365 Photo Project - Day 187

Taken: July 6, 2010, approx. 5 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

365 Photo Project - Day 80

Taken: March 21, 2010, approx. 3:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Pretty much everyone who knows me, knows I'm not a morning person. I usually rise between 10 and 11 a.m. and by the time I get my shit together and get out the door, it's at least noon. I usually don't get down to the nitty gritty of writing until after one, but I've always done my best writing late in the day. If I could stay up, writing all night long would be okay by me.

I usually knock off around seven; By the time I'm driving up my road it's nearly dark. The place we rent is at the end of a dead end road, which narrows and winds a short way up to end at a local vineyard. We're the last driveway on the left, just before the vineyard's wrought iron gate, and the last few hundred yards is a moderately bumpy up-hill paved single-lane, shaded by oak trees and lined by a wooden fence on one side and rich foliage on the other.

Just before I get to where the road narrows -- at a line of rural mailboxes at the bottom of the hill --  I usually pop my clutch into first for the ride up. For the last several weeks, just as I've started to downshift, a rabbit has appeared at the side of the road. It shows itself in the beam of my headlights, almost always on the right side, waits to make sure I'm not going to run it down and then hops across the road in front of my car, taking one last look in my direction before disappearing into my neighbor's vineyards.

I'm getting used to seeing my rabbit. I always slow down and wait for him and so far, he hasn't failed to show. I don't know if he's on his own schedule or if he's waiting for me, or if he's got a watch in his pocket and a date with a hole in the ground and a girl named Alice. I don't know if it's a good sign or even a sign at all, but there's something about seeing him that comforts me.

My Mom had her own rabbit once. We have a modest summer place in New England and my folks spend summers there now. Like here, there's a short walk to the mailbox and one day one recent summer,  a rabbit appeared and followed her to the mailbox. The next day, he was there again. And the next day after that, until my Mom felt her daily walk for the mail wasn't complete without her rabbit.

I'm starting to feel the same way, that my drive home each evening isn't complete until my rabbit appears in my high-beams. I like having my rabbit. My buddy, shadow, my omen, my vestige.

Or maybe I'm his?

Spring is here and the Russian River is ready for the river rats with their canoes and kayaks.  There's a canoe rental place at the foot of my favorite local bridge (the one y'all now know so well) and they're getting everything ready. I didn't get out on the river last summer but I'm planning on going this year for sure. On my way home tonight, I stopped to shoot this stack of canoes. I used my K100D and edited it in Photoshop.