This image was made in Badachro during New Years 1999-2000 (Y2K). We figured that the magnificent land and superb people of Sarah’s home would provide good company if, as predicted, our technological societies spontaneously shut down at midnight and the world plummeted into chaos.

My photographs from that visit to Badachro and those made on our next trip in 2002 are immensely meaningful to me as they represent much more than just a record of that place. My original impressions of Badachro were formed from Sarah’s recollections and art. The depth of this place’s significance to Sarah is not part of my formative experience as there is no single place from my early life in which I can identify the historical, inspirational, or emotional investment that Sarah has found in Badachro. Early in our relationship, I came to know the place through her stories and art, and later began to accumulate my own experiences there. “Wild” is how Sarah has always described the landscape around Badachro. While her definition naturally draws from her personal experience, for me, wildness is viscerally apparent in the incessant wind, rain, and darkness of winter there. Those severe environmental conditions resign the photographer to a certain loss of absolute control with unpredictable motion, long exposures, and moisture on the lens and inside the camera. If images are to be made at all, the imagemaker must give himself over to the place. The photographs I made in Badachro at that time were unlike any I had done before, and I believe it’s because the conditions, together with my intimate knowledge of Sarah’s experiences, came to provide a portrait, not just of the place but of someone dear to me whose life is molded by that place.

Another reason that the turn-of-the-millennium represents an important transitional period in our marriage is that children were introduced to our lives soon thereafter (Kenny was born, um, nine months after the Y2K trip). Blake



Baosbheinn and Lechnasaide




Skin at the Surface

Floating, staring at the sky, blue and cool.
A deep breath pulls my chest above the surface;
A ripple reaches up my cheek
And salt touches the corner of my eye.
Floating, hands patting the sea
Legs giving balancing kicks.

Granny calls, "You'll catch your death,
Come in and have a cup of tea."

The dog is running down the quay.
She wants to play, but hates the water.
She wags her rear and smiles.

"Sarah, come up out of the Water
You've been in there an awful while."

It's not that cold, shallow here by the boat
Dark in the shadow of the jetty.
Seaweed curls around my feet
But it holds no grip.

"Sarah, come in and tell me your news -
I haven't seen a soul all day."

I could lie here all day
Ears underwater, eyes in the sky
Floating with the jellyfish
But she is standing at the front door,
Clasping her hands tightly.

by Sarah.

From "Whit" a book of poems compiled and edited by Madalyn Rilling and published at the Colorado College Press, 2012. All rights reserved.