Where woodland, snow and water meet.

You know how memory conflates
long strings of things we've done or seen
into a single image symbolizing all,
how it subsumes a dozen walks
in a familiar place
into a walk that represents them all...
Here I have tried to find a token for
a walk through woodland to the sea
that fits a single frame.

(Click on the image to enlarge.)

Photos from the archive

Well, actually from the bottom of a cupboard that had not been cleared out for too many long years. I had forgotten about them. They date from my early teens and were probably the first serious photographs I ever took. It was my first camera. I forget much about it. I remember that it took 120 film. Black and white in those days. It was probably one up from a Brownie Box. I didn't develop my own film. Didn't have the facilities. I got the local photographic shop to develop the film and supply contact prints. I then marked in indian ink on the prints how I wanted each one cropped and wrote on the back the kind of paper I wanted it printed on. I had a preference for textured papers - and at the time that these were taken, sepia printing.

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The first three were taken on a walk in The Forest of Dean. I and a friend walked all day, I remember, without seeing anyone. We did see several kingfishers, though. Alas, I have lost the photographs I took of the kingfishers.

The last two were taken at Bournemouth. We had several holidays there just after the war. The last one of all shows my parents relaxing at last.