Writing Retreat 2023, day one

I moved in to the cab­in Fri­day evening—laptop, sleep­ing bag, cam­eras, bike, and food—and got set­tled in. I read for a bit^[1]Cur­rent read: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, which is pret­ty trip­py so far. and checked the fore­cast. The evenings this week look pret­ty cloudy, so I’m not sure how much astropho­tog­ra­phy I’ll get to do. Last night was clear, though, so I decid­ed to head on out about 10pm.

I got set up at the Wasagam­ing dock just before 11 and snapped about 30 min­utes’ of star trails. I dis­cov­ered lat­er that the cam­era was­n’t quite as lev­el as I’d hoped, so I end­ed up crop­ping out the thin line of the lake, but the tree on the left made a nice fore­ground. (See the pho­to above.)

After that I head­ed to Spruces, and set up one cam­era for anoth­er round of star trails…

…while the oth­er one was des­ig­nat­ed for Milky Way photos.

It was a good start to the week, I think.

Goals

What I’d like to do with my week:

• write (aim­ing for 10,000 words, let’s say, in two projects: Praise the Torch When ‘Tis Burned^[2]aka “Derelict star­ship + ghosts” and The Slow Apoc­a­lypse^[3]aka “Wiz­ard v. War­head”.
• pho­tog­ra­phy
• read a bunch
• bike rides (aim­ing for 5–10km a day, weath­er permitting)
• kayak­ing (at least twice, again, weath­er permitting)
• cel­e­brate my mom’s birthday

Hold my calls, I’ll be at the cabin.

Inter­est­ed in prints of my pho­tos? Let me know, and we can work some­thing out.