Barbara Knauff, a senior instructional technologist at Dartmouth College, is a regular bike commuter to work from her home in East Thetford. In August, she started a photo blog to share her experiences. The following is an edited interview.
I’m very much of a text person in most of my life. I studied literature, I taught literature and I do a lot of writing. I’m doing email all the time. So for me to force myself not to write, just to let the picture speak for itself, it’s kind of a new thing.
Sending an email to say, “When I rode in this morning there was fog on the river,” that doesn’t really convey it. It’s so beautiful and you want to share that somehow. If you take one good picture it says so much more.
A lot of cyclists that are really into it are very verbose. They talk for pages about gear, and what to wear, and what snow tires to put on, and I deliberately didn’t want to do that. It doesn’t have to be complicated.
I wanted bike commuting to be perceived as a fun thing rather than this good duty, let’s-reduce-carbon-emissions kind of thing. Which it is, but it doesn’t feel like penance. It’s always something I look forward to. I’m bummed-out when I can't do it.
I didn’t want to fall into this rut where you do the same route to work and back all the time and once you’ve done it so many times you don’t really notice what’s around you anymore. I thought by taking a few pictures everyday it would make me actually see.
I still take mostly the same route, but it makes me more aware. You put your eyes on in the morning rather than just motoring to work. I try to stop for anything that strikes me. Very often, I’ll just bike past but three seconds later I'll think, “Wait a minute. That struck me somehow.” So I’ll turn around and stop and think about why it did.
I don’t look at the route anymore as one static thing that's always going to be there. You can’t just say, “I’ll take a picture of those flowers tomorrow.” It’s always changing and if I don’t take the picture today, I may never get the chance again. That picture, that light, that moment is never going to come back. It's catching those fleeting moments when you can.
It’s a good thing to stop and not be locked in your routine. I’d rather be five minutes late getting home and get the picture.
On the web:
View Barbara Knauff’s blog online at http://locomote.wordpress.com/
To join a mailing list of bike commuters in the Upper Valley visit https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/uvchaingrease