It pains me to write this.

Somewhere along the way, these photography expeditions stopped being simple weekend trips. They became a damn ritual. A running experiment in miles, cameras, questionable roads, strange towns, wet boots, bad coffee, good photographs, and whatever scraps of sanity Robert and I could drag home with us.

And now October is threatening to break the streak.

Lobster Valley was supposed to be the next chapter.

Everything was ready. Bags packed. Batteries charged. Maps downloaded. The GPS loaded with coordinates for places neither of us had ever laid eyes on. Lobster Valley. The Dead Woods. Names that sound less like Oregon destinations and more like the last known location of two photographers whose cameras turn up six months later, hanging from a tree.

Perfect.

We were about an hour and a half into the drive when we stopped for breakfast burritos. A necessary tactical maneuver. No expedition into strange Oregon territory should begin on an empty stomach.

Fifteen minutes later, the phone rang.

And just like that, the whole machine stopped.

Robert had some personal business come up that needed him home. Nothing dramatic to embellish, nothing worth dragging into literature at somebody else’s expense. Life simply kicked the door open and said, Not today, boys.

So we turned around.

Nearly two hours of driving.

For breakfast burritos.

There’s something almost beautifully ridiculous about that. Months of planning, camera gear, hiking equipment, GPS coordinates, and unknown forests waiting somewhere down the road. The grand October Photography Expedition collapsed into an elaborate interstate breakfast run.

By the time I got home, I was pissed.

Not at Robert. Not at anybody, really. Just at the machinery of circumstance, which never checks the calendar before it grinds.

I sat there staring at the camera bag, thinking: well, what the hell do I do now?

Then it hit me.

Finley.

William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge. Back where this whole strange photography madness really started for us. Familiar ground. Maybe the old place could salvage the day.

So I grabbed the gear and went alone.

A solo expedition.

And technically, it wasn’t bad. The wildlife showed up. The landscapes were there. Oregon performed its usual quiet magic: fields, birds, trees, and that strange autumn light hanging over everything like the season itself was contemplating mortality.

I shot nearly 150 photographs.

I liked five.

Five.

Normally I’d shrug that off. Photography has always been a ruthless bastard. You can shoot three hundred frames and discover the entire day was really about one picture. That’s part of the game.

But this felt different.

My heart wasn’t in it.

I was walking around looking for photographs instead of seeing them. That’s dangerous. The camera was working. My eyes were technically working. The animals were there. The light was there.

But something between my brain and the shutter had gone quiet.

Maybe I’d already decided the day was ruined. Maybe disappointment poisoned the well before I ever reached the refuge. Maybe I’m just tired.

Whatever it was, everything felt meh.

That’s the technical photographic term.

No electricity. No madness. No moment where you raise the camera and think, Jesus Christ, there it is.

Just click. Walk. Click. Walk. Check the LCD. Shrug. Continue.

Later I found out Robert had done almost exactly the same thing.

After he got home and dealt with what he could, there wasn’t much more he could do. So eventually he grabbed his own camera and disappeared on a solo adventure too.

That made the whole thing stranger. Two photographers who were supposed to be wandering through Lobster Valley together instead scattered in different directions across Oregon, both trying to salvage the same broken day.

There’s probably a metaphor buried in there somewhere.

I don’t have the energy to dig it out.

And now I’m wondering what happens to October.

There isn’t much empty space left on the calendar. Life has staked its claims everywhere. Work. Family. Responsibilities. Birthdays. Obligations. The ordinary civilian machinery that doesn’t give a damn about camera bags and mysterious forest roads.

Could this be it?

Could October finally be the month the streak bends the knee?

I hate even writing that.

We’ve kept this thing alive through bad weather, wildfire smoke, snow, rain, injuries, canceled plans, exhausted mornings, strange roads, questionable gummies, busted equipment, and the occasional absolute lunatic encountered somewhere in the Oregon wilderness.

Every month, we found a way. Sometimes barely. Sometimes through sheer stubbornness.

But we found it.

Maybe that’s why this one bothers me.

October currently feels like standing in front of a locked gate with a camera in my hand, looking through the bars at a road disappearing into the woods.

There’s still time.

Maybe another road opens. Maybe some ridiculous last-minute idea gets scribbled across a map and we find ourselves two hours from home wondering what the hell we’re doing again.

Maybe October still has teeth.

Or maybe the streak ends.

I don’t know.

And perhaps that’s the uncomfortable lesson here. These adventures were never guaranteed. The photographs weren’t guaranteed. The roads weren’t guaranteed. None of it was.

That’s probably why I’ve been writing the damn book in the first place: to preserve this strange period while I’m still standing inside it. Someday the monthly expeditions will stop. Maybe not October. Maybe not 2026. Maybe we push north in 2027 and get even more unreasonable about the whole thing.

But eventually life changes.

The trick is not mistaking one canceled trip for the end of the road.

So October isn’t dead yet.

It may be wounded. It may be staggering around behind the barn, coughing blood and muttering obscenities.

But there are still eighteen days left.

And somewhere out there is another road.

Another forest.

Another stupid idea.

And two camera bags waiting by the door.