A Sense of Place - Week One Reflection

It's been awhile.  I think I needed a little breather after a 14-day series...

Of course, I remain entrenched in Kim Klassen busyness...including a new class in her Test Kitchen... but this week I plunged into a new adventure with a Kat Sloma course called, Sense of Place.

Oh maaaaaan...DEEP!  First week's focus:  Do you photograph as you travel or travel to photograph?

As Winnie the Pooh would say, "Think, think, think..."

But the "committee in my head" believes that it has to be: I travel to photograph!

Now, in past posts, I have written about my Appalachian roots...and while living in Ohio with West Virginian parents, you are hardly aware of anyplace else.  But after my father died in 2009, I longed to find out more about my family tree beyond my grandparents...discovering a five century legacy of Appalachian roots. I realized West Virginia is truly my home...and go their at least three times a year to capture it all.  Not just places...but the taste, feel, smell, people, emotion, the oldness, the heart and soul of its true essence and history.  And of course...at least one WVU Mountaineer football game is always an annual event!

And as you can see...the "sense of place" at a Mountaineer game is its people...its fans!

I travel to photograph the idiosyncrasies...another part of the "sense of place"...

Rusted, non-working vehicles in fields...or sometimes on concrete blocks in the front yard...

Mountain isolation colliding with the high-tech world...

It may be a humble abode...but we have our satellite dish!

An Appalachian woman scurrying into the IGA...

And the ruggedness of a hard life in the hollers near the Kentucky border...

And of course its sense of history:

A foundry and repair shop for Shay engines that repaired what pushed the logging cars up steep mountains during the logging industry in the early 20th century...

Civil War era of Harper's Ferry...

And sense of my history...

The one-room schoolhouse my father attended...

The log cabin built by my 5th great-grandfather, Henry McWhorter.

The little mountain church my father began attending as a baby, where he heard the Word he based his life upon.

And the gift of a migrant scarlet tanager in the trees above my great-great grandparents' grave...

And of course, the sense of place in its breathtaking beauty...almost untouched over time...

The cotton grass of Dolly Sods...

Abundant fields of wilflowers...

White-tailed deer in the mountain mist...

Endless mountaintops...

Tumbling waterfalls from mountain rivers...

Dappled sunlight in the holler known as Thurmond in the late afternoon...

and unassuming wildlife...

Some known as a West Virginia speedbump...

And yet...I can never capture it all...put it in a box...and bring this sense of place home...

And what my heart hungers for the most is something that cannot be filled...

The longing to touch and embrace those dear to me who are no longer part of this world...

My family...

A sense of place...is it elusive?  No...as I always carry it in my heart!