An Erie Step Away From The Burgh

Being that I am from Texas, I had never seen snow in my life. That is, until I moved to Pittsburgh on July 4th, 2017. Where I am from, we have lakes, rivers and oceans. However, they are just bodies of water made for fishing, cooling off, drunken spring break or summer nights and whatever else comes with the good time of being on a body of water. Since I had never seen snow in my life, it's obvious that I would have never seen an entire lake covered in snow. I was mind-blown. As I was driving over the Veterans Memorial Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, I looked to my left and was astonished by what the winter weather had done to Lake Erie. The lake was no longer a lake. Instead, it was essentially snow-blasted, ice covered, island- if that makes any sense. I spent nearly half my day just wondering around the park surrounding Lake Erie. It wasn't hard for me to understand all the weird looks I was getting as I was running across the ice, nearly two-hundred feet away from the shoreline, but to me this was incredible. For the average northerner who see's this lake frozen over each year it is no big deal, but when they see a six-foo-tall, thin as a board, grown man playing by himself on top of the ice I am sure it is something to stop and take notice of. This was just one of those instances where you try your best to leave any sort of camera, phone or digital device behind and take advantage of an opportunity that you have never been able to take part in. On the other hand, I knew that I had a roll of film and Mamiya camera sitting in my car. So, I went ahead and shot a roll of film so that I return to Texas, I would not forget that I will never have the chance to run across a lake like I did in Cleveland.