Photography as Self-Help – The Road to Redemption

The road is long

With many a winding turn

That leads us to who knows where…

Rufus Wainright

A selection from the lyrics to the song “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”

I have always loved to look at roads and paths and sandy walkways leading to who knows where.

When I’m on the highway or freeway, I’m all business. I drive. I don’t listen to music or my books on CD and my eyes are on the road and the drivers surrounding me… behind and ahead. I don’t like to talk in the car, if there’s someone else there… or not. I’m a good driver… a careful driver… an annoying driver.

But when I get on the side roads… the service roads… the roads leading to places I have never been… it is a magical journey… at least to me. To someone else, it may just be the way home.

I remember wanting – so badly – to find a real-live labyrinth. My friend had recently traveled to the Caribbean and sent me a photo of herself walking one… and it looked so peaceful and healing.

I have another friend who guided a group of us – on the phone, no less. Now that’s talent! – on a meditation where we visualized a labyrinth. I can still remember her voice, so calm and clear.

I wanted to find my own labyrinth. It was purely happenstance that I passed one on the way home from my therapist’s office, where she’d told me, once again, that I needed to take better care of myself.

I was driving along and – bam! – there it was, in the middle of a teaching hospital greenspace. I must have passed it a hundred times before and never noticed it!

You had to pay to park and I had no money, so I did something bad. I followed a back road for faculty and parked on crunchy gravel, under a tree. It was hot that day and the sun felt heavenly. I walked it until I got to a bench under a tiny tree. The sun was bright on my face and I felt wonderful. Surely, I would be forgiven my tresspassing. And I was… in fact, I was rewarded with a beautiful twenty minute walk in circles… on a road… to nowhere in particular, and yet… to somewhere. The center.