Remembering What This Is All About

As you can tell from the pictures and the stories that I have shared here and on Facebook in the last week, my family and I have had an enriching experience that will be remembered for many years to come. There is no doubt that my children will reflect on these days as their defining moments of what summer family vacations should be all about. It is my hope, my prayer, that they will provide the same memories to their families in the years to come.

It’s important, too, that I take a moment and share the memory of Emily. None of our experiences, stories, and photos would have been possible without the love and kindness of the Davis family.

Emily Davis was a student at my school, who was diagnosed with Ewings Sarcoma in February 2002. In the two years that she battled her cancer, she remained selfless and optimistic, immersed in her artwork and in working with others. She died six years ago. She was 15.

I had the distinct honor to teach Emily’s brother and sister, and it is through them and their parents that I have been touched by Emily’s kindness, love, and sensitivity toward others. Emy will continue to inspire me to do my very best as an educator, as a father, and as a human being, always remembering how precious life is, and how we must always treasure the moments we have with each other.

I lost my own mother to cancer almost exactly two years to the day when she was diagnosed, and many of you well know that my sister continues her brave battle. The courage and bravery that I have seen from Emily, my mother, and Cindy, as well as from a CHS grad and good friend, Amanda, remind me every day that the celebration of our lives is in our hands every moment of every waking hour. We must believe in this moment, in all its beauty, and live it like no other.

Emily, we will never forget you. May we all remember your charitable love and kindness, and may we always share that willingly so that others may be touched by your good will as well.

If you have been following my photos and words this past week, and you’ve enjoyed them, please take a moment and visit Emy’s website and learn her story and about the scholarship her family has established in her memory.

All week, my children and I have talked about Emy’s beauty, her family’s love and kindness, and the importance of embracing each moment with humble appreciation. It’s easy to get a bit derailed sometimes in the hectic rush of our lives; join me in keeping an appreciative perspective of what is good, what is right, what is love.

Wild Horses

(all photos taken by rus vanwestervelt, assateague/chincoteague island national seashore, july 29, 2010)

In the end, it was a darkness different than the pre-dawn trip to Assateague that enveloped me, and haunts me still.

Ten hours earlier I knew nothing of the cries. When we stepped outside of the bayside condo to head south toward the national seashore, the black sky brought nothing but a humid, cool breeze and a hope to capture the wild horses silhouetted against a rising sun.

A tall order for any photographer, really. We do this all the time. We get an image in our mind of what we want to capture, paint the scene over and over again on our creative canvas, dreaming of colors and compositions that create impossible scenarios when we are working with so many variables beyond our control. We do it anyway, and we learn that it’s only through patience and tenacity that sometimes, though rarely, we are treated to the magnificent materialization of that craftily detailed mind-canvas we’ve been working on for days, perhaps even months or years.

For this photo shoot, the mind-canvas was layered with countless images of horses against magnificent backgrounds, most of which were inspired by my daughter Madelyn and her illustrations. It wasn’t until I saw my friend Kim’s photos of the wild ponies at sunset that the images were complete in my own mind.

Sunrise. Wild horses. Silhouettes along the ridge line. A blend of warm–cool colors that suggested a nearly unspeakable calm, a reverence for what goes on in the rest of the world as we push on, putting ourselves through the grind of hard labor to get and spend, get and spend.

When Brad and I arrived at the island, still nearly 50 minutes before sunrise, we drove immediately to the southern tip to see if any horses were on the beach. We pulled into the parking lot among a dozen or so cars, and within seconds we saw a golden glow pulsing just over the dune. Sunrise already? It seemed impossible to think that the charts would be off by seconds. But 45 minutes? Simply beyond impossible.

We unpacked our gear and set out for the beach. As we marched closer to the the top of the dune, we realized that the early sunrise was actually a pre-dawn bonfire, where about 20 people stood around laughing, staring into the large orange pit. We took a quick look north, then south along the shore — no horses in sight. With the invisible sun already lightening the deep blue skyline, we headed back to the Jeep. Suddenly, there was little time to find the horses, set up the shot, and wait for the sun to break the horizon.

