End of the Beginning

America seems to be welcoming me back with particular fervor. Yesterday morning I went kayaking on the Shenandoah River, something that I plan to do every other day or as often as I can for exercise. I saw two bald eagles, one with full plumage and the other with brown immature feathers, shrieking and whistling at each other in a treetop. They must have been two males vying for territory, because I couldn't see any food between them. Two competing males is a very good sign for the species in this area.

Since I've gotten home I've been really lazy. The two productive activities I've actually paid attention to are chopping cherry wood for the winter and picking blackberries in our backyard. Other than that I've filled up my days with Age of Empires III ("le scent de la mort et la bruit des fusils") and the HBO TV series True Blood. I've been scouting around online for graduate school options through the Peace Corps, and I'm getting frustrated because although they specifically mention a degree in photography on the Peace Corps website, the closest actual program to a Visual Arts degree that I've found is Arizona State's Arts Education degree. I'll probably still do overseas volunteer work even if the Peace Corps can't help me with grad school.

Last night my father and I went to see Warren's play Up the Down Staircase, about a new teacher trying to make children care about education in an overcrowded and dilapidated New York public school. The play had the wrong mix of comic relief and grave issues; things like a girl's attempted suicide seemed really out of place for a comedy, yet the characters seemed to be built just a touch too much on high school stereotypes for it to be a serious drama. Not to brag on my own brother too much, but Warren was really the best part of the whole thing. As the Jim Stark/Stanley Kowalski character, he seemed like the only truly self-aware student in the whole school and was really effective in showing the sexual tension between him and the young heroine Ms. Barrett.

I'm thinking of beginning a new blog, simply because my time in Europe is over and I should draw this one to a close, leaving it as one complete work. So far I've only decided that the web address will be erichcampbell.blogspot.com. It should be up and ready by the first weekend in August. I want to thank everyone who's shown an interest in my travels, photos, stories, observations, musings, and rants over the past half-year. Hope to see y'all again in the future.

FIN

Odyssey (4/4)

This night and the ensuing day really made me fulfilled in my status as a world traveler. I crossed the territory of seven countries and an ocean in a period of fourteen hours, and, looking back, the whole time I took it in stride. The most stressful moments of the whole affair were when I was still at Charles de Gaulle waiting to see if Scandinavian Airlines would accept my e-ticket.

I killed some time at CDG by writing the BOOM! post, then asked some girls from New York to watch my stuff and walked around to find the SAS desk. I went to sleep on the floor at around 1 and woke up again at four. As I trudged to the bathroom I noticed the rope lines for SAS were up, so I got my bags and stolidly sat down in front of the desk to wait.

No one else showed up until just before five. One guy came to stand beside me, then two girls, then a whole bunch of people started queuing up to my right. Five o’clock came and Lufthansa and TAP Portugal started operating their ticket desks, but no one came to SAS. At five twenty a bunch of those waiting next to me started leaving, and I almost did too to see what they knew that I didn’t, but then they started lining up again, this time behind me. I love the feeling that you were right and Everyone Else was wrong.

Scandinavians are never late, nor are they early; they arrive exactly when they mean to. Finally, at five forty, the SAS desk finally opened. The man at the counter simply asked for my passport and handed me my boarding pass. My luggage was marked heavy, but I wasn’t charged extra for it. Happily, I mounted the space-age moving ramp to the second floor to find my gate.

French security was annoying. I asked to have my film inspected visually so as to spare it a further risk of radiation, but they still put it through the machine. Apparently films under 1200 ISO can be used to smuggle explosives, but over 1200 are perfectly safe. They also confiscated my tiny Swiss Army knife on my keychain.

I was unconscious for most of the flight from Paris to Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Airport is like one gigantic mall, duty free shops everywhere I picked up some Danish alcohol and Swedish chocolate for my family, and got change for my euros in pretty silver kroner coins. I forewent getting food for myself, because I knew they’d serve lunch on the plane for free.

The transoceanic SAS plane was really nice. Each seat had a screen in the back that was continually playing fifteen different movies at once through the whole flight. I had time to watch Monsters vs. Aliens, Dragonball Evolution, Duplicity, Batman Begins, and part of Chicago. And I played two long games of Tetris. And I wrote the third blog post. The food was good, almost as well-prepared as the food on British Airways.

