Wayward Summer Project

Summer can be like a Sunday. Too long, lonely and quiet in all the wrong places. A respite long awaited, only to arrive with an aura of loss before it starts. That is how I remember them growing up, and approaching my fiftieth year, I found myself back again. Time spent following my daughter’s lead and joining in her play as we ventured out to pools and beaches had passed, and I was sitting alone. Watching from farther and farther away as her growth and independence propelled her forward. I felt that disquieting nostalgic feeling again – like looking from the window while others play - sitting with time, with loneliness, with space, with thoughts – she will grow up, I will miss her – sitting with sadness, with self.

“Wayward Summer” is a project about all the moments that make a summer. “Life Escape” was taken in one of those moments, while I watched my daughter in the deep end and floated disconnectedly trying to cool myself and find my way. What I found was beauty in an old, rusty pool ladder that I had seen year upon year but never as I did that day in my solitude. This photograph, and the series, capture all the complex moments that fill the long summer months. The lonely ones, the quiet and calm, the lost ones, and turning of “lost” into wandering. By unleashing purpose from the equation and accepting disconnection, I was led back to my greatest joy – untethered wandering. Led to finding beauty in the tiny details that stillness allows and ways to see moments that won’t last or stay still because they cannot and should not. Summers can feel like a lifetime and in that generate enormous unease, but also leave room for so much growth. They are a treasure veined with the knowing that they will end, but the memories glimpsed when we are forced to let go are mementos of the magic that filled them.