Cool

Cool is what it looks like to be at the very beginning of something. Before you know how it will go, before the weight of it has settled, before anything has been decided. There is a particular kind of freedom in that moment. This piece holds it.
 
I made this early in the walk that changed things for me, before I had found any rhythm, still carrying the accumulated weight of the weeks behind me. My dog had chosen the route. We were approaching a busy intersection in the cold of early spring, the light still low, when I noticed the leaves on a tree I had walked past hundreds of times before. This was the first time I had seen it just after it opened.
 
Early spring leaves carry something no other point in the season can replicate. They haven't been stressed yet. The colour is vivid and young and without history. Nothing has dampened them.
 
I stayed on the footpath. I angled the camera so the pale sky would whitewash behind them, wanting that freshness, that particular unguarded green, to be the only thing in the frame. I wasn't trying to make anything yet. I was simply letting the world show me what was there.
 
The world was starting to open. So was I. Collectors who are standing at the edge of their own new season tend to find this piece first.