Hiker friend Lenny taught Elfie Tromp about space

At a certain age you make hiking friends. I do not know if there is a club in which I registered. Or that it is hormonal or culturally determined. But at some point you go for a walk in your free time. With friends. You drive towards the seas, the moors, the forests and the fields to stroll together. Perhaps one of you knows what the five-toed burdock looks like and enthusiastically points it out in creeping field margins. Or, your hiking buddy can tell you random anecdotes about the passage of the gray geese.

Room

Hiker friends are bored in a pleasant way. As weekend radio. You learn something, you reflect and you discuss something, but your hiking buddy is still a good friend. Never the one who embarrasses you, accuses you of all kinds of things or lies. And really, we should all become more walking friends to each other.

My hiker friend is called Lenny and his specialty is observation. He is a photographer and taught me about space. And that’s a crazy thing to say because you think you know very well what space is. You have moved through spaces all your life, estimating distances and times it takes to traverse space. You felt like the best in the spaces, but you also felt small and insignificant in the spaces. You have always come to know space in relation to yourself. To your body.

“He photographed like an animal”

Lenny teaches me to look beyond my own limits. During our walks, he photographs weeds, water currents and tree branches. He shows me the photos of his close-ups. Spaces full of life and movement. Spaces I would have casually passed if he hadn’t captured it. And in which we, romantic animals as we are as humans, want to see all kinds of metaphors.

Lenny once randomly photographed a flight of jackdaws and a crow against a gray sky. He pointed his camera up and printed. No close-ups or endless squinting and worrying about lighting. He photographed like an animal. The birds passed. He pressed the button and the result, printed two meters wide, moved me.

leave space

I didn’t know if I was this crow or all the birds at once. But Lenny’s picture reminded me of how little space I usually had in my head. How I try to understand all my thoughts. Cage and categorization. While we are waves as we think. Flee. We sway on the currents that cross us. We like to take ourselves seriously and we experience the world as a defined set of landscapes and properties. But there is more, so much more, if you leave space.