We have often been to Maine. We have rented the same little cabin on a lake in the woods for a week or two at a time for more than twenty summers.
The little cabin on the lake. Photo Mimi Stadler 2014
From that woodsy nest, we have driven in all directions and hiked, canoed, kayaked, enjoyed beaches and explored parks both regular and Acadian, stopped at roadsides for vegetables, picked blueberries and strawberries on hilltops and along trails, and seen the occasional moose.
Along the way I've toted (successively) three cameras. I'm not one for only the big vistas. There are small images that draw my eye, like lazy bubbles on the sand at the kayak landing near "our" dock, and seawater nibbling away sand to reveal pebbles at the Maine beach,
Ebbing tide at Popham Beach, Maine. Photo Mimi Stadler 2014
and many, many permutations of the sunset off "our" dock.
A peach and apricot sunset over the lake. Photo Mimi Stadler 2014
There are big stones on our hikes that speak heavily of the boiling cauldron that is the core of the earth, and give further testament about glaciers that retreated over its surface; and tree roots that embrace the landscape fiercely. Leaves make a haven of patterns, and waterbugs scoot tiny rings within rings on the surface of the lake.
Clouds reflected in a waterbug's rings on the surface of a Maine lake. Photo Mimi Stadler 2014
There's the soft gray of a rain-spangled day.
The patter of rain on lake and dock, through a raindrop-spangled porch screen. Photo Mimi Stadler 2014
The greatest luxury is not the cabin, although it is sweet and quiet. It's not the camera, although I spent some thought and money on this one after my last one took its final wheezing click of the shutter. It's the time. Time to truly look and contemplate is the greatest luxury of all. To be able to lift a camera in places where the textures are vast or tiny but wilder than what I know in suburbia, makes time, even though it is not still, feel still for a little while.