Lillie Park is the perfect confusing mix of a respite and a landscape that bears the scars of industry and technology. I’ve been here to photograph multiple times over the past few years, and this idea is why I come. This sort of paradox of a place is always compelling to me. This is a landscape that generally looks one way in pictures but presents another way as you stand there. It seems to change yet again when you get the narrative of how the place came about. It’s also mostly true that when considering the places I have lived, they are the only types of places left to make landscape pictures. For the most part, a truly wild or natural place is a mirage.

So, this park spans two large plots of land that encompass two ponds and a slightly larger lake. It is a reclaimed gravel pit tucked between a waste facility and highways on the southeast side of town. I can’t quite tell whether the lake (Haven Lake) that I photograph more was made from gravel mining, or the ponds on the south side of the park were, or all three. Likely all three. What is inescapable is the fact is that this landscape as it is seen is shaped the way it is because of extractive activities. These holes are here because they dug up this area to build our roads. Strangely, to be here, for myself and I would imagine most people, is to seek nature. That only ever works a little bit, but where the experience fails is just as interesting, and it’s why I keep returning.

This is all just to preface a couple of pictures and some notes I made about visiting six weeks ago.

February 18, 2025

I’m standing out here in mud soaked boots as the snow melts and the loudest sounds are the traffic from Highway 23. Even more than that, it’s the buzzing of the electric transformer hovering higher than the treetops that seem to blanket this whole space in conjunction with the fog. You can hear the ice melting from the trees, the drops hitting the forest floor, but you have to really listen because the buzzing and the road noise is a blanket, muffling everything else. I’m out on the trail at the south end of Lillie Park north. I had a bit of trepidation to pursue this path - last time I was here there was a small encampment with a dog. It’s gone now, and I wonder where the person (people?) went, and if they are okay, and if their dog is okay.

This is always a strange place to be, I almost never encounter anyone here walking. Why would I?

But I came this morning because of the fog. I think since I first started making pictures, it’s always been the fog. One year, more than a decade ago, I took a multiple trips out to Pt. Reyes in California. It’s the foggiest place in America. I’ve long wanted to get to Newfoundland, too, because a place there is even foggier. But it’s a heck of a journey to get there.

With the fog, it’s something about the way it obliterates visibility, the way it simplifies a complicated place, the way that being out in it feels quieter. The fog is also a blanket. The fog is also lifting this morning. Slowly, but it is. I’m not actually sure I will get a good picture today.

If you’re not careful, you can take too many photographs and the magic of the situation dissolves right in front of you. It can even dissolve in your take of images. You might be so taken with the atmosphere, feel so concretely that it is worth a picture that almost anything you record will reflect that. But you have to be careful that you cherish the gift that nature is giving you and you don’t try to squeeze too much out of it. I’m sure I’ve made these good situations disappear right in front of me. I might have done it today already. I was certain there was something there, but now I’m not so sure. Perhaps the most important part of going out to photograph is knowing when to walk away.

I might have failed at that on this day, but at least I got to be here.