i am becoming more and more certain that 10x8 no matter how seductive the negatives are, isn’t the format for me. while i like the rigour and the ritual and when wandering about here visibility works as i learn a lot about the the area from what i am told by those who stop and gawk. the slowness doesn’t bother me, i can still walk - although hills are a killer. i find that it is best walking with the camera if i have it on the tripod with the legs long enough to have a nice balance. it isn’t the limited amount of film that i can take at a time. 24 exposures which means twelve when i am too far away to be able to easily return to make another snap if something is wrong with the neg. it is how the decision making process is changed.

i knew of this in theory with the looking hard before placing the camera down, walking around to make sure there was a better angle then once the camera was placed playing with the edges of the frame before inserting the film. through this process first impressions are obliterated. due to the size of the screen, and with patience, the ability to see how everything lines up i am pretty much sure of what the neg will look like. there are no surprises. when an neg is edited out it is because it is boring, self evident why i cannot see this when i place the camera down i am not sure.

with a hand camera, an image can be made before i am aware precisely why i have stopped. after the first impression i can guess as to the reason and make snaps that maybe improve on what i thought that i saw. this usually entails worrying about the edges, how lines match up shifting back and forth a bit more or less what i would be doing with the plate camera. when i look at negs from a hand camera even though i go through the second guessing at the time of the taking, the initial impression usually holds up. that decision though is made when i am away from the scene, sometime later when cooler heads are in play.

i also pity those who are taking the standard image class. while i hate the fact that large format classes seem to outfit students with monorails - cameras best suited for the confines of a studio. you can spot a large format student kilometres away with the steamer trunk hold the camera attached to a cart the tripod precariously attached to the top. when if schools only went for field cameras a tow decent courier bags would carry camera and film. the tripod could be carried on a shoulder.

this will be worse with the standard image. while the 10x8 deardorff isn’t light it is well balanced. i can place it in a back back, place the dark slides in my timbuk2 bag and throw the tripod over my shoulder, after the first image the camera never leaves the tripod. the new new outfits while the cameras will be flatbeds - sort of there is an excess of wood meaning that they won’t fold as compactly. the “cases” will be plastic tubs with wheels, that barely fit the lockers hardly portable. after reading about lois connor biking with her banquet camera in china and how important portability is with nicholas nixon can only image how this mini caravan will effect the way those in the class will photograph. what ever the case there will be no hiding in the studio.

if all the people that i want to hang out with weren’t on the avalon, i’d probably not return. yeah sure i’d miss, hava java, the duke, and being able to find the globe, bottles of coor’s light and the western star aren’t quite the same, but the reason that i liked places like pouch cove are so much more present along the great northern. i realise that this is back to my isolationist tendencies but due to the circumstances of these places there is a sense of community and while it at times may fall short of my “strange” needs - no curry powder at the foodland in roddickton things seem geared for those who live here and here that is a much more exacting balance. conche has two conveniences less than 300 metres apart. i am sure that if something was in either of them that didn’t sell the profits would plummet as there would be no back-up.

while right now this is extreme,unlike bonne bay where being the off season only the essentials in town are open here everything is. granted the lounge only has three people in it during the evenings, but kearneys does a good substitution for tim’s where people meet over their morning coffee and the restaurant under the bed and breakfast is open.

i like to have to actively entertain myself. the days are longer but time doesn’t drag, with less amenities, it seems that more gets done. i like this paradox. i also know that this is a choice due to the house having neither phone, internet nor television service. houses over the area have satellite dishes and i heard the morning crowd at kearney’s talk about updating their face book page.

i miss pouch cove but in the times that i have been going there i have noticed that it is becoming more and more greater st. john’s it is becoming less of a community and more a place for people to sleep at the end of the day. st. john’s provides most of what is needed cape st. francis and while there are also two conveniences in pouch cove, two restaurants, and a lounge.

being off the avalon, i also notice how much the rest of the province is ignored by the capital, except for the call in programmes and the fisheries broadcast, it gets little notice. labrador might as well be alberta.

last year seemed to be a high water mark for everything. while i didn’t mean it to be my attempt of photographing everyone who spoke to me turned away from away of making the trip personal and to remember those with whom i came in contact with and became more of an exercise pathetic midwestern art schools would foster.

that is not true for the most part those i photographed last year had the importance of those of the past, but i could feel myself become more sanguine to the point where it became a photographic portrait session. there were a few times when i was with the wrong camera - it seems that during the navegatio of 2008 the people camera became the digital - and would ask the people to wait while i got the proper one. talk about spoiling the mood.

even in 2008 i was worried that the process of getting the photograph was more important than the underlying reason. last year was worse.

