Taken during a visit to the New Windsor Cantonment where the American army finished up the Revolutionary War while waiting for peace. This guide is in the uniform of a Massachusetts regiment. He also did the musket firing and blacksmithing demonstrations. As I was processing this picture I noticed that it was taking on a kind of “painterly” quality, which I then thought to enhance. This monochrome version looks to me like a sketch. I love his expression. It looks as if he’s gazing out wistfully over a Hudson Valley landscape finally understanding that the Revolutionary War he’d been fighting for 8 years was now over and he could go home at last. Of course the reality is rather different. He’d been talking a mile a minute explaining the history of the cantonment. My friend Ken must have asked a question (it must have been Ken because we were the only two people there and if it had been me he would surely have looked in my direction) and he paused briefly to listen before charging off again with an answer. Quite amazing (And very lucky. Although as someone once said: “I’m a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.”) that I got this brief, tranquil moment in between.