Finally we touched down at Dulles. The line moved pretty quickly through Customs. I got flagged because I was carrying a small bouquet of lavender and sent to a nearby inspection area. My assigned inspector was a very courteous Latina woman, not at all like the Parisian guards who treated me like a dangerous criminal. After x-raying my luggage, she told me I could keep the herbs. I couldn’t believe it, the system actually works! Must be a relic from the days before 9/11 and Bush.

I walked out of the gate and into the arms of my mother and my brother.

My father actually took a flight back early from his conference in San Diego, hoping to meet me in the airport, but since it was later than mine, he surprised us by showing up at home.

That evening we had hamburgers and corn on the cob.

Slept thirteen hours, and now I’m here.

Curiously Well-Timed Catastrophe (3/4)

I took the metro to Gare du Nord and then the Transilien out to Enghien-les-Bains, the town next to Montmorency. Marlène picked me up at about 8.

We picked up some baguettes and had breakfast at the house with Jean-Jacques. Warm brioche with thick honey; for one day I got to eat like a prince again, a very welcome change after Thérèse had us eating everything either canned or generic-brand. Jean-Jacques suggested I rest and take a shower before going into Paris to photograph the Bastille Day crowds.

After an exquisite lunch of Basque chicken with peppers, I went back to Gare du Nord, then Châtelet and the Champs-Elysees. I shopped for presents for my family at the Virgin Megastore, and then attempted to use up my last roll of color slide film.

I tried to balance my mini-tripod on two metal crowd barriers to shoot the Arc de Triomphe.

And the camera fell and the lens broke.

I would have flipped out right there if the situation hadn’t had the potential to be many, many times worse. I’ve finished my documentary, so I don’t need my film camera anymore at the moment, and conceivably won’t until I after I graduate. Also, the piece of the lens that broke is one of the plastic rings that joins it to the camera body, while the optics seem fine. It’s a relatively rare and prized model of Nikon 58 mm, so I’ll probably try to get the part replaced instead of buying a new one.

One more objective for the summer. Man, I need to find some way to make money, for the lens repair and the strategy games I want to buy. I’ll look for the usual opportunities to sell photos. My best chance will be to market to the rich landowner idiots we have in Clarke County, but it’s difficult to get them to buy any art that doesn’t feature horses or foxhounds. Oh well, I’ll figure something out.

I returned to Montmorency to inspect the lens further and to rearrange my stuff for the trip. I reduced all of my stuff to my giant suitcase, my large backpack, and my medium backpack.

We had a light but heavenly dinner of tabouli and sausages, and then drove to the airport at 10:15. We said a brief goodbye and then I headed into the airport to find a spot on the floor.

Farewell to the Alps (2/4)

For a while I thought that this would be my last summer spent outdoors in the sunshine in the company of others my own age (relatively), with no real worries other than the restrictions placed on us by the governing organization. Then I reflected that, if I’ve learned anything from Maia Dery, growing up doesn’t mean you have to become boring. Consider a year from now: I’ll have graduated from Guilford (God willing), and it’s very possible that I’ll be living in a tent again somewhere in the Andes with OxFam or the Peace Corps or UNICEF. That’s if I’m not still traveling with my family in Ireland on the trip we’ve been planning for the past two years.

This month has further sharpened my focus for what I want to do with my life; it’s shown me that no matter what kind of photographer I become, whether I’m shooting eagles in Tanzania for National Geographic or supermodels in the midst of Indian ruins for Maxim, I don’t want to give up being close to nature.

We actually got the goats on Saturday, six nannies and one kid. They’re pretty skittish around people. I think their smell alone, that pleasant earthy barnyard stink, helps to lend the fort more of an eighteenth-century feel. Sarah tried to convince Thérèse to accept the donkey that the city was offering as well, but she wouldn’t listen.

For my last day, Thérèse assigned me to the welcome desk at the Château. It was boring just sitting there, and I had to bite my tongue when tourists asked whether there was anything more than “just stones” inside the fort, but I was relieved after lunch. It was the windiest day we’ve had so far, and the long entranceway created a giant wind tunnel, so that I had to weigh down the papers on the desk with rocks and listen to the constant rattle of sheets of paper whipping back and forth. And it was cold!

