The camera stayed in the bag for the first stretch. Mina, a Korean American graphic designer, had spent the drive explaining the light she hoped to find. Isabel, a Mexican American teacher on a rare quiet weekend, had spent it explaining that lunch was also a location.
In the state park’s pines, the argument became unnecessary. They could hear each other’s boots. That was the whole soundtrack. Every few minutes one of them stopped, and the other stopped too, without asking what they were looking at.
They turned back earlier than Mina would have on her own. Isabel’s gloves were damp. The picture could wait; warm hands could not. Back in Ludington, at Scotty’s Restaurant, Mina took exactly one photograph: Isabel leaning over a bowl of soup, laughing at something that would make no sense in a caption.
On Sunday they left the Cartier Park Inn, the car keys swinging from Isabel’s motel key tag, and drove home with no dramatic accomplishment to report. Mina called it a successful trip. Isabel said they should put that in the calendar before someone invited them to do something productive.
Illustrations are imaginative, not documentary portraits.
Meet the rest of winter’s people →