Golden Hour

Aren’t sunsets wonderful? I wanted to share these photos from Prineville; many are just from my Aunts garden but there was such a gorgeous light in Prineville every day we were there. I tried to capture the beauty and stillness. The sunset seemed to last for hours and every evening we were drenched in this stunning golden light.

My family has had ties and connections to Oregon for about 5 generations now and on this trip my Aunt took me to visit certain key areas where ancestors of mine were born, married, buried. It’s strange to think that we live an entire life and eventually get distilled into a handful of places and sentences. “Hers is the fourth plot from the left. She liked playing the piano and was a big animal lover.” “His birth entry is on the second page. He had grey eyes and everybody mentioned his big smile.” We’re left to fill in the gaps with our imagination. Maybe when our generation is gone it will be different, and we’ll leave acres of mundane photos and comments strewn across the internet that our great-grandchildren will never read.

Prineville

Welcome to Prineville! I spent a few days here in this small town; it’s definitely not one of the foremost tourist destinations in Oregon but I really enjoyed the slower relaxing pace, beautiful sunsets, abundance of wildlife and quaint old-timey buildings. Quite a turnaround from New York!

I mentioned my family ties to Oregon and a large chunk of family are based in Prineville. There was one night where there were maybe 12 people in the room who I have a blood relationship with. It was weirdly assuring to experience “family” in Prineville; I have a difficult relationship with both my parents and have few other relatives in the UK, so growing up I often felt very apart from anything you could call “family”. Whilst it was an interesting peek into what life with a large family could have been like, I’m grateful I grew up largely alone. I’m also lucky I have multiple surrogate mother and father figures around these days (as well as a slew of older brother types who I can annoy and bicker with in equal measure).

Family musings aside! There were quite a few weird coincidences and serendipitous moments during my month long dash round the US (I believe in magic). One of the weirdest was watching Back to the Future on the plane over to Oregon and then arriving in Prineville to be told that the clock tower in the film is the same as (i.e. directly copied) the clock tower in Prineville. Have you seen the film/do you recognise it?

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Independence Day

Despite being part American I’ve never really celebrated 4th of July as I grew up in the UK with two very unpatriotic parents. So 2014 marks my first ever July 4th! I spent the day with my cousin (isn’t she pretty?) and it was a perfect mixture of friends, food, football matches, fireworks and excessively aggressive drunken karaoke.We watched the fireworks from the closed off FDR avenue.The entire road was filled with people talking and drinking, clambering over road signs, hiding in bushes, wearing light up grills (as you do) and just generally running around being hysterical.

I love fireworks, street parties and running around befriending people (i.e. all the people in these photos) so it was right up my alley. I reckon July 4th has the edge over Bonfire Night because there was no need to involve the usual extra thermals we Brits succumb to for half the year. We finished off the night riding a crazy disco cab across the entire city, complete with goldfish bowl and blaring eighties hits. God bless America…

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