32 and falling
There’s a trail that goes down by the Black Creek that scrapes up against the mini-cliff made by the winding water. The trees will clear and you can peer out onto the broad, rushing water. Since a big portion of it is within the DeSoto National Forest there’s dispersed camping, meaning you can just pick you a good place so long as you leave it as you found it.
I don’t have any photos from this trip; I have never taken a Polaroid out camping, although I have thought about it, because it doesn’t really weight that much all things considered. But this was late November and even though the creek was nearby I wasn’t sure how accessible it would be for water, and I had probably over-stuffed my pack with food and water, even though I wouldn’t ever be that far from my car, barely a few miles. Don’t pack your fears, they say, but I am still learning how to listen.
Somewhere up in the Delta, Polaroid Spectra, on New Year’s Day (2015)
Today doesn’t feel like a Sunday, which is maybe a funny thing to say, because why do days feel like anything at all. For a few days last month every group chat in the South has been filled with questions and reminders, forecasts and prep lists. We are probably below the freezing rain line, or the Harbor Freight in Brookhaven still has a couple of generators, then quiet photos of snowy backyards in Memphis, icicles in Starkville, fallen oaks in Oxford.
The world gets very quiet at these times, and my thoughts turn to other soft times filled with little more than only the sounds I myself made in the world, with the only information seeming to come through vision. As my old cousin once figured it, when describing a few similar, solitude-soaked wanders: Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.
East Williamsburg, Polaroid Land Camera with Fuji FP-100c film, ca. 2015
Every now and again I’d spy a big old sandbar by the Creek, but it was either out kind of in the middle or over on the other bank. I had no idea how deep it was but the temperatures were supposed to dive down around freezing so I didn’t want to get overly wet or really wet at all. Finally the trail curved up around a pretty sharp embankment which cleared about twenty feet over the water and I could see where some kids had stomped out a trail down to edge.
It was semi-overgrown by blackberry bushes, no fruit this time of year, or eaten by the deer and raccoons, and thorns and stickers grabbed at my pants as I tromped through. The sandbar glimmered as white as any beach in Florida, and whomever had been here last had left some chunks of wood within a decent attempt at a little fire-ring. I had an hour until sunset, which would be long enough to gather wood and set up my tent.
PX600 Silver Shade, Mississippi State Agriculture Museum, Jackson, Miss. January 2011
Once I was wandering around in a blizzard, which I don’t per se recommend. We didn’t know it was going to be a blizzard, or weren’t paying enough attention to know until it started thundering. My buddy and I had just left a fantastic place in Koreatown where you could cook at the table, which I had never seen or heard of before. It was Christmas Day in New York City.
This is some Mordor stuff, he said, when the snow was falling hard enough you could feel it, when the lightning was flashing across the pitch-black night sky.
I wish I had a photo of that, had tried to bounce a flash off the sky while standing in the empty streets of Long Island City.
East Williamsburg, Polaroid Land Camera with Fuji FP-100c film, ca. 2015
I always try to bring a little plastic bag to haul garbage out with me, given that everyone drops or forgets something here and there or figures the fire will eat something that can’t actually get et. I packed up a rather filthy wifebeater that had been hung carefully on a branch, a crumpled High Noon can, the remains of a mostly melted plastic bottle of either Mountain Dew or Sprite, an empty package of GoGurt, the wrapper from a granola bar that danced about in the blackberry bushes and glittered like a knife.
When I awoke in the morning, chunks of ice were floating down the creek.
GORJUS is a dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, held fast with instant film. If you get wistful even for something that happened just a few weeks ago, then this is for you, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider forwarding this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see an archive of Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.