Field Day
Summer has finally reached Washington state, and I’ve been looking for every excuse possible to get outside and make the most of it. I sent out a call to the summer programs to see if any classes had interesting field trips coming up, and many faculty wrote back with invitations to interesting outings all over the Puget Sound.
Over the past week I joined a Plant Biology class as they visited the Mima Mounds to study and catalog the native prairie plants. I also tagged along with Radically Local Quests as they took a kayaking trip around Hope Island State Park.
On both these trips, I made some great photos of Evergreen students as they interacted with and studied the surroundings; but I also made few photos of the non-Greeners (or future Greeners) who came along. One of the students on the Mima Mounds trip brought her son Felix, and I caught a couple of frames as he raced between the hills. On Hope Island, I photographed one of the kayaking guide’s kids as he busied himself trying to “free” a buoy on the beach. (No worries, the buoy was recovered and returned to shore.)
I love these two photos just because they remind me so much of my own childhood–the way that running at top speed thrilled me then, and the way that my imagination could turn an inanimate object into a prisoner waiting to be freed, needing my help. There’s something about nature that inspires the internal life of a kid; and I hope these photos capture some of that. — Shauna Bittle, staff photographer