When we go out taking pictures (shooting), we mostly just
walk along the roads leading out of Louisburgh. Some have sidewalks but most
don’t so you end up walking on the road itself. This can be a bit nerve wracking
until you get used to it. The roads are narrow and the cars fast.
It’s a good idea to take at least one other person shooting
with you. That way they can keep watch as you take pictures and vice versa.
Your ears tune themselves to pick up the frequency of engines off in the
distance, and your mouth becomes habituated to warn, “Car!” once you see it
rambling over a hill. Waterproof shoes are a must as just stepping to the edge
of the road isn’t always enough; occasionally you’ll need to tramp into the
soggy, grassy shoulder.
At first this kind of thing really frightened me, but I got
used to it within a couple days. We had one experience last week, though, that
had my heart racing and adrenaline pumping. Emilee and I were on one of our
usual photo excursions walking up a very narrow uphill road when we heard the
tell-tale sound of a car approaching the crest from the opposite side. Only it
didn’t sound like a normal car. It was much louder and a lower pitch, and that
could only mean one thing: a truck. As it materialized at the top of the hill,
Emilee and I looked at each other. Her face mirrored the “oh shit” look I knew
was painted on mine. Had we been closer to the foot of the hill we would have
jogged back down to a wider road. But we were more than halfway up the hill and
there weren’t any driveways nearby so our only option was to just stand on the
tiny shoulder and let the truck pass us. So we stepped over onto the grassy
shoulder only to realize that there was also a trench on that side of the road.
It was about a foot wide, but I couldn’t see how deep it was; thee was definitely
water at the bottom, though. So there we are, standing on a strip of grass ten
inches wide with a truck approaching on one side and a trench on the other.
Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place—or should I say a truck
and a deep place.
The driver saw our predicament and tried to drive as close
to the other shoulder as he could, but that’s not exactly possible when the
truck is nearly as wide as the road itself. It was so close to us that I wouldn’t
have been able to fit a camera between my face and the side of the truck. Maybe
four inches, six tops. It would have been a cool picture had I thought of my
camera at the time (instead my inner monologue was more like, “Fuck. Don’t
move. Breathe. Stay still. Shit. Shit. Shit. Holy shit. Breathe. Calm down.
Whatever you do, don’t move. Breathe. It’s okay. Almost done. Breathe.”). Once
the back bumper had passed us, we breathed a simultaneous sigh of relief but
stayed frozen in place for a moment. When we were finally capable of moving
again we booked it up the hill and down the other side. There was no way in
hell we were going to get caught on that road with another truck. I was scared
shitless at the time, but now—less than a week later—I just laugh about it.
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