Lumber in the Sun

Right now I work part time for a construction company, and we do remodeling both residential and commercial; every now and then (or super frequently and I just haven't noticed yet; I haven't been here that long) we build a bathroom in a flip house for a real estate agent. My first day on the job went something like this: I showed up outside the work truck on a backstreet in my hometown and drove off with a couple guys around my age who I met for the first time that day at 7:30 in the morning.

"You working with [insert boss's name here]?"

"Yeah."

So, y'know, perfectly honoring those stranger danger lessons we all learned as kids. About 30 minutes later we get to a two story house in the middle of scenic nowhere, 70% gutted, where we were redoing a couple bathrooms. That was about two months ago, and the week of this story we went back to the same property to frame in a new bedroom. I'll spare you the gritty construction details, but we sawed a lot of 2-by-4's by the end of the day.

The boss left early and it was just me and "Yeah" finishing the framing, and I looked up: there, across the room, through the hallway into the room where our saw was set up to cut lumber, I saw it. I still don't know how to explain these moments when they come; there was something about the light caught in the sawdust motes and the way the boards were lying completely by accident that stole my attention. I had to find an excuse to run back down to the truck and grab my phone so I could take a picture. Hi, I'm Alan and when I see pretty things I feel the need to take pictures. Look at it!

The picture doesn't quite capture what I saw (it never does), but I think it captures the spirit of what I saw. I took that picture and then took pictures like the one I used on the cover. I feel a little silly for being so smitten by light on a couple of wood scraps, but you know something? I like being silly. Cause gosh dang it, that pile of lumber in the sun was pretty.

You probably didn't see this coming when I started talking about construction, and 2-by-4's, and guys who say "Yeah," but this whole day was about being true to yourself. It was about the time and place to do something nice for yourself because you really want to. I took a couple more photos before we left that day and I'll stick them below, but you all should know how important something so unimportant is: no, it didn't matter if I took those pictures. I had no higher agenda with them (and honestly in the first draft of this thing only one picture made it in). What those pictures represent is the purest part of myself, the part that stared in wonder like a little kid when we went through the forest of Christmas of Lights this year. It's not necessarily the best or the truest part of me, but it is the purest, and the most innocent, and the part I've fought the hardest to keep alive. In a job like mine, where you work with your hands around rough, strong tempered guys, your hands and (to be cliché) your heart callous easy. That's somebody I used to be, and I can't stand the thought of being again. So, if that means taking silly photos of scenic things in the middle of the work day in the middle of nowhere, guess what I'm gonna do.