We had no luck finding a single horse anywhere. With the sunrise just minutes away, we decided to head to the marshes and see if we could get a few good shots with the ponies in the shallow waters.

We walked briskly through the still, stagnant air and along the meandering boardwalk, swatting at black flies and mosquitoes that were thrilled with their own early-morning find. We reached the observation deck, struck with the natural beauty of the marsh, where water and grasses battled for space like a pair of old sparring buddies.

Majestic, we both thought. The only thing missing was, of course, the horses.

The east, now light from the rising sun, taunted us. We both felt a little disappointed, though we we were grateful just to be immersed in such beauty. We knew the horses were there. The running of the ponies from Assateague to Chincoteague that had happened a day ago, just 30 miles south of where we were, had no impact on the horses we were looking for. A fence separates the Maryland and Virginia wild horses, and Maryland controls the horse population a little differently than Virginia’s annual pony swim and auction. North of the line, Marylanders use dart guns to administer contraceptive vaccines to selected mares.

Simply put, we knew they were there. We just had to find them.

We decided to zig-zag it through the primitive camps. Maybe they had a morning routine of their own, seeking out sweets and treats left out or behind.

The sun had since broken the horizon on the Atlantic, but the high dunes kept it hidden from us as we sought out the ponies. On our third and final sweep of the camps, I noticed a few pintos and chestnut-brown ponies emerging from the dune grasses and wandering through the campsites. As quietly as possible, we gathered our gear and headed toward them.

We started shooting just as the sun’s second rising — this time over the dunes — began.

We made it after all. As the ponies grazed, we kept shifting to the right, doing our best to capture them in purely natural settings and away from the asphalt roads, the picnic benches, and the very unnatural and unsightly bath house building.

“Rus, look at the ridge.”

Brad, to my right, had made his way through the tufts of marsh grass and beyond the camps to get a better view of the ridge line. There, silhouetted against the big orange sun, were six or seven ponies at various levels. Our patience had paid off.

We stayed there for twenty minutes or so, experimenting with various combinations of apertures and shutter speeds for different lighting effects. The horses, as if scripted to stay on the dunes for as long as we were shooting, posed with natural magnificence and grace.

We packed up our gear and headed back toward the main highway, grateful to have lived so fully, so early in the day, when most of the east coast still slept. We were about 500 yards from turning left and then off the island when we spotted a mare and her foal. The bond between the two was unmistakable as we pulled off to the left side of the road and approached them. The foal, only days old it seemed, shifted her weight nervously with little strength in her baby legs, never leaving her mother’s side.

After a few minutes, a stallion joined them, as if to make sure that we wouldn’t harm the mother and baby. We did not challenge, of course. We kept our distance, in our own personal reverence, of the inseparable bonds between a mother and her child.

We headed home, humbled by the experience.

A few hours later, Amy and I loaded the kids in the Jeep and headed to Chincoteague to witness the penning of the ponies from yesterday’s run from Assateague. Madelyn was especially excited. She has been a “horse girl” since she was two, and she knew all about the pony run from reading Marguerite Henry’s Misty of Chincoteague. I didn’t know much more than the horses were corralled on the southern tip of Assateague, brought over to Chincoteague through the wildly popular 3-minute pony swim across the channel separating the two islands, and then auctioned. There was a carnival, too, which we were all looking forward to.

When we arrived and parked across the street from the fairgrounds, we were immediately disappointed that all of the carnival rides and buildings were shut down. We roamed through the grounds like post-apocalyptic survivors, aware that something great had happened here — and recently — but there was no sign of life anywhere.

We kept walking toward the abandoned rides tucked in the back of the fairgrounds, and it was Madelyn who first spotted them. Wild ponies, mostly mares, penned up in a dusty patch of land just beyond the lifeless rides.

