Back to the Future

Abandoned Homestead - Glenravel Road, Ballymena.

The image that I am sharing today already appears in my Gallery. As a kid my parents would often take me out for drives in the area, visiting family and friends. But also on occasion, they'd take me to see places like the Glens of Antrim and many of the coast towns like Cushendall, Cushendun, Carnlough and Glenarm. Many of those lay on the road passing this old cottage. When I was a kid, the tree wasn't there, but over the years it has grown up and passing it today, I think it adds something special to the composition.

It's one of those 'firsts' for me. I have a few. Images or places that link me to my childhood. I don't think I had even seen a photograph of this by anyone else. I can't be the only one who has seen this surely? But as a kid it always used to catch my eye as I drove past in the back seat of my parents car.

I love the bleakness of the area and something about that old home draws me. I have returned again and again to it. On this occasion it had been snowing and I think the snow adds something special to it. To be honest, sometimes I come away and don't really have an image I am particularly happy with. But taking the time to intentionally come here, park my car on the roadside, and climb through the long grass and barbed wire fence are worth it.

I always feel the same when I come to a location. A sense of accomplishment and a sense of arrival. "I'm here now." Then I can settle in and just think about why I'm here. I can look around and ask myself if anything is different from the last time I was here? Has anything changed? But as is my practice now, I also look around and on a more recent visit, found a babbling brook on the other side of the road a couple of hundred yards back up the way I'd come.

And again, regardless of the image, it created a quiet moment for me to just observe, and I'm sitting here some 13 years later still able to recall that memory. That moment. When we create images, I believe those images imprint on us and with them are attached the memories we created way back then. I think its important to realise this because it shows that there is meaning in our everyday lives. Even in the most mundane tasks like climbing a fence or stopping at the side of a country road to photograph something that has caught our eye. Ask yourself, 'why did that catch my eye? What was it about it that interested me?' And often, its because there was something there, waiting to reveal itself to us.

P.S. I'm fascinated by the subject of Neuro-plasticity and how our minds create neural pathways. That's how habits are formed and when this all comes together it explains how an image or even a smell, can evoke memories from way back in our past. (If this interests you, I'd recommend you check out psychiatrist Curt Thompson on Youtube.)