a bike ride to the meadows.

it's the journey yadda yadda.
beach towel picnic blanket
grassy trail
Here we are, it's October.  It's just now that am I able to unpack the summer months; things I saw and things I did (... and unpacking literally too, in this case.)  Summer always holds a kind of urgency for me. Or, maybe I always feel that. My friend Cara once said to me that the experience of grief will fill the rest of your life with urgency. I think that's true. Especially in Summer. That there's something about losing greatly that makes you unwilling to do that anymore -- to miss anything.

In July, I got my heart set on going for a picnic. How many more beautiful days will we get in a summer? (It was July, so the answer was a lot. there will be a lot more beautiful days. But, again, with the urgency.) So, on our first unscheduled afternoon, Tyler and rode our bikes to the meadows. We made a few stops for all my favorite unreasonably priced items: french cheese (comté) and charcuterie (capicola) and the $3 grapefruit soda that I was in a real phase for.  

As soon as we laid out our towels the mosquitos started biting and Tyler entered the early stages of heat stroke. The picnic wasn't much, but it's still the source of my lasting image of summer: the two of us at idle at a stoplight, a baguette tucked into his backpack. 

(photos) on film with pentax k1000 | The Meadows in Northampton, MA

3 comments:

  1. is that pink grapefruit juice?! My fave! Love these photos :-)

    timothy + ariana

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  2. since i don't live in a 4 seasons country i don't mark that kind of urgency on summer. but i do it on the month. april feels like the end of the start of the year, july is the beginning of 'we're halfway there'. and then october. october feels like the beginning of the end of the year. your writing is beautiful, Sam. and oh, how i love these pictures

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  3. I feel that kind of summer urgency too. I love this, the last sentence is perfection. xo

    ReplyDelete

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