Portfolios > Love Letters to Life

Dear Nina, yesterday I drove two and a half hours from Denver to Laramie, Wyoming, to revisit some memories from 1985, when I was prospecting for platinum in the Medicine Bow Mountains and based at the Super 8 Motel in Laramie. Sometimes, I worked with one or two others, but most of the time, I was alone, working, living, and drinking large amounts of whisky alone. Music kept me sane. I had a portable cassette player and a case that held sixty tapes. Laramie had a record shop, and I asked the owner for music recommendations. He suggested Texas singer-songwriters like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, both of whom were already my travel companions. He also recommended Nancy Griffith, whom I wasn't familiar with. We’ve been together ever since. Nancy’s poetic lyrics about loneliness and unfulfillment resonate with my own feelings about things that seem out of reach - a condition that is likely universal. I photographed Nancy, from a distance, when she performed in Glasgow in 1988. I recently hung that photo on the wall of my living room. Maybe that’s what inspired my memory trip to Laramie. More likely, it's Nancy’s 3 a.m. visits to my social media feed that lull me back to sleep. I paid for a night’s stay at the Super 8 Motel. I stayed long enough to take my photograph, then headed back home.