, PAAs 2016 arrives I’m excited to still be in the circle of the world.  There’s hope and joy ahead as well as dark times.  That’s a given.  My job is to make the most of whatever rolls my way and not turn my back and run.  And if I do, well, I’ll meet myself on the road ahead and have another chat.

Vespa GTS scooter at the end of the day on a long roadI don’t know what’s ahead.  And despite any plans I might make the days have a way of changing them.  Uncertainty is as much of living as change, death and taxes.  As I think of the new year and any resolutions I might have there’s just one that keeps bouncing through my head — to rage against the dying of the light.

I’m alive and walking (or riding) on the earth right now and want to keep meeting myself on the road — raging together.   That’s what I want in the coming year.

To each friend and reader, to anyone who happens by this way — Best wishes for a Happy New Year in 2016!