“Let’s go see what’s up here,” she said, motioning up a dirt path. My friend Laura and I are out taking photos of the land I have just moved to, 100 acres of mixed wood forest in rural Massachusetts. Autumn is full bloom all around us. Gold and red carpet the ground and cling to the tops of branches as if to set the sky on fire by will alone. In this moment all that I know of the land is that beyond our boundary lies acres more of forest, crossed by a maze of rugged ATV trails and smooth snowmobile trails I have only heard of.
Laura is a photographer. Only a photographer would willingly lug her medium format Pentax, the largest hand held still-camera I have ever seen. It has a vertical wood handle and a shutter release like an artillery report. Our cellphones and Laura’s Pentax are the extent of expeditionary equipment between us.
We soon find ourselves on the snowmobile trails spiraling out beyond my home. These paths are wider and obviously tended by machine rather than by hand, briar and branches cut flat. We find an odd little small swamp someone has laid full screen doors over. Perhaps to promote flat ice when winter comes? At another point the briar bushes reach in and congest the trail. I never think I know where we are, but the signs we pass are so unique as to make me believe I may be able to find a way back.
One trail leads to a makeshift shooting range. An old bowling pin and other small objects are set up as targets. A chair with 2x4s attached to the back for the shooter to rest their rifle is surrounded by many bullet casings. Most look to me to be 5.56 NATO or .223 Remington, what your typical AR-15 throws. But I also see what may be 7.62 NATO or .308, a larger caliber popular in modern hunting rifles (there seemed to be dozens of casings and I didn’t have time to confirm each size), 9mm likely from a handgun, and even an unspent Winchester 30/30, a bullet for a rifle popular during the colonization of the West as well as in the South.
Down a little further and up a short but steep hill there is a clearing. We find two structures, one looks like a hunter’s shed with an old mattress and broken green plastic lawn chairs. The other is a platform, like a porch, but free-standing. Laura starts shooting. The sound of her titanium, steel and glass eye mechanically lidless of a split second splits the quiet of the woods, chemically capturing its point of view forever. I scan around looking for other paths and signs of life. Just beyond the tree line my eye catches something familiar but which somehow alarming. The outline of a garden gnome… no, bigger than that. It is a lawn jockey with what appears to be a gun. I get my colleague’s attention. We move closer.
The Relic 
The Relic, profile
“It’s a racist lawn ornament,” I tell her. “The exaggerated lips and simple facial expression are a caricature of black people especially popular in the South.” This particular Lawn Jockey has been upgraded with what appears to be hand-painted military camouflage style; a coat of drab green with brown accents made with a smaller brush. A toy Colt 45 cut at the magazine, each side glued to his outstretched hand. “That means lynching,” pointing out the laundry line noose around his neck. Laura’s Pentax starts to speak again. I consider what I’m seeing, and finally connecting the shooting range just down the hill to Jacko, the name for this model of lawn jockey, my pulse quickens and my senses flares out as the need to move on lurches into gear.
It takes us some time to make our way home.
Keep going with this – great potential.