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• 1 media/julieshaferuntitleddivergingpaths2018.jpeg 2020-05-10T05:13:32+00:00 Photographic Tall Tales 6 Denise Johnson Interviews Julie Shafer Pt. 5 structured_gallery 2020-05-16T23:29:44+00:00 Julie Shafer considers the tall tales that photography made true for those seeking new possibilities.
  
  
  
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• 1 media/julieshafer_untitledroadwithpowerlines_2018.jpg 2020-05-06T00:25:33+00:00 The Sense of Animals 4 Julie Shafer essay plain 2020-05-06T00:32:47+00:00 I tried to intuit a path in-between the vegetation, and quickly realized that I don’t have that ability. My dogs had that ability. For 14 years they hiked off-leash throughout California, Utah, and Colorado and never did they stumble and fall like I am now. I don’t think it’s simply the fact that dogs have four legs and are far more athletic than I am (they definitely had that going for them). It’s like they had another sense-they could intuit the terrain of a place where they’d never been while running full speed across it.  I’ve spent countless hours watching the way they moved through a space. I loved it. I loved watching their bodies sink low, and get long, as they ran full speed-probably somewhere around 25 mph. They’d take off like a rocket, and more or less go straight as an arrow. The grace, strength and freedom of their bodies gliding across the land was truly awesome.
  
  There would always be a fleeting moment where they and I went into another realm. I could see it; a look they’d get, where their gaze was turned inward; my gaze fixed upon them tracking their every movement. Sounds changed too. The din of the wind, birds, crickets, the crunching of my feet on the trail dampened and the sound of their gallop is all that remained. I get why films with racing scenes- be it horses, humans, cars or dogs-invariably have a slow-motion sequence. The viewer needs to be able to see each strained muscle defined, the fluidity of a stride, the levitation of feet between each strike of the left midfoot, float, right midfoot, float, left midfoot, float, right midfoot, float (in print I would like the last midfoot and float to fade to nothing). The slow motion is the only substitute for the experience of being there. For a moment, a few seconds, peripheral vision gives way to central focus and I could see their muscles flexing, their front two paws tucked under the chest, as the back legs flex toward the front so all four legs crisscross under the body. Then levitation, then the front legs straight out in front, and the back legs straight out behind. I imagine this is what it must be like to hunt-to have your prey in your sites and their speed is irrelevant because you have the ability to track its every movement for a few beats. Peripheral vision quickly returns, and it is only then that you’re aware you had just witnessed something that doesn’t seem possible.
  
  
  They moved differently when we’d walk. Typically, they walked in front of me, and more or less they followed the contours of the trail. But every few hundred feet they would veer off and create an annex to the route. It would happen suddenly. It happened often. Their bodies would be heading straight, the trail would start curving right, and about 20 yards before the bend they’d make a sudden 45 degree turn to the right. Sometimes they were simply taking a shortcut back onto the trail, and other times they’d weave in and out of an undulating hillside with shrubs, downed trees, and rocks as if they’d taken that same route several times before. I always attributed that behavior as evidence of them exploring and wanting to be independent of me. It hadn’t occurred to me that their movements probably had more to do with the fact that they knew how to move through nature more efficiently than the trail. They sensed it. Thinking about it now, I wonder if they tracked the trails of other animals?