It’s the Fourth of July in the foul year of our Lord 2025, and the air feels thicker than it should, like you’re breathing someone else’s hangover.

We spent the day down by the river, the kind of Oregon summer afternoon where the water feels just cold enough to shock the bad thoughts out of your skull. Family scattered along the banks, kids splashing, laughter carrying over the slow current. But you couldn’t help noticing them… The others. Strangers lounging nearby, sunburned and tattooed, looking like they’d all made at least one spectacularly bad decision in the past month. The kind of folks who’ve stared down their own chaos and didn’t flinch.

Still, it didn’t matter. Today wasn’t about judgment. It was about escape.

Later, we moved to a field as the sky grew dark, carrying chairs and snacks and that creeping anticipation you only feel before something big and loud happens. Fireworks. Explosions in the sky to distract us from the ones in our heads.

I set up the tripod. Mounted the Nikon. Dialed in a long exposure, chasing streaks of light and chaos. Click. Click. Click. It was working, those electric arteries of red, violet, and gold tore through the black like someone had ripped the universe open and let it bleed neon.

But halfway through, I stopped.

Stopped worrying about perfect framing. Stopped checking settings. Stopped being a photographer.

I turned away from the screen and looked at my family, my little one staring up in hypnotic wonder, eyes wide but wary, trying to make sense of the madness in the sky. My older kid was grinning, caught between childhood awe and teenage coolness. And for the first time in weeks, maybe months, I let the camera be and just watched.

The world melted for a while. There was no news cycle. No deadlines. No ghosts from the past whispering in my ear. Just color and sound and heat. It was nice, dangerously nice to lose yourself in the moment.

Because you know what happens after.

The lights go out. The field empties. The quiet settles in like a hangover. Life’s chaos returns, meaner than ever. The ride ends, and you’re right back in the muck.

But for a few brief minutes, we were untouchable, basking in fire and color and the fragile illusion that everything might just be okay.