Where We're At

An iPhone shot of the field from last week. Not a
bad place to start most days from.

This morning I set up my tripod in the fairground area across from our house for what is likely the last time I shoot a landscape in Europe. It wasn't in a famous location or a spot that is particularly remarkable in the German countryside. Instead, it was to shoot a view of home. It's a view of a big hill on the other side of the river with the fairground field in the foreground. This field is where we've been walking our dog for the last 3.5 years. The view of that unremarkable field and the unremarkable hill across the river has been the view from our house, a view we've had in our lives longer than any other. It was important to me to capture it during a sunrise. In a month we'll pull away from this house and our street and this town and we'll probably never see that view again, at least not at that time of day. I think we often take these types of places for granted and sometimes we see them so much we forget that there might come a time we will never see them again and then we may forget them. I've lived in a lot of places and I have photographs from all of them. But, they're mostly all snapshots. It wasn't until we moved to Europe that I thought to document the towns and homes we lived in with a little more care. So, this morning I officially closed out my European photographic journey with shooting a place that means a little more to me than some bright city or sweeping landscape elsewhere. It isn't that exciting compared to all those other places I photographed, but every time I looked out a window at home at this view or walked The Dog in the field, I said a little thanks for being given time to live in this beautiful, simple place.

After I came inside this morning, I packed up most of my equipment. Saturday morning we're flying back to the US. We're going for a week to finalize our housing in Akron and take care of a lot of logistical stuff. We're also taking The Dog back and he will be hanging out with my parents who graciously offered to care for him until we finalize the move at the end of next month. That way we will be able to take Cats 1 & 2 in the cabin with us on that last flight instead of putting them in the hold. The Dog will be riding under the seat on Saturday's flight and my computer, backup drives, all of my cameras, lenses, and other misc gear will be riding under the seat next to him. The "powers" that be in Washington are threatening to make passengers check their laptops on flights from Europe to the US like they did earlier this year with flights coming from Muslim majority nations. I want to get my laptop out of here before that goes into effect. We have a moving company shipping nearly all of our belongings, but I certainly don't want my equipment crossing the ocean on a tanker or in the hold of a cargo plane. So, it all has to come back under the seat on Saturday. No important equipment will be checked, of course. All that will remain in Germany to use during our last few weeks here is my X70 and a Gorillapod.

These next few days I'm going to be cramming in as much editing from our trip to Zermatt as I can and I'll probably continue to work on that while we're in Akron next week. But, we have a lot to get organized for the move too and time will be tight. Whatever I don't get to is going to wait until we are done with the move. I'm not going to have my computer for 3 weeks! So, there's a good chance this will be the last blog post for a while, but I'm hoping to keep posting with my tablet right up until the end. There's definitely going to be a lull in new photograph uploads to the website, though. I hope you'll bear with me!

After we return next weekend, we'll be in Germany for three more weeks. They will be shipping nearly everything we own right after we come back from Akron so we'll be sharing an air mattress on the floor with the Cats and eating a lot of carry out on paper plates. It's going to be like camping in someone else's house because it won't feel like ours anymore. In fact, it doesn't feel like home anymore now. All the art is off the walls, we have piles of stuff everywhere- some for the boat, some for air cargo, some to take back next week, some to donate/throw out (massive hassle on that front, by the way), and some to keep here. It's a mess. International moving is like regular moving except about ten times more stressful. Every single thing has to be kept track of, accounted for, and organized- right down to the toilet paper and cat litter. It's hard to believe that by the end of Summer this will all be behind us and we won't have to move again for hopefully a very, very long time.

So, just wanted to touch base, but I really need to get back to editing. Time is short.

Wow.