countessian

campfire madness

[Big Sur, part five] This was one of those frustrating evenings where I was quite gleeful and somewhat giddy but, seriously kids, I doubt I’m the only person who’s ever been known to sip from a bottle. I love the taste of bourbon for sure but I’ve never been a shot taker.

Anyway, Dave D kept taking the whiskey away on the imaginary grounds that I was drinking too much–insisting something about how I was supposed to be the photographer, what?–not realising that whenever it came back to me I sipped a little and then set it down besides me, where it would remain for ten mins or so until he’d declare I’d been hoarding it and take it back again. Dave C was on to it and kept laughing. Max christened me Whiskey and was convinced I was taking silly, self-indulgent photographs of the fire when actually I was taking silly, self-indulgent photographs of the crazy people gathered around it.

Apparently it was my fault that the Jim Beam cap was lost, despite the fact that I was handed the bottle capless from Colin and only one of us later fell down a cliff… maybe the cap’s in the creek as we speak.

I was, however, just about silly enough to keep checking on The Baron, who had turned in early for the night. I kept waking him up to check he was still there and hadn’t been kidnapped by hags or wolves or anything. He didn’t once yell at me. I”ve been studing fairytales too long; there will always be a part of my brain that’s convinced the woods are a bad, bad place full of singing foxes, cottages that walk on chicken legs and cursed guitars of doom that play themselves.

I actually left the “party” fire and went over to the “family” fire for a while, alone with my camera, and foolishly tried to think of how to take a picture that could show that weird and sinister feeling, but I just don’t know how to use a camera well enough yet.

Then Colin rolled over the edge of the cliff and we couldn’t find a single working flashlight. Aiyayai. I got overwhelmingly warm and took off as many layers as I could while remaining decent before realising that the heat was centered around my right foot, the one I’d been leaning against the firepit. The sole of my boot’s only half melted. The next morning I felt great, which will one day count for a lot in my lunatic Big Sur photography book.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 12:01 am. It is filed under documentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.