I hate it when I have to go to my own properties and spend only a short weekend, like I'm going to a very strict hotel and I have to respect the check-in and the check-out.
Last weekend I almost didn't go to our mountain house because of that. Like a spoiled brat I had the girls pull me out with strong "pleaaaaaase" phrases and the lure that during the weekend the Perseid meteor shower will be at it's peak. We have our own little place, up on a ridge, where there is no light, the canopy is broken just enough in order to see a big chunk of the sky and the probability to meet some wildlife during quiet nights is very valid.
While I know I am a big baby sometimes in regards to my commodity and availability for short term travelling, I admit that at least in this case I was very wrong. We could've missed two great evenings in which the meteor shower has put a quite a show. The fact that immediately after dark the temperature drops significantly, made the evenings even more pleasant. Yes, in the mountains you would expect to have some degrees less but during the last hot week the temperature was high even in the upper parts of the country. Armed with some hot tea, two fishing chairs to split for 3 and some blankets, we gazed more than 2 hours to the night sky. The Kid has seen for her first time a meteor and we spoke relentlessly about the sky mechanics and how to understand what the Milky Way is. If I manage to make her understand from a young age that what we see on the night sky as that fine, white dust, is our perspective of the galaxy we are a small part of, I am sure she will learn to be humble in regards to everything that surrounds us. The fact that she's seen some meteors too were the cherry on the cake.
At some point, as we were gazing in the distance, we have seen a silhouette of some animal, roaming around the parking lot around us but until I lit up the light of the phone, we didn't realize we were being sniffed by a fox. A very friendly fox who was not afraid to get as close as 3 meters, looking for food. Imagine the Kid, who was pretty scared of foxed before (never seeing one in real flesh and bones) having to face her fear from a fishing chair while in the arms of her mother. Fear and curiosity blended in... and the damn fox was not leaving...
On Saturday I tested her physique with not a long hiking trip but a steep one. Close to our house there's a mountain cabin that is in the middle of nowhere. Very touristic and nicely renovated in the last 10 year, this place attract a lot of day tourists, especially in a holy day for the orthodox like it was last Saturday. Nevertheless we took the dusty road and climbed the steep portions, stopping occasionally for water, berry harvest and some shots I had to take. As a gadget dad, with all sorts of photo and film tech, I have the fatal task of developing short movies with the Kid. Now that she got the hang of it and she sees herself in the takes I'm editing on the tablet she even more interested. So now, whenever we have some nice scenery to shoot, I have to develop a short script in my head and try and take the shots as close as imagined as the bar is getting higher and higher.
I can't produce bad films anymore as she will compare and complain about the quality, the script or the editing. What started as a hobby is becoming more and more of a job with research that I have to do prior to the day of shooting and probably, in a short while, also scene cards sketched before in order to be as close as possible to the imagined shots.
The result is in this post and I think I managed to grasp the happiness of the Kid, together with her relentless curiosity about anything and her childish manner of approaching things, delicately but firm.
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