Footprints [explored]

We all make footprints in life. Both physically and metaphorically. Sometimes those footprints last for a lifetime, and sometimes they get wiped away by the next strong breeze.

 

I want to dedicate this picture to my wonderful and amazing younger daughter. She's now 16 and entering the stage in life where she gets to choose her own path and take steps independently. It is hellishly hard as a parent to let go and let her walk alone, not knowing where those steps might lead, or what unknown terrors or wonders lurk behind the next sand dune. I'd like my most lasting footprints to be not mine at all, but hers (and her sister's). It doesn't matter at all to me how big, or how small, those prints are. Only that they are hers, of her own choosing, not feeling as if she is forced to follow anyone else's path. And I hope more than anything that they may lead to more joy than sadness along the way.

 

Teenage life in the 21st century is way more difficult than I think mine was, and I didn't think mine was easy at all. The competition is much tougher, the pressure seems higher, the outside influences are unquestionably more constant and more magnetic. At that age it's almost impossible to see life as anything but a straight line competition, first to this or that achievement, fastest to that milestone or another. The pressure to excel, to stand out and to achieve success seems overwhelming. Only once we get older do we realize that life's path is *never* straight, and that what looks like the top of the hill from one's younger perspective, turns out to be just one shifting sand dune among thousands. With the benefit of hindsight we see there was no "best" or "fastest" path. Each one of has to slog through their own quicksand at one point or another and ultimately find our own measure of success. Hopefully we find out along the way which of the multitude of hills has meaning to us. And we discover that the things that end up imprinted on our mental film turn out largely to have nothing to do with achievement and accomplishment, but rather who we met and what songs we sang together along the way, and how we responded when the going got tough.

 

I enjoy photos and captions that have multiple levels of meaning, and this one has a whole other level of meaning to me as well. The lone figure at the top of the dune is my esteemed friend and fellow photographer Kevin Benedict. We had walked together in to Mesquite Dunes in Death Valley National Park, and were hoping for a spectacular sunrise. As you can tell by the clouds above, that looked increasingly unlikely, but there was still a hope that the sun would break below and light all this cloud cover up in a glorious sheet of fire. Kevin had determinedly picked out his spot and had a vision for that sunrise shot over the dunes. I didn't want to just copy Kevin's vision, and I also had some teleconference with colleagues in Europe and China to deal with and didn't want to annoy Kevin with the chatter so I decided to walk off on my own and find something else to shoot. So the footprints are mine and as I turned around to take a look at the sky I saw the surreal cloud texture along with the sand texture and the line of fresh prints and decided that was kind of cool so I took the shot not thinking too much of it. Of course, the sunrise did not pan out as hoped (or I would probably have posted some other big sunrise-over-dunes shot), and the conference call kinda got in the way of my ability to get more shots.

 

EDIT: I originally posted a monochrome version of the shot, but then decided I liked the color version better so I swapped it out.

Done