The Photograph I Didn't Take.

 It was the last day of our vacation. We had just finished a week of camping our way around Lake Ontario & had spent most of September 10^th driving back to our house in Sullivan County under a cold front. If we had left 90 minutes earlier or later, we could have made the entire trip in sunshine. That storm also pushed another storm traveling up the coast out to sea, leaving behind the beautiful weather that we all remember so well.

Our backyard had three ancient willow trees that always shed branches when it rained, so that’s where I was, cleaning up, when my brother called the next morning.

Jane answered & Dave said, Are you watching television?

No.

Turn it on. Now.

What channel?

It doesn’t matter.

I was on the phone with him when the North Tower fell.

On September 12^th, back in the city, Dave & I rode our bicycles downtown to see what we could see. On my way to meet him, I saw a car parked on West 77^th Street, covered in dust.

The cops had all traffic blocked at Houston Street, but from years of running along the East River, I knew the little downtown streets pretty well. Getting inside was easy.

Dave wanted to go back to his old apartment in the West Village. Walking out of his front door every day, the first thing he would see would be the towers. At Christopher & Washington, he got off his bicycle in the middle of the intersection & let it drop. He stood in the middle of the street, arms at his sides, staring up at the empty sky.

I took so many pictures that day, but I didn’t take that one. I don’t know why.

We got within two or three blocks of The Pile. Everything was covered in dust, sometimes ankledeep. Papers & shoes. Demolished cars & trucks, towed just far enough away.

At some point I realized that we were serving no useful purpose & had no acceptable reason for being there, taking pictures of rescue workers with nobody to rescue. I thought about what was in the dust I was walking on & I felt like a creep.

The fires burned for weeks. You could smell them from 30 miles away, or more.

In 2002, I worked the first Tribeca Film Festival. Every time we stepped outside, day or night, we would see truckloads of debris being loaded onto barges for transport to labs, hoping to find something, for somebody.

Jane & I sold our house upstate a couple years later. Dave died a few months after that. The 9/11 photograph I didn't take is the one that's stuck in my head.

All those people.