The Newtown Pentacle

Friday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Your humble narrator normally eschews company whilst behind the camera, as I’m not a terribly big fan of humanity – particularly these days. I enjoy the quiet and meditative nature of solo photography, and always have. Saying that, there’s a quite active Facebook group serving the Boro of Dormont, and somebody posted an invitation on said message board that they were initiating the creation of a ‘camera club’ for the town.

I laughed about going, but then decided ‘what the hell, why not.’ It was about a 20 minute walk from HQ to the meetup spot at Dormont Park, a scuttle which would involve walking up and then down about three steep hills. Stretch and strengthen, that’s the mantra.

Our Lady of the Pentacle and Moe the Dog were probably just happy to see me leaving the house and walking about the neighborhood again. I’m a lot surlier than I was before the ankle deal.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Personally, I would have chosen a different location, as parks are generally a bit too ‘safe’ to capture the sort of things I normally find myself pointing a camera at, but it wasn’t my show.

The leader of the group laid out a challenge for the day, which was ‘early spring.’ He mentioned that he was going to be shooting for macro shots of new leaves and such. There were about ten people, all friendly and nice. I made an effort to keep my mouth shut for most of the thing, as it wasn’t my ‘show.’ I’ve done plenty of ‘talking’ at shows, after all.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The ‘spring’ thing, for me, took the form of noticing all of the park equipment that was still locked up in its winter hermitage.

A few kids were throwing balls around on the baseball field, a couple of people were walking cute and fat dogs. We followed a path around the park, and your humble narrator was being quite mindful of his ankle.

The walk here was surprisingly difficult, due to all of the heavily angled pavement paths. I’m getting better, a lot better, on level ground. Angled foot steps on slopes are a different story. Time spent on exercise will fix this.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

This was a weekend day, and I also had a social engagement to attend a bit later in the afternoon. When the group headed downhill to the lowest elevation of the park, I broke off and started making my way to meeting up with Our Lady and couple of friends.

Last thing I needed to do was add another steep hill into my portfolio of pain at this point. Actually, pain is a bit of an overstatement, rather I’m feeling a pervasive soreness in the ankle and calf. Couple that with the muscular atrophy in the upper thighs…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The long scuttle I’ll be talking about next week saw me breaking a few limitations, and made the case that things are progressing in the right direction. This part of my story seems to be finally coming to an end.

I bid our host adieu, and requested to be on his mailing list for future endeavors. Saying that, ain’t all that much that you’ll find that’s worth shooting in a park.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

On my way to the social engagement, I spotted a T light rail unit leaving the local station. Man, this is so much more my deal.

Back next week with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.

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