Dutch Power! (reposted from darkcreekfarm.com/blog)

Dani and I were trucking along today and about the 6 kilometre mark after leaving our hostel in Salceda a couple of Dutch guys slowed down and insisted in taking a turn in pushing Dad. For a couple of kilometres they stuck with us, chatting away and helping us on all but the steepest of downhills.

Then, it was better for us to hook up our patented “D-brake” system, with Dani behind and connected to the wheelchair with the laundry line and me hanging on to the handles of the chair. As soon as we hit level ground again, though, the fellow from the Netherlands (I can’t believe that throughout the entire time we spent together nobody mentioned names!!!) took over again and kept pushing.

We made excellent time and found out about a documentary film called “I’ll Push You” https://youtu.be/W7gKD3q0-V0 about two friends, one in a wheelchair, who do the Camino together. Turns out one of the Dutch brothers is a Camino-phile. This trip along the French Way is his fourth, his seventh Camino in total. In 2013 he happened to see the guys on their wheelchair trip, stopped and took a photo. Then, recently, he saw their documentary film and (I think) watched it with his brother. And, when the brothers saw us, they immediately wanted to stop and help.

It was pretty cool to hear their stories and share a bit of the journey with them. One of the things we have really missed in our journey so far was the camaraderie so many pilgrims speak of. Our Camino family has been limited to the three of us as moved so much slower than everyone else. Now, though, people don’t pass us nearly so quickly and when they do, it doesn’t throw them off schedule too much to walk with us for a short while and have a chat.

After a couple of kilometres it was time for us to stop for lunch, which was lovely in the warmth of a late autumn afternoon.

The Dutch brothersa continued on their way and then Dani, Dad and I finished up the day here in O Pedrouzo. As soon as I get somewhere where I can stream video, I’ll have to watch “I’ll Push You.” From the trailer, though, it makes our little jaunt look pretty cruisy!

Q is for Query Letters

It’s been a while since I wrote a good old-fashioned query letter. But here I am in Paris and it seems a bit silly not to take advantage of my time here. I’ve been wanting to write a few more travel articles (it’s been a while since I last published any travel pieces) and what better place to find some inspiration than right here?

I love graffiti and have seen quite a selection since our arrival. Plenty of people have been having fun with the zillions of political posters that are plastered everywhere… I like travel articles with unusual visual elements (so, for example, no Eiffel Tower shots, my last post notwithstanding…) so perhaps an article featuring some of the finest graffiti in Paris might be cool.

I’ve also seen some beautiful crumbling things…

Maybe I should shoot a photo essay about Paris and her quiet corners, the places where her beauty is fading (aging gracefully, depending on one’s perspective).

I’ve been doing a lot of people-watching from our apartment window… that’s a long and venerable tradition here. Perhaps a personal essay about why watching people is so utterly fascinating? I’ve started a list of ideas for articles. Query letters are on my to-do list for later this week. Stay tuned. I can only hope that the acceptance-to-rejection-ratio is a bit better than when I first began as a freelancer all those decades ago.

I’ve started a list of ideas for articles. Query letters are on my to-do list for later this week. Stay tuned. I can only hope that the acceptance-to-rejection-ratio is a bit better than when I first began as a freelancer all those decades ago. Earlier this year when I was going through all my papers as I prepared for my move to the mountains, I came across stacks of carefully saved query letters for publications all over the world. I was enthusiastic and optimistic as a youngster, that’s for sure! Right alongside my lists of potential markets for a gazillion stories, articles, and poems were stacks of rejection letters. Some were generic photocopied ‘thanks, but no thanks’ replies. Others had personal notes scribbled alongside the generic message (those were very encouraging, even when the editors were also saying, ‘thanks, but no thanks.’) In the mix were the occasional acceptance letters or requests for subjects slightly different to those I had suggested. Occasionally, there were even cheque stubs! Oh, how well I remember the sheer delight I felt when I first started receiving payment for my efforts! There are also clippings of early articles, but those are outnumbered perhaps 20:1 by the rejections. The odds were even worse for poetry but a bit better when it came to articles. Travel writing was somewhere in the middle.

 

The staircase up to our flat in Paris. No elevator in this old building.

 

Things have changed, of course. One doesn’t need SASEs any more (many submissions are done online) and, of course, the creation of images has changed dramatically since the days when film (and film processing) was expensive and one thought long and hard about every shot one took. And then, of course, you had no idea whether the exposure was decent or the image sharp or, heaven forbid, something happened in the film processing and your entire set of precious photos were ruined. Not that things can’t go wrong in the digital age, but there are ways to mitigate loss through compulsively backing stuff up. And, of course, you can have a peek and immediately see whether or not you have captured something useable, which is all the more likely because for better or for worse, there really isn’t an upper limit on how many photos you can take.

 

The railing outside my bedroom window.

 

The sun is coming out after a rainy morning here in Paris, so off I go to see what stories I might unearth!

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