Jordan Lee 10/9/26 Jordan Lee 10/9/26

Here I Was

In a few hours we will be on the road, returning home to our old selves. The car will be packed. The kids will be snacked. We will be breathing the filtered air of the car as Pennsylvania rolls by under our tires.

But for a couple of hours, while everyone is just starting to rise and the coffee is brewing, I am sitting in a cloud.

The walk down to the lake is quite this morning. The sharp edges of the houses along the street are rounded smooth by the fog that settled over night. As I peek though the trees I can see the fog is much thicker out on the water. Standing on the dock I can see less than fifty feet ahead of me. Along the shore off to my right someone has set up a tent on a little peninsula that sticks out into the lake. I do my best to slip my kayak into the water silently.

35mm Flic Fusion 200 ISO in a Sears KS 500

As I paddle out into the fog I start to question if this is safe. It's six in the morning and I'm sure I'm the only one on the water, but I can't see the other shore. I can't even see the middle of the lake. The fog is so thick it feels like something from a movie. I imagine paddling out into the fog, losing sight of the shore, and coming out somewhere else. Somewhere years in the future when no one remembers me.

Because there is no sky to be reflected on the water I can see much further down than I usually can. The brown/blue/green of the lake water is clear now. I can see my paddle stirring up little clouds along the bottom.

To my right are a series of boathouses. Their colors rendered in a wash of pale watercolor by the morning air. To my left the world ends abruptly in a wall of white and grey.

I feel like I'm intruding. Like walking into a bookstore before they open. I'm surprised that it's not silent. In the morning quiet a few sounds travel unopposed across the surface of the water.

A distant truck engine climbing up the hillsides. The woeful cry of a loon on the far end of the lake.

I have come prepared this morning. My old camera sits in a gallon sized Ziplock bag between my knees. I have rolls of film tucked into my pockets. My waterproof digital camera is balanced on my lap where I can reach it quickly.

As I work my way around the tip of Scott's Point the lake houses along the cove come into view. These houses that I have seen so many times are strangers this morning. They emerge one by one, like faded memories.

Leaving the shore behind the world is blue/grey below. The fog purples above in the first light of day. As far as I can see in any direction there is nothing. The yellow of my boat is the only anchor to reality.

Suddenly it sounds like the air is ripping just over my head. I fold myself forward, crouching low into the belly of the boat. A 'V' of ducks swoops right over my head and circles down in formation to land.

A dark shadow in the fog behind them is the far bank, and sitting in the middle of that is a little yellow pinprick of light. As I get closer I can make out a lake house sitting like a guard tower among the pines.

The sky is getting lighter at this point. The stubborn fog begins to lift. I look behind me and the end of Scott's Point emerges from the retreating cloud like a mythical island.

With the reassertion of reality my confidence waxes, and I set out into the middle of the lake. The morning is waking up all around me. There are more distant car sounds. I can vaguely hear someone's alarm going of. The pulse of it's buzzing calling out to the day.

Each mechanical click of my camera’s shutter marks one less picture I will get to take while I'm here. The hours left are down to just minutes now. I know my time here is coming to an end.

I try in vain to etch all of this on the walls of my soul. The smell of the air. The alien feeling of being untethered in the fog. I am stealing this one last moment on a day defined by ending. I am grasping at it, trying to save it inside of me. I know that no matter how hard I try it will slip between the fingers of my memory and spill out on the trail of time behind me.

I will lose this. That is what makes this meaningful. Despite that I pray. I pray to the universe, my uncaring future selves, the ceaseless flow of time. Please let me keep this.

But the alarm is ringing. The car is probably getting packed by now. There are things I need to be doing. My old self reaches it's long shadowy arm out from my living room back home and taps me on the shoulder.

It's time to go.

As I turn and paddle back home the sun rises fully and breaks over the hillsides. The lake lights up in biblical rapture. I sit in this moment that will be lost, all the sweeter in it's flight.

The lake will not remember me. For all my trying, I will not remember either, for someday I will give all this up and become a memory too. But forever etched in time is this moment. Unchanging. Once there was this place. Here I was.

35mm Kodak Gold 200 in a Sears KS 500 SLR.

Jordan Lee 9/8/26 Jordan Lee 9/8/26

Between Two Worlds

A very still and quiet morning on Star Lake, NY. Kodak PixPro WPZ2

The alarm wakes me up at 5:45 am.

Breathe in life.

The rain drips from pine boughs above and plonks out a metronome on the corrugated steel roof. Each metallic tock a punctuation point on a reason to stay in bed.

It's still raining.
The day is going to be overcast.
It's still dark out.
This is going to be a waste of time.

I'd made myself a promise: to push out past my comfort zone.

So I pull back sleep warmed sheets, step out into the still damp air, and feel around for the clothes I set out the night before. I hit start on the coffee maker, gently latch the front door as I sling my camera over my shoulder, and make my way dockward.