After lunch, for a lack of direction, we didn’t really do much of anything. I got some shots of the goats. Thérèse gave me the keys to St. Blaise and let me catch the bus back an hour early so that I’d have time to pack. For dinner I slurped a bowl of leftover soup and made myself a mushroom sandwich to eat on the train. A new kid, Ken, arrived before the others and I showed him my vacated place in the tent. Thérèse had my passport and ticket locked upstairs in a box with the others’ valuables, so as the minutes ticked by and she still wasn’t back from the Château, I began to get stressed. After a couple of tense phone exchanges, she called a taxi to take me to the station. When she got back she calmly walked upstairs and handed me my documents. The taxi arrived a minute later and as I got in everyone turned out to wish me goodbye. The driver drove like a madman to the station and got me there twenty minutes early.

As the train wound down through Argentière and Mont-Dauphin, the mountain peaks were lit a brilliant shade of rose by the setting sun.

The rest of the train ride was better than others I’ve taken. Didn’t pay attention to the time, so I don’t know exactly how much sleep I got. Sometime around two we passed through a massive thunderstorm; I wondered if I was dreaming when I saw the lightning flashes.

At 6:35 we pulled into Gare Austerlitz in Paris under a sky gray with the sunrise.

BOOM! (1/4)

All that I’ve had to endure during this camp, Thérèse’s craziness, Elias’ immaturity, Yann’s complaining, the way Mathieu grinds his teeth in his sleep in the tent...

All that was worth it for today.

After posting at the Spirit I started walking up the mountain to the Fort des Sallettes. As soon as I exited the east gate of the city I saw six of the Régiment du Passé standing around the old guards’ quarters. Although the event didn’t start for another hour, I wanted to get a good viewpoint of the soldiers as they filed up the path to the fort. I got to the fort at 2:45, the soldiers marched up the path and promptly locked themselves inside the fort at three. The crowd of tourists that had followed them up were left with me standing outside wondering what was going to happen next.

Finally at 3:40 three tour guides showed up, organized the tourists into groups, and the fort was opened. All the tourists filed into the courtyard, but the guides said nothing.

Musket barrels poked out of the inward-facing gun slits of the fort’s lower firing gallery.

And then they fired, one after the other. And whatever sound effects you’ve heard used for musket fire in the movies is fake; muskets are LOUD. You can feel the impact of the sound against your body, and if more than two fire in quick succession your ears ring. I can’t even imagine how loud a full-scale battle must have been.

After that the three groups of tourists separated to take different routes through the fort, but I hung around the courtyard to watch the “cadets” of the Régiment go through marching drills. Most of them were younger than me, probably around 17. And that made me think, how many soldiers in all the wars of history were 17? The enlistment age for the Romans was 15, and I don’t even think medieval armies cared about age as long as you could wield something sharp. Even in the eighteenth century alone, how many boys exactly like these were being taught to march in time and fire muskets, only to have themselves blown apart in battles like Yorktown and Assaye? The thought was kind of eerie for me.

I thought I was going to be the only photographer there, but the Régiment had their own, dressed exactly as they were. Out of mutual respect, we tried to keep out of each other’s way while shooting the other soldiers. His girlfriend was there too, and she looked damn hot in a bodice. But as has been iterated countless times in Yachting circles, most girls look good in a bodice. Later, while everyone else was busy I glimpsed to two of them having a photo shoot by themselves in the Upper Gallery.

I think he’s the French me.

I sat in on one of the lectures given by one of the senior officers on the history of the regiment they were playing. It was formed in 1735 as a Scots regiment when the French tried to invade England via Scotland and reinstate the Stewart dynasty. After the campaign failed, the Scotsmen were relocated to Briançon. I noticed then that all the soldiers were wearing fresh-picked thistles in their tricorns.

The officer went on to explain how the troops learned all the steps of firing a musket by constant drills, so that in battle they never had to think about what they were doing. After another soldier demonstrated the fourteen movements involved in drawing the ramrod and placing the cartridge, the officer explained that a good soldier could repeat the sequence in twenty seconds, and an expert veteran in ten. Y’all remember how when we learned American history back in elementary school we were taught to be impressed that the colonial Minutemen could fire one shot every sixty seconds? No wonder we only beat the British once the French got involved.

