at the time this photograph was taken, i was the little prince (at least in our household.)
and i remember, after the roll of film was developed and my mother wrote the year on the bottom of the photo, how much we giggled with delight at the memory of our day driving the backroads of northeastern wyoming and stumbling upon this vista with the devil’s tower in the background–my mother encouraging me to run out into the field away from the road and how i may have been just a little afraid (snakes!), but thrilled at the same time at the freedom of the moment–just look at all that room, why wouldn’t you find it liberating?
but today when i examine it, what i see is a very tiny, indistinct human being, so insignificant as to be nearly impossible to discern in the center foreground of a landscape so immense, that the idea of being a prince among men (or at least your own family) seems impossible to comprehend and something like a lie perpetrated by my mother and grandmothers so that i wouldn’t ever know the truth of our tiny moment on this earth.
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