Moon rising over Atlantic - Corolla, North Carolina 

Earlier this week, I mentioned Natty Bumppo in this post about the wild horses that roam on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Natty Bumppo, of course, is the hero of the five novels that make up the Leatherstocking Tales, by James Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans (1826) is perhaps the best known book in the series.

What made me think of this as I was trying to slip quietly through the woods to get close enough to photograph a wild mare and colt, was this passage from Mark Twain's sarcastic and hilarious take down of Cooper's work:

"Another stage property that he [Cooper] pulled out of his box pretty frequently was the broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leatherstocking Series out to have been called the Broken Twig Series."

The piece is called "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." Read the whole thing here.

Thanks for reading Photography in Place. I hope you will come back for a visit next week. We will be looking at some of the fall color back home in Virginia.

All of the pictures from my visit to North Carolina were taken with the Pentax K10D and the Pentax FA 50mm f1.4 lens. The 50 mm lens is a very moderate telephoto on the K10D (equivalent to a 75mm on a 35mm film, or full-frame digital). I thought the lens would be a good compromise, but often wished for something wider. I know I should be using a zoom, but for some reason I just don't seem to get along well with zoom lenses.