this year there is no running back for the correct camera, in fact i have photograph few of the people i have talked to as the chat was more important than the photograph. there are a few times that i regret this - fred in her machine telling me about potlotek, the guards at marine atlantic escorting me back to my machine after i left the confines to get something from tim’s, the scandanavian who befriended me but with the exception of fred they would have all been the type of image that the documentary expert in the department would have made - completely soulless ripe for theory.

i like this new moderation, as again the moment is more important than the photograph, marianne who cut my hair with her next customer - joking about a may december - “november i’m not that old” relationship, tom coming back and the camera being raised while we talk about the time that has passed since i was at the bank or montréal building.

last year was a good wander, while part of it bordered on pure mannerism and it seemed that i forgot why i like to wander, not to get some place but to go, it allowed for all the excess in what i thought i was supposed to be doing run through my system and i am much better for it.

this is certainly different than my last wander up here. i think that last year things became overly complicated due to forgetting why i come up here. i over packed in cameras, although this time it is worse with the deardorff, the medium format crowd even joãozão who hasn’t seen the rock in a good six years and and a digital. this time however it is the trip that is multitasking. the race to the rock, the race back to nyc, what was to be another more leisurely return to the rock - frequent boating miles on marine atlantic, meant the different cameras. am sure that i’ll be asked to make snaps at the graduation hence the digital. joãozão because it is still my favourite camera for flânerie, the other medium format crowd for everything in atlantic camera and for the second crossing.

last time like a camera clubber i worried about what camera to take when i headed out - would i run into people, would i need something for this, i realised that i was more worried about the postings that i was about making work.

it was a breaking point, by this time last year there would have been seven postings i would have stayed up to write, make the jpgs, and publish. this time, i am making sure that i remember the day first that i get down all the - even more - boring detail of what happened and if there is time, i make an entry. while there are snaps appearing, i leave the digital behind when wandering. i have become quite disciplined. an outing entails taking the deardorff, using it until i run out of film then picking up ubirajara and continuing until i have to leave before it gets dark - so far i have seen 20 moose along the road - mostly cows - and i plan to be in conche before it becomes duckish.

also the excitement of posting has somewhat diminished. this could have been a flash back to the days where there was no wi-fi in pouch cove and i would make midnight runs to the airport to file, if i didn’t make it to wordplay on time. as i sit outside the french shore centre here to check email, that excitement could have returned but i found something equally as exciting - post cards - think of them as postal tweets, which i have been sending out to those who do write. i can do this from the comfort of the kitchen here in conche again following a deep tradition here in newfoundland - being kitchen centred. sat in the front room by the wood stove once but it didn’t feel write. i write the tweets, head down to the post office chat with the worker and off they go, nothing is of immediate importance that it has to be read immediately and while i do like seeing that people in iran, saudi arabia and from coast to coast to coast here read it at times, i can get to sleep much earlier.

at the end of term, being asked what i was planning to do, i mentioned my driving once again to the rock and my desire - since i have now been in every province east of the prairies - to hit all the provinces before the end of summer.

it was met with horror from one student. that’s so far why not fly?

my glib answer was typical of someone who finds anything longer than a tweet “war and peace”. turning onto autoroute 20 just beyond the city of québec the true answer was made apparent.

while i tend to grin and bare the area between the u.s. border and montréal, once on either 40 or 20 things change. it is here that i see the geography change hints of the north show up from the first moose warnings to the beginning of the pine forests that first whiff of newfoundland while still in the nation of québec.

having said this though southern ontario is necessary as i need the flat of the land outside sarnia to appreciate the views of lake ontario around oshawa, the beginning of the saint lawrence at kingston, the wetlands that confuse the ontario québec border. how can i see that topographies have little to do with borders.

how does one experience 100km/h meaning 130 in ontario, 100 south of montréal but 120 between montréal and québec and 150 on the côte sud.

from however high you are in a plane how can you distinguish the flat of southern ontario from the that of côte sud of the st lawrence. a comfortable flat between with the river and the laurentians in the background. where silos and churches compete.

there is no scale in a plane like there is no scale from map to map, ontario prince edward island they both fit on the same size map. going from sarnia to cornwall i now know what 800 kilometres feels like, i also know that while it is the same distance between port-aux-basques and st. john’s the latter takes longer.

how much time should travel take?

how much dignity should be surrendered for speed. full body pat downs and no liquids?

would i have seen the skate border along autoroute 20 westjetting it east?

how about the oh so tired overworked server at the tim horton’s in brockville who wasn’t sure what was left as even though it was 10pm she had just started but none the less when she had got her bearings, apologised for not having bread for a large egg salad sandwich nor lettuce - we’re just off the 401 and it has been non stop - gave me extra tomatos to make up for it.