We had just missed the auction. To our left, a line formed where the winners were paying their winning bids, money that would benefit the local volunteer fire departmant. Most of the horses went for about $700, but some went as high as $8,000, we were told. These were beautiful horses, but there was a restlessness about them that I couldn’t place, a restlessness that somehow transcended the trauma of being corralled, run through the channel, and then penned.

There was something else, a sadness of sorts, that I did not understand.

And that’s when we heard them. The auctioned foals, on the other side of the line of winners, had been separated from their mothers. They whinnied to them, a neverending chorus of cries like I’ve never heard before.

I immediately reflected on the mother-child bond I had witnessed just hours earlier on Assateague Island. I had seen that love intact, unmistakable and strong. There was no doubt in my mind that this family, untouched by any such stresses that we place on ourselves as human beings, was a natural love, so perfect and divine, that we could not question the depth and sanctity of relationships founded in love.

Here, all of that was broken in a matter of hours. Shattered for the sake of fundraising and “natural resource management.”

We left minutes later, kicking at the dusty grounds of the barren carnival that wouldn’t come to life until the sun had nearly set. For our kids, hunger replaced the disappointment that we were going to miss the carnival. For me, though, all I could do was think about the foals, their sorrowful whinnies fading as we left the carnival and crossed the street to the parking lot.

I reflected on their freedom that they have had on these islands since the early 1600’s and wondered how they had been able to manage so well without our intervention for hundreds of years. Was it our place to step in, break the familial bonds of love, and claim the foals as our own, a piece of property purchased for a few hundred dollars?

Suddenly I wanted to return to the pre-dawn beaches of Assateague, this time with no camera in hand, and take nothing but the wisdom of love untouched by our own desires, our own need for possessions and for control. This getting and spending, getting and spending, is indeed, too much within us.*

*lines paraphrased from William Wordsworth’s sonnet, “The World Is Too Much With Us.”

OC 2010: Day Two

(photo taken by rus vanwestervelt, july 27, 2010, ocean city, md; mick jagger imitation by my son purely coincidental)

The warm temperatures of the water, the pull of the full moon, and the restlessness of the mid-summer Atlantic all led me to believe that, on this day along the ocean’s shoreline, the water would be rough.

The waves were calm though, washing over us gently, soothing the remaining stresses we brought with us on vacation.

We joined Brad and his family on their beach near 107th Street, at The Quay. I dropped Amy and the kids off at the dunes and ran to get fixings for a lunch on the beach — fresh turkey, cheese, honey mustard, Maryland tomato, and some snacks. It worked perfectly. The kids were happy with a deli-style lunch on the beach, and the need for food never interrupted the flow of the day.

Brad and I spent the majority of the afternoon in the water, waiting for any waves that would periodically muster up some muscle to ride into shore. While our kids waded in the surf about 30 feet closer to the beach, we savored the solitude of being immersed in nature — literally — for several hours.

We pondered, as we believed countless others were doing up and down the coast, how to make this last, how to make a life where this was not the exception, but the rule. The buoyancy, the gentle shifting of the sand under our feet, and the sun remaining our constant high above us freed us to wonder if the world did not have it backwards, where peace and moment-savoring were not supposed to be what life is all about.

Even a modest shift in thinking would make a tremendous difference on our stress levels and our overall approach to life, wouldn’t it? We had reached a point where the time seemed as meaningless as the whereabouts of our Blackberries. Did we even bring them to the beach? It seemed at one point in the ocean, we could not remember, nor could we hardly care.

Back at the beach, our wives joined our children on the shoreline, daring the waves to crash closer and closer. We did our best to encourage them to join us, but we neglected to understand that they, too, were happy in their own place, savoring the salty waters in a completely different way.

