Real Things

I’m up to my neck in deferred things and pressing things, and always the real thing gets shelved.

— Ted Hughes (Source: The Atlantic)

I’ll soon revise and publish a post observing, lamenting, and resolving to vanquish “the tyranny of stuff” once and for all. Or, at least for a while. The post, still in draft form, is a belated tribute to the late poet Seamus Heaney (inspired by a quick read recommendation from friend, Jennifer Isaacson) that briefly recollects my early teens at a boarding school in Massachusetts.

The passage excerpted above — perhaps the best boil down of the article — might well have tumbled out of my own mouth. Perhaps yours too? Too often the real things, the meaningful things, the transformative things, the personally important things are deferred to make way for more urgent concerns. The deadlines. The daily punch lists. The expectations.

Today I made time for one of the real things. Charge drone. Launch drone. Take drone photos. Progress photos. Planning photos…

Absent my own drone, my nephew, Christoph, generously lent me his. A newer, snazzier piece of equipment than my own. Smooth operation. Impressive pictures.

The images included in this post were not among those that I *needed* to document, but they inspired me. Home. Place. Rosslyn. Lake Champlain. Essex. The Adirondack Coast. Real things. Grounding things.

Thank you, Christoph, for your eye in the sky. And thank you weather wizards for conjuring perfect conditions after days of drizzly gray.