“As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect.” Thoreau, Walden
All the phoo-rah that gathers around groundhogs in early February has had me watching shadows. And that, mixed with my habit of taking everyday photos, has led me to “shadies,” a sort of self-representation that seems apt for woodswalkers, who surely track shadows as intently as light, or self.
I took my first recent shady by accident – there, in a micro-climate nursed by the sun, were a few shoots of green grass. Attuned to winter’s shades of sere and brown, I bent first to look, and then for a photo. Later, when I scanned the day’s images, I stopped on this one: the green was arresting in its shades other than pine, but so too was the shadow crowding in from the left. What threw that, I wondered?
It took a moment to recognize my shadow-self. No “halo” though, and so not “one of the elect” under the eye of divinity. A relief.
Not long after, it occurred to me that the “shady” should replace the selfie, if one is of a mind to record presence. There could even be shady-sticks, repurposed selfie-sticks that are held behind and between person and sun. Such a shot would rearrange the celebrity-selfie as well: whose shadow is that next to my familiar own?
Shadies are all about silhouettes, an older sort of representation before full-frontal me-ness claimed everyone’s attention. They suggest presence without making it central; they are the outline of story without the banal details and chipped tooth.
An old shady from the Kerry Way
Attending to shadow also makes us more aware in the woods, where the margins of little light hold the world’s other animals. No longer in peril (unless you run or walk in lion territory), our sense of the shadowy periphery has faded; what used to be a wide angle of awareness has shrunk to a few central degrees. And, as I watch a whole new generation of walkers with bent-over heads, focused on small glowing screens, oblivious to what’s around them, I realize what easy meat we have become.
Trees, of course, know shadies.
The shady then is remainder and reminder. Our shadows say that we were there, are here, but they say also that we are not the whole show.
New walking mantra: Leave only footprints; take only shadies.
My current, signature shady