We left the beach at 5:30 and reunited at a restaurant a few hours later for crab legs and shrimp, then returned to the ocean for a nightcap of pictures and conversation.The older girls, especially, enjoyed the freedom and the time together.

It was a day of reflection, of letting go, of celebrating friendship, of remembering our priorities. We did not need to be shocked into any of this; instead, we let the gentle lapping of the salty waves wash away those worries and cleanse us with a new sense of living.

Day three awaits. . .may we carry the calm with us along the way!

OC 2010: Day One

(all pictures taken 26 July 2010, rus vanwestervelt, ocean city, md)

In what seemed like the fastest trip ever to Ocean City (and yet, the longest and “most boringest” ride to my son, Braeden), we finally made it back to Ocean City, MD for our much-anticipated week at the beach.

Last year, when my family and I spent a week in July here, my children deemed it “the best vacation ever,” and Amy and I hardly disagreed. We have all been looking forward to this trip since last year’s vacation ended, and our first night in Ocean City did not disappoint.

After picking up Holland at the gym around 3:45 (she had just returned from a 4-day vacation of her own at Smith Mountain Lake near Lynchburg, VA), we made some last-minute stops for favorite foods and headed toward the Bay Bridge. Despite a little congestion at the bridge because of a lane closure, we made record time in getting to the beach, just before sunset.

Now, I’ve been watching the moon charts closely this past week, and I knew that we were going to be close to watching a full moonrise over the ocean. The last time I experienced anything like this was back in the very early ’90s, when I saw the moon rise over the Chesapeake in Calvert County. I was left breathless by the intensity and the size of the moon, as if the Earth had somehow invited Mars to join her for a late snack. There she was, the full moon absorbing the sun’s orange-red reflection, rising over the water.

I nearly missed it this year. After all of my planning and wishful thinking to get a good moonrise photo, I took some shots of the boardwalk and turned to head south toward the Inlet, when Madelyn said, “What’s the sun rising now for?” I looked back over the ocean and, at first, didn’t see a thing but a lifeguard stand on its side and a sign warning beachgoers about safety along the shore. I took a step to the left and there it was, hiding behind the sign: The Full Moon emerging out of the water as if Zeus himself was rescuing the orb, an Aquarian feat of both strength and love.

Behind us, others along the walk were beginning to notice as well. It was as if we were all witnessing something magical. A few minutes later, as I started to pack up my gear and finally head down to the Inlet, where we planned to meet Brad and his family, I saw a couple walking along the beach, pointing at the rising moon, and then pausing. My kids groaned as I unpacked my camera for a few more shots. I was lucky to get this one, where two lovers celebrated the moment in an especially romantic way:

After I had taken another 10 shots or so, I packed up my gear again (this made my family very happy) and asked for their patience one more time as I ran down to the shoreline to show the anonymous couple the picture. They were thrilled, and I gave them my Ravenwater card and offered them a free copy if they emailed me.

When I returned to the boardwalk, terribly out of breath from running (ha ha ha), I thought my family was going to have a photo intervention with me — just within the first hour of being at the ocean! I promised no more delays, and we headed south for the 1.2 mile walk to the Inlet.

We met Brad and his family while standing in line for our traditional Thrasher’s Fries fix and then spent the next two hours on the boardwalk talking, while our teens strolled ahead and our younger children played in the sand.

One of the things that I love so much about Ocean City is the mystical, carnival-like atmosphere, especially in the evening. The full moon enriched the experience even more, and I was taken aback by the mixture of brilliant, flashing lights from the boardwalk rides with the enormous moon, sifting through clouds sporadically passing by. It was a night to remember in all ways, and we are all grateful for the kindness of our friends, both here and back home, who made this vacation possible.

We finally caught the tram back to 14th street around 12:30 a.m. and got the kids to bed by 1:30. Amy and I celebrated the end of our first night in Ocean City with a clink of our Blue Moon and Hoegaarden beers, looking ever-forward to what may come Day 2.