Fireworks on the Fourth of July. Pumpkins for Halloween. Red scarves at the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Feathered headdresses for Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Every ritual has its signature. At noon on the final day of the Mountain Workshops, the site erupts in celebration of The Final Card Drop. Over the years Silly String has become the crucial celebratory element, though banners, crepe-paper streamers, wild leaps and general whooping all play a role.
We can say thanks to the sponsors of the 2011 Mountain Workshops, but that wouldn’t be enough.
Through your generosity the workshops are able to tell unique stories. Those unique stories teach the participants, but they also give the community a mirror in which to see how things were in those brief moments when we were here.
Without your support, the brief moments that reflect the life of this community would be blank. Without your support, the workshops would not happen. Without your support, the lessons would go untaught.
If you wanted to play fly-on-the-wall at the Mountain Workshops, you’d probably have the best time in the book editing room.
There, coaches Mick Cochran, Patty Reksten, and Rodney Curtis, participant Ron Page, and labbie Jabin Botsford are making strides in designing the book that will be published next fall documenting this year’s Workshops.
How to have a good time at the Mountain Workshops?
Take your job, your assignment, your task very, very seriously. About yourself be not serious at all.
Want a hot cup of coffee? Be prepared to run a gauntlet of shouting, clapping, chanting colleagues that materializes on the whim of who-knows-who, and vanishes as quickly as it assembled. Enjoy a quiet moment reading in a welcome pool of sunshine. Think hard. Work hard. Share a hug. Share a laugh. Make somebody’s day. Give your best.
Wherever they are, whatever story they’re covering, it’s what every photographer is looking for. The moment. The precise geometry of earth and water, sky and cloud, that defines a landscape. A glance between him and her, an embrace between parent and child, that reveals the heart of a relationship.
