Pumpkin Faces

Every year our local Friends of the Panhandle Trail in Walker’s Mill and Rennerdale host a Nightwalk on the trail.

Youth groups carve around 100 pumpkins, which are lined up along the trail and lit with tea lights.

The trail is lit at two entrances for this event, but is dark between. It was a rails-to-trails project and because rail lines tended to run on the outskirts of things it’s far from street lights or any other ambient lights, surrounded by woods.

The pumpkins look like shimmering faces in the dense darkness of an October night.

Because the pumpkins are on the ground and I want to get a face-on view, photographing these pumpkins involves either setting my camera on the ground or on a low tripod, then either crouching very low or nearly reclining to frame and focus. Plenty of concerned people stopped to ask if I needed help, lying on the ground like that!

Too bad most of them had burnt out by the time the crowd thinned enough to take photos! I’ve seen some really fantastic glowing faces on the night walk.