Parking

In the search for photographs, I drive first, then walk. Behind the wheel I am radar scanning for a blip; on foot, a hound with a nose to the ground, working toward the exact spot.

I found this one in the summer of 2023. A little rise pinned between the highway and an S-curve in the Payette River, where the water looped back on itself like a snapped rope left to rest where it lay. A faint rim of wildfire smoke sat along the horizon.

I would return to that rise for years. The only demerit against it was the parking: it required backing into a tight gravel cutout squeezed hard behind the end of a guardrail.

To anyone passing at sixty miles an hour, it just looked like I’d broken down and abandoned the car.