On a harsh light day at the beginning of July, I ventured out for a photowalk on the northeast side of Hoquiam, Wash., my hometown.
My destination was the soccer pitch and baseball field behind Immanuel Baptist Church, where I would meet up with the Hoquiam River and a footpath that leads into an abandoned and wooded section of the city, on a nook of land formed by a bend in the river.
I've lived here in Hoquiam for nine years now, which is the longest I've stayed in one spot my entire adult life.
You can't, apparently, live in a place that long without piling up a few stories. Two come to mind in connection with the church, and I'll share them here because they both flesh out Hoquiam in a way that my photos don't.
Thanksgiving and Murder
The Immanuel Baptist Church annually holds a Thanksgiving dinner at the church. It's a completely free, cornucopian smorgasbord open to the community, and well attended. The one year I went there were easily 100 people gathered around folding tables in the auditorium, a group made up of both families of the church and unattached community members without a more traditional Thanksgiving to attend.
This was in 2018. I went with my best friend at the time, days after his mother was stabbed to death by his brother. He was (obviously) still in shock and scrambling to find something that would distract him and get him out of the family home where the murder occurred.
The community meal fit the bill, as well as anything could at a time like that. We were able to be with people and at the same time go mostly unnoticed in the crowd and its hubbub. The large spread on offer was something he could appreciate, even at the time, as a professed foodie. I think for a few moments he was able to forget about what had just happened.
My Homeless Girl
Over the past year, the church and its grounds have taken on a new significance: it's where my sometime girlfriend and I used to go to hang out, usually in the middle of the night.
Katt is homeless, schizophrenic, and addicted to meth. She loves to go to the church at night and sit under the entrance overhang (which you can see in the first photo above). The acoustics under there amplify the music from her phone, and she can sit and watch the sky for aliens and try to decipher what the flickering and flashing lights in the hills are signaling.
Being schizophrenic and on meth can lead to some unsettling behavior. Like, for example, performing a wardrobe change in the middle of the church parking lot while they are holding youth group.
That's why we don't hang out there anymore. The church was always uncomfortable with her being there: she talks loudly about bizarre things, mostly only when others are with her but sometimes to herself, and sometimes she looks like a real bag lady. But after the wardrobe change, the church started going out of its way to tell her she couldn't be there, threatening to have her arrested for trespassing and even getting the police to cruise through in the middle of the night to ask her to leave.
I suppose I understand where the church is coming from, them not wanting kids to be exposed to strange, drug-influenced behavior. But, Katt feels safe on the property, she never does any damage to it, and she is exactly the kind of person that Jesus hung out with and ministered to. Kicking her off the property just doesn't seem very Christlike.
Before I made my way down to the river, I stopped by the landscaping near the church entrance to photograph these flowers blooming on a bush.
A bumblebee zoomed in ... just as I was zoomed in!
The footpath leading to the woods was as baked as the grass in the ballfields, and well trodden.
Like a noob, I didn't actually photograph the path in the woods. Suffice to say it is no wider there than it is leading into the woods, and in places partially closed off with blackberry bushes and other underbrush.
You can get a sense of what it's like from this shot alone.
Lovely, dark and deep, as the poet says.
The vegetation has overtaken the remains of old Hoquiam.
Deeper in, there are more bits of concrete foundation and a broad paved area that might have been a parking lot, with small trees growing up through it. I asked my retired friend Ed what used to be in there, and the best answer he could give is some kind of rendering plant (presumably for fish). It's apparently been abandoned for awhile: Ed said it was even when he was a kid, and "kind of scary to go back there."
This monitoring well probably explains why the path is kept open.
It looks like a good year for blackberries; there were blossoms all over.
Incidentally, in the three weeks since I took these photos, the blossoms around town have already turned into green berries.
After a distance of four or five city blocks, the river bends west back toward downtown. I broke through the underbrush to the upper bank just after the bend and popped a squat on this log...
...which afforded a somewhat novel view of Riverside Bridge.
It was a lovely day for boating.
After the boat cleared the river, a flock of geese swam upriver and into the shadow of the bank on the far side. I switched from my 18-55mm zoom lens to my 75-300mm to photograph them.
An outlier kept an eye on me while I did.
The 75-300mm lens is new to me. I've only had it a couple months, and I'm still learning how to use it. When it is extended to 300mm, the weight is all on the front end, which makes it difficult to hold still. And at that magnification, every bit of motion is also magnified, so I'm finding it a challenge to take clear photos. Of the 25 photos I took of the geese, only a few turned out with them in any kind of focus.
I experimented with using my camera's pop out, tiltable LCD display, instead of the viewfinder, while sitting on the end of the log and propping the camera on my knees. It made for some interesting framing, like in that last photo above.
After pausing in the shadow, the flock continued upriver, past the bend and out of sight.
The watcher was the last to go. In this final shot it looks like it is checking the shadow to make sure no one was left behind.
There's lots to learn with the new perspective 75-300mm creates. Starting at 75mm forces one to 'stand' farther into the scene in landscape photography, and it also makes objects at a distance figure more prominently in the composition.
The new possibilities are exciting though. I could not have captured the view below of the riverbank behind the Timberland Bank offices (the brown building) at 55mm. The riverbank there is one block from my apartment, and it's my favorite spot to sit and have coffee. It's pretty cool to be able to have (and share) a look at it from this angle.
I also played around with the bokeh capabilities of the new lens.
Back in the woods, I found I could focus on elements of the forest farther off the path, like these berries dappling the leaves with their shadow.
I've photographed this area behind the church and in the woods on a few occasions over the past five years, and I've never before found a satisfactory angle for a photo of the river from the bank behind the church.
With the new lens at 135mm, I was able to 'get out in the river' for this final shot, which shows the second-to-last bend of the main stem Hoquiam River, less than a mile before it forks into tributaries at the northern city limits.
I'm not sure I've even noticed that tree hanging over the water before.
I'm satisfied. And eager for more.
