Holly at the Lake
(click to enlarge)
i love photographs that explore Place. maybe that's why this is one of my favorite photographs from the trip.
there's something about hayesville... the minute i drove into this small town, i could sense it -- it's a promise. a promise that if you stay here long enough, something will happen to you. an unfolding. a promise that if you drop into this pace of living, stop twittering about so much like one tends to do in larger cities, you might just (re) discover yourself. It's the SLOW FOOD of living. Or, as Robert told me one night over dinner at the Copper Door, (like The Oracle, because that's the way Robert is) "you can't hide from your sh*t up here. The Mountain forces you to deal with your ego." Or as their friend Nate told me when i first got to the Market (like some Greek Chorus Ambassador of Hayesville who spoke so highly of the place i thought maybe Robert and Holly had planted him there to lure me in), "this place is magical. something happens to people that come here.
especially people who have Cherokee in them." (I have Cherokee in me.) "Takes about two years, but then... you just drop into it. It changes you. It's magical." (he sounded like some mystical Oracle, because Nate sounds eerily like Robert, and that's just the way Nate is.)
on my second day there, holly had been giving me the tour, stopping at all the places she'd already scoped out for me
and deemed photographically worthy. and because she is an Art
Director, and an artist in her own right, she does know how to pick 'em. after
riding around for a bit, we stopped at the Market for a last goodbye to
Robert and a pulled pork sandwich (because apparently, that's what they eat around here. it's good. tastes just like BBQ), before heading to
asheville. on the way out, holly said she wanted to stop briefly at
the lake "just so i could see it." the colors were amazing, this gorgeous red clay like they have in Georgia bleeding into the lake... Holly had walked down to the lake's
edge with Priya, and I was able to capture this shot of them.
The force of Place, and its affect upon us, is so often underestimated. We are creatures of our environment, and depending upon how in alignment our mental space is with our physical space, this force can either be constructive or devastating, making us feel out of sorts when the two are no longer in sync.
i guess that's why i like this photograph. because it's no longer a landscape photograph, it's a portrait of a woman whose rhythms are in sync with her environment. it's no coincidence that holly chose to come here shortly after becoming a mother... its the perfect environment in which to sink into that new role.
and so as i stood back there, behind the lens, watching her, watching the two of them, mother and daughter, at the
beginning of their own wide open expanse... there was something heartbreakingly beautiful and piercingly
respectful that i saw in her: this beautiful
unfolding into motherhood, this yielding of one's heart, one's ego,
this softening of spirit, this opening into a great unknown... and there's something...
singular... in that journey, something of an alone-ness, a mother-daughter world that only the two of them will ever be able to inhabit, but that holly, as the adult, will experience separately from Priya. and so even
though Priya is in the photo, I actually see it more as a portrait of
Holly.
to your new place, Hol. it's beautiful and you're beautiful in it.
x.
charley
