Lost & Found in Fog, Part 3
In this blog series, I trace how a lost wedding ring, an innkeeper’s tale, and the story of Thomas Cole’s Oxbow helped me find my way through a creative fog—revealing that inspiration, though often hidden, still waits along the timeline from lost to found.
Part 3
What the Innkeeper Said
I was on the Cape for the weekend, my wife staying with her childhood friends, while I, as her chauffer, stayed at the Wellfleet Motel & Lodge. The Lodge was set on the border of the National Seashore, edged by my powerlines and, further on, Marconi Beach, with a stunted forest spread between. I arose as planned that next morning and left with my gear, pulled more by the desire to create than the gravity of my loss I felt every time I thumbed my bare finger. By that next morning, I had glumly accepted my wedding band was gone forever, lost to the world, a betrayal of my fidgety fingers. I was along the timeline of the stages of grief—just past denial, quelling anger and with acceptance a distant, insurmountable peak. I had no idea that I would be wrenched from that timeline of grief’s stages in just a few hours. I was blind to the real timeline, the timeline of lost to found. The fog of loss in which I was veiled had inveigled me to ignore the solace of a basic notion—that which is lost can be found. Enshrouded in that fog, the grimness of loss weighing on every footstep, I left before dawn, encountering a landscape that to me reflected my mood. Inspiration eddied against that current of grief running through me and after I made a few exposures, I returned to Lodge for something to eat and to search once again my room and belongings.
After breakfast, I made my way to the front desk to report my lost wedding band, where I encountered a middle-aged man, clearly a part of the family that owned the Lodge. After I made my report, the innkeeper encouraged me to go back and look again for my lost wedding band. I dismissed idea. Surely, it was only a means to multiply—exponentiate—my grief and frustration when it turned out a fruitless effort, as it certainly would? The innkeeper, leaned forward on his elbows, a smile lurking behind his eyes, and told me his story. Years before, he and his then new wife were at the beach nearby, roughhousing with their golden retriever in the surf and sand. It was a sunny summer day, with the fine sand underfoot, golden, warm and forgiving. As the innkeeper stroked his dog between vigorous bouts of ‘go fetch’ with a tatty tennis ball, his wedding band flew from his finger, landing who knows where, unseen, buried in the soft, dry sand edging a surf dampened strip of the beach. Panicked, he scrambled, on all fours, trying to find his ring to no avail. Dread mounted as the tide rolled in. Rakes were retrieved, with the plan to literally comb the beach, before tide and time could wait no longer. The innkeeper fought off desperation, fearing the efforts fruitless, as he and his wife and friends tried to find something as unfindable as the proverbial needle in a haystack—a small golden band buried in golden sands on a beach with the tide encroaching. The innkeeper said, with the polished tenor of a raconteur relaying his best-loved yarn, they had raked for what seemed hours refusing to give up, the sun ever-slanting, the tide’s slow march like sand dropping in an unturned hour-glass. Then, seemingly—actually—out of nowhere, he heard a small clink as he raked over a patch of sand already gone over myriad times. There, wrenched from the void of loss, dangling from a rake tine, liberated from the fine, golden sand, the innkeeper’s wedding band glinted in the glow of the now setting sun.
“Go back and look for it,” he finished, holding my gaze. Stirred by his story, my fog of grief and loss vaporized enough for me to see a glimmer of hope. Shaking his hand, I thanked him, confessed my inspiration and gratitude, and made my way back to see if I could find my wedding band. And with me, I carried the innkeeper’s gift of newfound hope that my wedding band lay there waiting for me to complete the timeline he had completed years before where lost becomes found.
During college, my writing had evolved in approach and output. My life had evolved as well, likewise in approach and output. I was a fairly new father when I completed my first degree. And though I still maintained Tal’s “primary goal” of stability, that stability now included my family. I still craved the freedom to pursue meaningful and rewarding experiences. But those had transformed with my burgeoning family into experiences that were, paradoxically, at once more personal but less self-centered, less selfish. I could no longer approach life as I had, adhering to a mission statement that put writing above all else and at all costs. It was clear that next steps were needed on a new mission statement. I was, however, reluctant to leave behind altogether my pursuit of my creative impulses. I concocted plans to, at the very least, leave space for me to write—some of which included pursuing photography professionally, despite never even owning an interchangeable lens camera. But those plans adhered too closely to the old mission statement or seemed impractical if not unachievable—it turns out, student loans are much easier to secure than credit to purchase professional photography gear. Teaching seemed to offer the best solution, with its summers off and frequent holiday breaks providing the space for writing. After being admonished by a friend who taught to “do it for the kids, not for the summers” I landed on the law, convincing myself that the profession would afford enough “freedom to pursue meaningful and rewarding experiences.” Talk about naïve. It took over fifteen years and the forced idleness of a global pandemic for me to even come to the threshold of the freedom to pursue the meaningful and rewarding experience of writing again. Ironically, it was the purchase of my first full frame camera and that Zeiss glass in 2018 that provided the key to opening the door stood at that threshold.
And even those years later, when I purchased that kit, I had no inkling my rekindled passion for image making would lead me to the door back to writing and forge for me the key for entry. A friend, a professional photographer himself, quipped that I had become a lawyer for the singular purpose being able to afford photography gear. Unbeknownst, that gear set me along the timeline away from lost, incrementally lifting the fog, and leading me to found and to once again pursue the meaningful and rewarding experiences of creative engagement. Though not as straightforwardly, that camera was another innkeeper, inspiring me to seek that which was lost. My image making provided me, over time, the same inspiration given by the innkeeper that morning on the Cape. The inspiration to go back and look afresh, to seek that which seemed lost forever, to find the slim crescent of gold of a passion left behind in the sandy ruts of time, gone to a new mission statement bereft of room to indulge any creative impulses. Ultimately, to peer through the fog of loss and catch a glimmer of the timeline that would take me back a degree freedom to pursue meaningful and rewarding experiences through creative engagement.
That creative inspiration ebbs and flows is shown in Part 4. It is two years removed from my trip to the Cape, and creative momentum has once again faded under the weight of obligation. During my morning commute through the Pioneer Valley, a break in the fog over Thomas Cole’s Oxbow offers an unexpected moment of clarity. Cole’s own struggle to recover inspiration becomes an inspiration, revealing how the path from lost to found is rarely direct—but always present.