Changing Seasons: My Last Spring

"I hate that sadness in your eyes,
But Angie, Angie,
Ain't it time we said goodbye?"

My headphones echoed as I sat on a wooden bench bequeathed by some wealthy couple in hopes of getting their underachieving offspring accepted to college. Focusing the lens on the edge of the tongue, I took a second look through the viewfinder and tossed my dirty white buck in the air.

The shutter of my camera thwaapped like an automatic Nerf gun as the buck hung for an instant, suspended a few feet above the recently exposed grass and then awkwardly flopped back down. What started as a means to pass time seven seasons ago, grew and evolved into a defining part of my life. At first, I waited to tell my friends and family of my new crush, deliberating until the spark caught and I knew it wasn't another one of my many short lived and often unrealistic excitements.

Something was different. Maybe I was mature enough to stay committed for more than a few weeks, or maybe I had found something that fit my intense and stubborn personality. Telling myself it was both, I dove in like an eight year old into Karate classes, hoping that one day I too could chop bricks in half and wear a black belt.

As the seasons marched on, I muscled through the slow and enjoyed the best, leaving my aspirations of business school and board meetings behind like a beleaguering ex-girlfriend. Motivated by a new passion that fueled my curiosity and confident in the success of my new experiences, I started acting on more impulses and seized opportunities with the disregard of a love-struck teenager.

Before I knew it, a few coincidental activities became routine and I was captivated by something that I never knew existed a year before. I enjoyed the security of finding strength in something created by passion and creativity, yet available to only a few.

As the situational end of my relationship with Maine and the free time necessary to work on photography and write for my blog marched forward two posts a week at a time, I slowly started to realize how fortunate I am to have had them. Like with any tasty beverage, I didn't realize how good it was until the last sip.

I waited and rationalized like the inevitable end to a serious relationship. "Tomorrow the sky will be brighter and the grass greener," I told myself a few dozen times after the last hope of winter died early in March. Finally, on Tuesday, I packed a lone British Walker White buck in size 13 into my pack along with my Canon 5d Mark II and biked to school. Sitting by myself on the wooden bench, turned on Angie by the Rolling Stones and pulled out my camera.

"Come on baby dry your eyes
But Angie, Angie,
Ain't it good to be alive?"

Here are some more links,
Changing Seasons (Picasa),
Changing Seasons (ART).

Colors of Granada

Spanish colonialists first settled on the northern shore of Lake Nicaragua in 1524. Over the last 500 years, the town of Granada has changed little, with many of the area's early buildings still defining the skyline. Despite catering to a new economy, Chaco-wearing tourists with zip-off cargo pants and Teva bucket hats, some buildings are still made of adobe, and horse drawn carriages still carry food and produce around the rough streets. A few weeks back, I visited Granada not as an early colonialist or missionary but as a sunburned and gluttonous gringo fresh off a week of surfing.

Windows boarded up during the heat of the day.

Lacking apparent rhyme or reason, each house has its own color combination and the sidewalks change like in the Billie Jean music video. As I walked around the streets of Granada, the juxtaposition between humble materials and construction and cheerful colors caught my eye like drunk hippies at a music festival.

Brick, dirt, adobe, cement, rock, wood, and some turquoise paint.

Sidewalk meeting the wall of a house.

Out of necessity and abiding to no apparent codes, power lines and regulators dotted the walls like a single scar on an old, weathered face, marking each individual homestead.

An old Nicaraguan woman talking with her neighbors.

One eye open.

Hardwood, handmade doors.

Without looking cartoonish or belonging in a soon to be bankrupt suburb of Las Vegas, the vibrant colors made me smile. It looked like a group of mischievous boys had bashed a wall here and there with a sledge hammer and painted a square patch on a white wall just to prove they could. It didn't feel contrived or thought-out because it wasn't, that's why it's beautiful.

Here are some more links,
Granada (Picasa),
Nicaragua (ART),
Doors (ART).

Food from Nicaragua

"Me gusta el plato de frutas y una Tona por favor," I gingerly said hoping my ear-to-ear smile would mask my butchered verb conjugations and gringo accent. Standing behind the wooden bar wiping the top down with a rag, the mid-thirties Nica women giggled, "....y uno grande agua?"

