Twenty Feet Down

The shutter whispered. I pulled the film holder from the camera and turned to reach into my bag.

The tripod pitched forward. The camera somersaulted twice down the slope and landed hard on a flat bench twenty feet below.

I laughed in the quiet. My oldest daughter had moved a state away earlier that year.

I scrambled down to fetch it. Mud, snow, and grit were packed into the gearing and smeared across the ground glass, but nothing had broken.

I drove straight home and set it on my workbench. With a paintbrush, soap, and warm water, I cleaned every joint. It took an hour.

There are still specks of foothill mud in the folds of the bellows all these years later.