I explore the potential of puddles as I walk along the little road that leads to the switchback down to the water. The indifferent sky overhead casts the world in a muddy monotone of blue grey and grey blue.

The path down to the lake is carpeted in tan pine needles. They spice the air with their scent as they crunch beneath my morning shod feet. Through a widow in the trees ahead I can see the water reflecting in the faint grey light. It is blanketed by a wispy fog that is blowing steadily westward.

Fleeting.

Already the fog is lifting and with it goes the last traces of sleep that cloud my head. My pace quickens. The fog is lifting rapidly and there is still a ways to go before I'm out on the water.

Heron-legged, I insinuate myself from the dock into the rocking kayak. I do a knobby kneed dance trying to keep the boat still in the water, get myself in the boat, and my camera in the boat and not in the water.

Paddling backwards into a three point turn, I wonder if that is a water droplet tickling my leg hairs like a spider.

As I straighten out my boat in the water I catch my first photograph.

I am caught between two worlds. Facing west the sun is at my back and the landscape before me is a pastel drawing. The fog moves like torn gauze, wrapping itself around the houses tucked away into the hillsides along the shore.

First few images are with my waterproof Kodak PixPro WPZ2 since I had nervously wrapped up my vintage SLR in a plastic zip lock bag. 6:11 am according to the timestamp.

Over my shoulder the sun has yet to rise from the east. It doesn't arrive with a pinkening but with a roaring flame, dressing the horizon with orange light and casting the dawn cloaked pine trees in shadow.

Shot with a Kodak PixPro WPZ2 at 6:04 am.

The fog retreats steadily across the lake as I chase after it. I am thinking quickly. Trying to frame the background with the shoreline. I'm learning as I go to make sure the last stroke I take with my paddle will drift my bow in the direction I want my camera to aim. Otherwise, by the time I've dropped my paddle and grabbed my camera, I have just enough time to watch my shot drift out of the frame.

I’m not into the film vs. digital debate, but in this case I think film wins out. Film grain and fog make for painterly images. I love this one. 35mm Kodak Gold 200 in a Sears KS 500 SLR.

The wind starts to pick up as I make my way out into the middle of the lake. The sun has risen all the way over the far hills and is kissing the cheeks of houses on the far shore, lighting them up like a Winslow Homer painting.

I take another picture, lower my camera, ratchet the film advance to the next frame, and it sticks.

36 exposures.

I only brought the one roll of film. An hour hasn't passed since I got in the boat.

I paddle around for another hour taking pictures with my little digital camera. In my race to capture the sunrise I realize I'm so busy recording everything that I'm not actually paying attention. I don't want this to be something I remember looking through a camera at. I want to remember it with my skin.

The feeling of the sun warming my face. The ripe peach glow it makes behind my eyelids as I close my eyes, set down my paddle, and let the wind carry me.

The last frame I shot before setting down my paddle and drifting for a while. Kodak PixPro WPZ2

I think those are the photographs that mean the most to me from this trip. The ones I chose not to take. They live only inside me. The sound of the morning water lapping at my hull. The breeze as it caresses my temples. The feeling of being exactly where I wanted to be, and a touch of melancholy knowing that soon I will open my eyes and paddle back to the shore.

Jordan Lee 9/3/26 Jordan Lee 9/3/26

Holding Loosely

Star Lake, NY. I’ve photographed this house many times. Never really getting what I wanted. I was aiming for a retro camp vibe. 35mm ORWO Wolfen NC 500 on a Sears KS 500 SLR.

I've been thinking a lot lately around this idea of holding things loosely.

I tend to grip everything in my life with a white knuckled intensity. I don't want to fuck up. I want to enjoy it right. I want to explain it properly. I want to get out of it what I wanted to get out of it. I want to control the outcome. That's how this trip started out. For the first few days I couldn't get in step with being on vacation. I felt restless. I took my camera with me wherever I went. I spent a lot of time squinting though my viewfinder and shaking my head. Nothing looked the way I wanted it to. I felt like I wasn't vacationing right.

Wanakena, NY. 35mm ORWO Wolfen NC 500 on a vintage Sears KS 500 SLR.

Thursday night was different.

We had our big communal dinner, friends and family sitting shoulder to shoulder, on a rickety screened in porch while a thunderstorm broke over our heads. The rain misted in through the mesh of the screen windows and settled on my shoulders while we ate. Something changed.

As we cleared the table the sun started to set, right as the storm clouds passed. The sky lit up pale yellow. I knew I wanted to see what it looked like down by the lake.

I'd been on a kayak for the first time in my life that morning. So I felt a little nervous sliding the boat into the water alone, like a little kid doing something I didn't get permission for.

Star Lake, NY. Little red house again. Different light. Camera: Kodak PixPro WPZ2

Paddling out onto the water I could see the sun setting just behind the hills to my right. I paddled further out into the lake to get a better look past Scott's Point. When I came around the bend the sun was lighting up the swirling remnants of the storm.

I'd found what I was looking for.

Sometimes you just have to show up and see what happens.