"Si si," I stammered, sitting shirtless and dripping salt water on a stationary stool made out of a tree trunk. I rubbed the two raw marks on my ribs from constant rubbing from the surf board and waited as the cook handed me a cold can of beer and a water. Swimming after waves for five hours a day like a dog chasing sticks works up an appetite, and for a week and a half, I indulged in the food area.

Classic Nicaraguan breakfast; Two Eggs, Pico De Gallo, Rice and Beans.

Five minutes and a few glasses of fresh squeezed orange juice later.

For breakfast, lunch and dinner, a trio of three Nica women in this kitchen whipped up some of the most delicious meals I have ever had.

For dinner, I ate fish: fried fish, grilled fish, fish fillets, and entire fish.
Huachinango (Red Snapper).

The fridge.

Breakfast of champions.

Refueled.

Chris enjoying his breakfast after a two hour morning session.

Chorizo, rice and beans, tortillas, and two fried eggs.

I had plenty of second breakfasts.

Reward..

Anticipation..

Huff and Puff cooling; discussed by few, but known by many overzealous pizza eaters.

Food does not have to be complicated to taste good. Instead of relying on complicated recipes and presentation, the cooks in Nicaragua used quality ingredients and compassion to make their food. I like simple things.

Here are some more links,
Food form Nicaragua (Picasa),
Food (ART).

My Time Nicaragua

I woke up before the alarm went off. Twice. Excited by the prospect of leaving Maine and my desperately small college behind in search of waves and 70 degree nights on the Nicaraguan coast, I forgot to brush my teeth as I grabbed my backpack and checked for the essentials: passport, wallet and camera. Like an overexcited 11 year old coming home from his first sleepover, I fell asleep in the passenger seat of Dan's Highlander somewhere north of Portland on our drive towards Logan Airport. Just in case our excitement hadn't fully manifested in my near sleepless night filled with fantasies of playing in the surf and eating fish, we arrived at the airport four hours early.

Traveling with only our backpacks and boards, we passed through customs in Managua without a question about our destination or return flight. After a two and a half hour cab ride on dirt roads through Nicaraguan pastures and farmland, we got our first glimpse of the arid shoreline and heard the first clap of swell rolling in across the Pacific. For the next week and a half, two of my closest friends (my sixth-grade locker partner Will and my college roommate Dan) and I played like lost boys.

Disconnected from computers, cell phones, and work, we wandered the beaches of Nicaragua. At high tide we surfed. During the heat of the day we hid in hammocks in the shade. When our restlessness got the better of us, we scrambled to the thundering waves of the sea across the beach's sweltering sand only to return to the protection of our hammocks after force-filtering a few gallons of salt water through our sinuses. Hundreds of miles away from the nearest umbrella-protected drink, we ate our fill of fish and beans and rice. We talked with Ex-pats and Euros over the cheap national beer about books, life and waves as stars rose, uninfected by light pollution.

Cows roamed the beaches, running from whitewater and picking at pieces of washed-up debris in search of food.

To quote Johnny Utah, "Nice Point break. Long Workable Rides."

Dan watching the waves close out at high tide.

The trustful watchdog.

Some deceased mollusk.

Will points to a set of waves pitching upwards like frost heaves on a New England country road.

Twenty years of civil wars and numerous campaigns for land reform left the coast line peppered with vacant houses and undeveloped stretches of land. For better or worse, the turbulent political and economic climate in Nicaragua has kept development of the coastline to a bare minimum.

In the distance white spray marks the peeling of waves on the reef.

A Nica line fisherman.

Our arrows in their quiver.

Two lost boys walking down the beach towards a reef break.

My hair got lighter and my skin darkened as the salt, sand and sun penetrated everything I had. Adhering to the, "No News is Good news" ethos, I went incommunicado.

Barefoot, we ran down the beaches excited by the sound of waves and motivated by the heat of the sand.

A horse at sunset.

As the sun set, Will and I walked out on a point to watch waves crash in. Scrambling around tidepools we edged our way farther out on the rocks. In the distance, Dan hooted as he dropped in on a waist-high wave.

"I caught my first tube today, sir" Will yelled back at Dan as he bent over and fingered a flat stone out of a crack. With a deft flick of the wrist, he skipped the stone across the tide pool towards the sinking sun. I was on vacation.

Here are some more links,
Right By the Beach (Picasa),
Lost Boys on the Beach of Nicaragua (Picasa).