ROB AMBERG’S PLACE
On Thursday Susie, Todd and I were invited for butternut soup and a salad at the home of Rob Amberg and Leslie Stillwell who hosted Rob’s 75th birthday party in Letojanni. We wound up a dirt road that curved on the contours of the hill past places like Big Pine and Little Pine and Katie’s Road. Higher and higher we went, deep in the woods, to the mountain cabin on a knoll where Rob and Leslie live and Kate was brought up. They live in a spacious log cabin, with rooms added so Leslie’s mother could live with them until she died. Beside it is a rental house which has a workroom for Leslie and a workroom for Rob, that still has a darkroom although he has transitioned to digital photography. Beside it is a barn with an airbnb apartment which is used for storage. They have chickens and sheep that keep the weeds in the pasture down in 75 acres of mountain land, a huge wooded spread. It was so good to see where they live. Leslie has a soap business and Rob works on photographs, right now on finishing up his book, Little Worlds.
You can access his photographs at RobAmberg.com where you can see photographs from the book and sign up for a copy, even helping him with his fundraiser to pay for the book which he is publishing himself. The walls of his studio are lined with photographs from other well known photographers with whom he has exchanged photographs. The book is a new venture for him, partly an overview of 50 years of photographs of Madison County, partly a journal record of those photos and partly an imagined view of what Madison County will be like in 50 years.
Leslie and Rob are so gracious and welcoming. The visit was marvelous, and certainly unlike anything I could experience in any of the countries I am visiting. It was a wonderful time.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 