Idle Latch

SALLY MANN: ".....I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. The lessons of impermanance, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring."

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Spring is in readiness - I've never had that sensation so strongly as this year. We had a week of unusually warm, sunny weather. I walked every day, and I wrote of peeping shoots in the dark forest and of the first leaf bulbs surging. And afterward, Jane nudged me to turn up my ears and enjoy the song of the first pond peepers. But the weather grew suddenly cold and crisp, and I used the clear light to shoot the blacksmith's latches on the old farm. There was a bit of snow, and some of it on Winchell Mountain in shadows lasted to last weekend, and all that pent up exuberance waited and grew stronger. Now, temperatures have begun to rise again, and we've had three days of rain. Even if I can't yet see any green, I can feel it rising. The rivers are flowing full and the ground is saturated, and the weekend prediction is for temperatures to climb to the mid-seventies. Though all is still dark and colorless, the swollen earth seems ready to loosen and spring forth as never before.