I was also reminded of an idea I had discussed earlier with Niels when he remarked that the Fort des Sallettes would make a cool CounterStrike map. How come almost all the shooter games we have now are set in WWII or later? Wouldn’t it be cool to have an eighteenth-, or early nineteenth-, century first person shooter? Being only able to fire once every fifteen or so seconds with a musket, taking longer to reload with a far more accurate Baker rifle, or having the choice to charge blindly with a rapier, would dramatically change the FPS tactics involved. Or, knowing the impatience of the average 13-year-old gamer, maybe it would just result in everyone chasing each other with swords and bayonets.

This day was the perfect crowning touch to my month in the Alps.

Day of Anachronism (4/4)

As I type this post I'm sitting in the Spirit Bar in the Old City, which is owned by two English expatriates and is where I've been coming to post via their WiFi.

Last night Thérèse announced that the Régiment du Passé (Regiment of the Past) would be conducting a simulation of an eighteenth-century battle at the Fort des Sallettes today. It's not really a reinactment, because none of Briançon's forts were attacked until the Second World War, so it's really just a very elaborate cosplay session. But don't tell the soldiers that. This cosplay is serious business.

This morning, even though we had the choice to sleep in, I got up early as usual and walked to the grocery store, only to find that the photography boutique was closed. So I won't be able to include the soldiers in my documentary for lack of film. On the other hand, their film was horrifyingly expensive, and this way I'll be able to pay more attention with my digital camera in hand.

My next post will probably be made from home, unless I really feel like paying for an Internet cafe in Paris. I can’t believe it’s been five and a half months already. Europe was fantastic, but it will be good to get back to America.

For a little while, that is. I’ve only a year left at Guilford.

After that, who knows?

Documentary’s End (3/4)

So I finally ran outta film for my photo documentary on the Club. I have ten rolls, with 348 exposures in all. Good news is that I finally have pictures for y’all now that I’m shooting digital again. Now the real exercise will be choosing the film shots to print once I get back to Guilford. I think I’m gonna have to put together a show this time, one because I don’t have the constraints that came with printing nudes as part of my Metamorphoses project, two because all the shooting is already complete, so it makes sense that I should introduce another production element to the project, and three because I would like to learn firsthand about finding a display space and running publicity. If nothing else, I’ll probably be able to get upstairs Founders for a gallery if I reserve it far enough in advance.

Ugh, my D40x lens is filthy. And all my lens cloths are contaminated with salt from sea spray and grease from sunscreen. I ran out of disposable lens cleaners back in Madrid, and haven’t been able to find any more. Anyone got any advice, or should I just suffer through the lens flare until I get back?

Yesterday we cut more grass, but got an unexpected break at the end of the day when Thérèse decided to give everyone an hour-and-a-half lecture on how to behave at CVM. I guess Elias, Igor, and Sylvain mucked up the guided tour that they were assigned to lead and got into an argument in front of the tourists or something like that. I felt sorry for the German girls, because I knew they hardly understood anything, and just had to sit there, whereas I, being able to honestly say that I have been a picture of docility and obedience in comparison to the other guys, was able to derive some schadenfreude from knowing that the lecture wasn’t directed at me.

I thought we were gonna have today off, but that’ll be tomorrow, when I finally get to post this blog update. Today was Cleaning Day, where we scrubbed the kitchen and the bathrooms and swept out the tents, and then everyone went up to the Fort des Sallettes. After a very light lunch, Thérèse asked all of us to divide into partners and think of games to pass the time tomorrow. Of course Wink was at the top of my list, but Thérèse will probably say it’s too dangerous once I demonstrate it. Ya see, people who worry about things like that just annoy me. Life is danger. As Mr. D told us back in eighth grade English, you can die walking down the street by tripping and hitting your head on the pavement. Scrapes heal, and as long as things don’t get REALLY dangerous, as in bones breaking, why not have fun? Maybe this is my being twenty-one talking, but I hardly think it’s right to live in perpetual fear of anything, whether it be other humans, unseen microbes, physical pain, or even your own mortality. I’m not saying that you should never fear anything, because that’s just stupid, but letting fear prevent you from living an enjoyable life is nothing less than a mental handicap.

After the hour to think up games was over, no one called us to do anything and no one had given us any directions, so my partner Alexandre and I stayed where we were and discussed movies. Alexandre told me why he thought Shaun of the Dead was the greatest film ever made, and he made a pretty good argument, too.