"Blogpost the First"

   My younger brother challenged me to start a nature-walking blog with photographs for the new year, 2017. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and willow, cottonwood, and sycamore along the Los Gatos Creek Trail hold aloft their last autumn leaves in yellow. Today I hear all around me the zip zip chirree chirree of Annas hummingbirds.
   Now in my late forties, my "depressive realism" shows me that, indeed, a lot of people are having a lot more fun in more brochure-worthy surroundings than I am. Their coffee is frothier; their peaks are higher; their teeth are gleamier and their shots are crowded with smiling family, partners, friends and other people wearing better sweaters and seemingly all really excited about something. A lot of my shots frame a leaf or a bird or a tree, sometimes a stone: A good majority are unpeopled.

Many of my walks are humble, close to home routes taken and retaken. If I can place myself within these walks in the moment, then they always reveal new things both within and around me.
   I am able to join myself in this walk looking down at the Los Gatos Creek at coots and mallards and screens of treetops without the pain of those I believe to be missing. Who should walk beside me? Who in my life would enjoy this walk and with whom am I anxious to share these paths? These are the types of distracting thoughts which beset me in my thirties. They would take me out of place and make even the now feel like lost experience. Many trees are stripped down to the bones fragmenting the clear sky.

 I think of calling a few friends back because I will be doing that more often this year. We all need other people; to fight this need is to fight one's own nature. I need the clamor of others. Merry-go-rounds have just never been a solitary activity. One boy stands dead center in the circle trying not to move or stumble and surrounded by laughing and shouting assorted children.

You can try to ride it alone, but it is cumbersome, too tiring. One has to perform too many roles. You hear the grinding of the gears. My year has ended untidily with lots of smears, blurs, and things as yet unreached. My days have turned up unsuitable for the sonnet but I can still sing my song.