Chapter Ten

LANDSCAPE RECIPES

How to Cook Up Some Tasty Looks

I can’t believe that you’ve come this far. I can’t believe that it’s Chapter 10, the final chapter in the book, and you’ve read all the chapter intros. Even the one about shooting the night sky and all—but you don’t even care about that stuff, and yet you read the intro page. You know what that tells me? It tells me a lot about you. Five things, actually: (1) It tells me you don’t conform to the crowd. You’re a rebel. An outsider. I like that about you. (2) You don’t bend to peer pressure from other landscape photographers who say things like, “I like the book, but I can’t take those silly chapter intros. . . .” Remember, people who call things “silly” are, by and large, not fun to hang out with. (3) You have a highly evolved taste in literature. You knew the meanings of many of the Latin phrases used throughout these intros, and yet you still went on to read my rough translations, many of which are . . . well . . . rough. I dig you. (4) You realized, about 2/3 of the way through the seventh chapter intro that these somewhat random, “stream-of-consciousness-style” intros are more than they seem. That there’s another layer beneath them, and you peeled back that layer to uncover a spiritual connection between you and I that can never be broken. Very much like the relationship of a tree’s root system to the vegetation that surrounds it and thrives because of it. Through these intros we have journeyed to a different place where we understand each other in a way, and on a level, others could not. We have transcended the boundary of what is real and what is an acronym used by General Pershing in the First World War. We have an unbreakable bond. An unspeakable union that dare not speak its name. We are young. Heartache to heartache, we stand. No promises. No demands. Love is a battlefield. And, (5) you’re probably an alien and shoplifted this book.