March
This is when we gird ourselves for mud-season, followed by black flies and then mosquitoes. Spring is not particularly kind in Maine. If you’ve been here for long you know not to get your hopes up too much or too soon.
But there’s hope embedded in this image. The wash is only on the line because it’s not that cold and there’s a promising green in that south-facing patch of illuminated grass.
I was down that far end of Isle au Haut; nothing special, just a scene and then….the man walks by….and looks my way….at exactly the right second.
That’s how it often works for me, the way it works for a lot of us who deal in fractions of seconds. Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Master of such things, called it “the decisive moment.” I was lucky on this one, but as someone else once said, “luck favors the prepared.”
In the time since then, this property has changed hands. Friends now own it and I don’t think they hang their wash. In fact, they go off island come winter, albeit to another, nearby island. Things change.
This was just one of those fractional moments.
