New Addition to Our Team

Sorry to have been silent lately but I've been wrapped up working on the edits for Following Atticus. My editor at William Morrow, Cassie Jones, did a great job with my manuscript and I'm making the necessary changes and hope to have them done and back in her skilled hands by September 15th.

Atticus is doing well. And I'm doing better. We've been out on some hikes and longer walks. Slowly but surely I'm regaining my strength and endurance.

We received good news a week ago when my attending surgeon, Stuart Battle, took the drainage tube out of my side and told me I wouldn't need further surgery. I cannot tell you how much I loved having that tube removed but it was nothing compared to the news of no more surgery. That means that during the next five weeks, which are the best of the year up here in the White Mountains, Atticus and I can now be footloose and fancy free once again - that is once I regain my strength.

There is something else I'm excited about as well. Last year I bought a new camera, a Canon Powershot SX20 IS. It is a great camera and takes nice shots but I discovered I wasn't using it all that much on the trail because it is bigger and more cumbersome than anything else I've used in the past. Hence the photos you've seen here from our hikes have been taken with an inexpensive Kodak digital camera, the EasyShare Z950. But there's a reason the Kodak was inexpensive. It lacked several features I was looking for in a trail camera. Often times I'd have to wait ten seconds to be able to take a second shot and it had its limitations when it came to low light photos.

When I decided to buy myself a survival gift (and why not considering that I finally learned my chances of survival from the septic shock were actually only about 20% to 25%) I went looking for an upscale Kodak, since I'm comfortable with their products.

Even someone with such a limited photographic ability as I have understands there's an intimacy that forms between a photographer and a camera and Kodak had treated me well through our first four years of hiking. I just needed to get a better one. I wasn't ready to make the full leap to a large SLR because I realized I wouldn't use it on the trail. While researching Kodak digitals I stumbled upon a new camera from Sony. It's called the NEX 3 and not only is it remarkably small, it's capable of great low light shots and takes as many as seven shots per second! That made my most recent Kodak seem like an antique.

The Sony NEX 3 will be here on Friday and I look forward to trying it out. There's one specific function I'm most excited about - the panorama sweep. I can hardly wait to see what it will do when we are on some of our ridge walks.

Here's a fun overview video of the Sony NEX 3.