Photographs
Let me tell you about Julia. Smart girl,
quite pretty I would say, strong-willed, altogether a level-headed and sensible
person. She had one hobby that I found frankly quite intriguing, and it was
perhaps the one aspect of her personality that demonstrated her powerful
capacity to pursue that which she loved. She would go on long hikes, sometimes
for days, alone in the wilderness.
Julia was a smart person, like I said, so she was always
exceptionally well-prepared for these trips. The first few were with other
people who knew what they were doing, but pretty quickly she started going on
these walks by herself. I would ask her about it often, ask why this one
activity in particular roused her passions so strongly. She could explain to
you so many things and was always in full understanding of her emotions, but
when I’d ask her that question, she’d always say,
“I’m not sure, I just enjoy something about it.”
I could respect that, and I totally did. I worried a little
for her safety, like anyone would, but she wouldn’t just wander around in the
woods at night or something, she’d go on a full-on hike in some mountains or
something like that. Different place each time, actually. It was just something
she loved to do.
She got a camera one year at Christmas from her boyfriend at
the time. The boyfriend was gone pretty quickly, but that’s a different story.
She started taking the camera with her on hikes. It was an oldschool one, where
you’d develop the film later at a shop. She took some amazing pictures of
landscapes I would never see, and slowly the labours she put herself through
for her hobby began to bear fruits. I told her she could probably sell those
photos to a magazine, so she did. Two months later she’s writing articles about
places she walks and the things she thinks about on her journeys. It gets
pretty heavy at times, but it’s always amazing stuff. Baring one’s soul always
produces
something amazing.
She went for a hike in these mountains one time about an
hour’s drive from where she used to live, a real middle-of-nowhere kind of
place. When she got back we met up to chat about it, because by then I had
become her boyfriend, and decided to get the photos developed that same day.
Now, we didn’t end up picking them up until the next morning for reasons I
don’t feel I need to explain, but when we did we decided to walk up to this
lookout point and sort through the photos. She was telling me the stories
behind the ones I thought were the best, and the things she shared about
herself struck me as being things that hadn’t been said out loud before.
I’m sitting there, shuffling through these photos that this
beautiful girl took on a hike alone in some far away mountains, and out of
nowhere there’s this photo.
There are two more almost exactly like it right after. Three
photos of her sleeping alone in her tent.
She didn’t go on anymore hikes after that.
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