Early in March of this year, my uncle was involved in a collision with a cement truck. His car had crossed over into oncoming traffic. The truck driver did everything in his power to avoid the collision, to no avail. My uncle died on impact.
My uncle led a troubled and troubling life. His mental and physical health were fragile entities and he struggled mightily along the way with drugs, alcohol and with what I would consider an ongoing addiction to fundamentalist Christianity. All of these things made it very difficult at various times to spend time with my uncle and as with most of life, if we can avoid unpleasantness, most of us usually do, especially when young.
It had been easier lately. He had had a few setbacks that seemed to have made him more philosophical about life and less prone to hellfire and brimstone sermonizing. His mind was quiet. I treasure the fact that I had grilled him, “The best steak I ever had,” during a recent visit. That is no small compliment considering how much he enjoyed steak.
Sadly, I was not able to make it to his funeral. I still have some pangs of guilt about that, but my brother and I decided that funerals are more for the living than the dead and instead made plans to visit my grandmother during the first week of April. After the chaos and visitations associated with a recent death dwindle and when people closest to the deceased begin to measure the immensity of what has happened and when the grief and loneliness seems to really hit home. And my grandmother would be living alone for the first time in her life.
The trip to upstate New York began rather uneventfully. My soon to be wife and I stopped to see a friend along the way in Connecticut. I did a short performance with him at a local open mic that we had been attending sporadically for the last six months or so. After a nice evening, we headed out the next morning with drizzle and rain forecasted in Connecticut. Being poetic sorts, we never thought to check the weather forecast for our destination. Perhaps poets are absent minded, perhaps there is a guardian angel aspect to our Muse, perhaps we trust in our own deliverance from evil, perhaps we believe in equal parts blind faith and luck.
We headed up the Taconic Parkway. The Taconic is an amazing, picturesque stretch of old Robert Moses highway that extends from NYC to just south of Albany. There is no truck traffic and little traffic of other sorts on the Taconic. It is joy for scenery watchers and daydreamers and poets alike since, unlike the parallel Interstate, we don’t have to worry about being run down like a dog by a huge tandem tractor trailer while our vehicle meanders from one lane to the next. Nor do we worry that we are impeding the progress of some self-important Toms River, New Jersey proctologist in a Lexus on his way to some late spring skiing up north. He flashing his lights and dousing us with expletives for driving slower than the speed limit while we watch the Catskills pass by our side windows.
So…we were mindlessly driving a long the Taconic, smiling at the sights and patting ourselves on the back for taking this route rather than the Interstate, when we noticed that it looked like the trees along the road were beginning to gather a coating of ice. I shrugged thinking it would get better when we got down off the mountain. Of course, it did not and in fact proceeded to get far worse as we left the Taconic and headed west on the dreaded Interstate towards my grandmother’s house. By the time we managed to reach our exit, the roads wore a slippery amalgamation of snow, sleet and ice. I asked the toll booth operator about the condition of the secondary roads, she mumbled incoherently and I nodded as if I knew what she meant. As I drove away, I wondered as to whatever happened to polite conversation and toll booth personnel who had a running knowledge of the local weather conditions.
And indeed, things would only get worse. When I reached the top of the hill just above my grandmother’s, the roads were thick with ice, unplowed and not sanded in the least. I put the truck into 4WD Low, broke the crest and let the truck idle us to the bottom of the hill and my grandmother’s driveway. The tree in the front yard whined and moaned in the wind under the weight of the still gathering ice. We had made it and my grandmother was more than a little surprised that we had decided to drive up since surely, “We would have known the weather was supposed to be bad.” Ummm…right. A few hours later, my brother’s car rolled into the parking area across the street. Apparently, there is a propensity in our family not to listen to or to check weather forecasts before we travel.
We stayed inside for the remainder of that first day, relaxing and dozing while the ice and wind continued their destructive tango. We relaxed and dozed next to the wood fire had dinner and, given the length and stress of our trip, went to bed early.
The next morning, the weather had broken a bit and I decided to head outside with the disposable camera I had brought along for the trip. I do not travel with my 35mm, because I have this odd fear of leaving it somewhere. The light that morning…was unreal…apocalyptic. I shot through the entire disposable, and wished I had another.
Everything was transformed and altered beyond its normal state by the ice. The skies gathered dark and purple one minute; bright blue the next. The sun when reflected by the ice gave even mundane, everyday objects an otherworldly glow. It seemed, for that morning at least as if my uncle in one of his alternating, dark mercurial moods was looking down, providing some minor miracles of light and shadow, visions of childhood passed and past, an insight into the pain and the pleasure of his existence. The photographs linked below that I took that morning truly capture what I saw and serve as a testament to my uncle. For that reason, I would like to dedicate this Ice Storm series of photographs to my uncle, Earl Alan Miller.
(click on each photo for a larger view)