or the worker at canadian tyre who commiserated with me when those out of wedlock pæderasts at bank of america denied my purchase.

or the people at the town and country motel who took the time to have a bit of small talk before giving me a room over looking the saint john river.

there is the advance warning of atlantic canada along 185 between riviere-du-loup and the new brunswick border and while the trans-canada in new brunswick is now all new and moose free with an arizona like border fence to keep them off the road - playing tag with the saint john river proves that you certainly in a new terrain.

i can taste the coffee at the bridge street café in downtown sackville - and wish i wasn’t rushing and could stay for food.

i can see the red of the mud when the rivers leading to the bay of fundy are drained due to low tide.
i can marvel at another flat of the tantramar marshes.
i make sure that i am not importing bees in to nova scotia.

but above all, while photographing a ball park in potlotek nova scotia, a machine pulls up and the driver’s window rolls down. having seen me photographing the chubby’s in st peter thinks that i would be interested in potlotek chapel island to the non native. it is a sacred place for the mi’q mak. fred then goes on to tell me that i am interested her sister works for the mi’q mak interpretive centre and she could arrange to take me out to the island by canoe to look around and photograph. when i come back through if i have a couple of hours it could be possible. it is still not the tourist season so being out there could be great.

now i feel like i am in a rush. jokingly tell her that she is going to have me miss my ferry and apologising in advance as i shall be racing through cape breton on my way to nyc for a graduation. nevertheless she hands me her email and says if it is possible let her know.

i head down to the shore to look at the island - her cousin said it was a mere kilometre away - and she is right, i so want to get on that island. i thank her in absentia for telling me about the place and try to get in touch with my sister to see when exactly i have to be in nyc.

this little outing has me questioning my dedication on some of my more audacious wanders. leaving bonne bay where i had my oil changed by paul martin - not that paul martin. i still liked the world down the 30 odd kilometres of route 431. bonne bay nestled in between the water and the tablelands. sped down the trout river gulch - 150 k/mh again gobsmacked at the tablelands still with snow on the top and the green of the opposite side. it was more peaceful now it was still winter and all but the essential were still closed.

leaving i am always aware of what is left behind and out on route 430 it is hard to image that the towns exist.

this was the reason for wanting to head to other more remote towns, to travel the now completed trans-labrador.

this curiosity was due to ignorance. while i still use maps instead the of google equivalent - scale changes and while i know that some distances are long i have no tangible reference.

this wander has been all about scale. here i am on the island further away from the avalon than chicago is from new york. i have gone almost from tip to tip - channel port-aux-basques to conche 400 odd miles - i have to deduct the bonne bay diversion. for most of the transcanada i was alone, north of rocky harbour the same but that was nothing. driving roads like this is driving in autopilot - except for the moose. it was when i finally left the 430 for roddickton that my patience was tested. a mere 70km but one that had to be done at the speed limit. this wasn’t due to the three moose grazing near the edge of the road. this part was due to the size and number of potholes. there were parts of the road that looked like someone had just finished having war games. the speed limit went down to 50km/h and that was optimistic. that could only be obtained in a 4x4 or a big rig, a saturn would be swallowed up.


i know that i could make 70 km, i was way ahead of time - time being getting off the road before dark when i would have to worry even more about the moose population. i felt the amount of road kill deer in michigan was some sort of warning - there must have been two dozen. then heading up the transcanada just before the codroy valley a road kill moose. i also knew that the road from roddickton to conche was dirt 24km of dirt. roddickton itself was not only the moose capital of the great northern but also the pothole capital - marked speed limit is 30 clicks and even at speed the road turns into a slalom event, dodging portholes and on coming traffic.

i now wonder while i could possibly do the bay d’espoir and burgeo highways as i am sure that they are fine 100 click roads, i wonder what would have happened if i could have book passage on the ferries last year and thus had crossed over into labrador from québec via that dirt road and then dealt with the trans labrador - 481 km of unpaved driving.

bought supplies in roddickton as while i was told there are two conveniences in conche, i doubted whether they had vegetables. then made my way to conche making mental notes on what to photograph - so many wood piles so little time. unpacking i realised that i had forgot to buy table butter. i’ll do without it.

perfect...

r c-d

The house will be open for you. The keys will be on a hook inside the door. Conche is only a small community, just drive around until you see a light blue two storey house with a sign in front of tree which says"Casey House".

Be careful on our road. It is a gravel road and we have a large moose population. Conche has two grocery stores but do not have a gas station. There is no cell phone coverage in Conche. Casey house does not have telephone or cable. We do have wireless internet here so maybe you can link into the neighbors for internet. If not, we have wireless at the Centre which you can use. You can also use the telephone here.