I used to love taking pictures.

Oh, I didn’t harbor any illusions that I was a photographer. But ages ago, back in college, I carried a camera with me wherever I went. At first it was a little point and shoot digicam. It had no zoom and image noise under low light, but I found myself a little bit in love with capturing the way the world looked, and the way the world looked to me.

But then my camera broke. I couldn’t afford a real camera back in those days–but I could afford a Holga. Holgas were plastic cameras that used square format film that had to be sent out for processing. They were made in China, cheap and poorly constructed. Light leaked in, streaking the film. Corners went dark. Images looked surreal.

Real photographers would probably tell you that these images were bad. Out of focus, exposed incorrectly. I didn’t care. I loved the way that this plastic camera, purchased on ebay from Hong Kong, forced me to see the dreamlike in the daily. I began to experiment with other weird cameras–like the plastic dollar store cam whose lens I coated with clear nail polish.

Eventually, I discovered the Olympus XA. It was the camera that the infamous Lomo-brand Russian camera was based upon, but despite its brand-name credit and clear, rangefinder focus, it sold for much, much cheaper. It was no bigger than my palm, and I carried it everywhere. Somehow, pictures taken with it looked like real life–only better.

But then but then but then I made the mistake of reading Susan Sontag. On Photography, specifically. It wasn’t entirely my choice–I was assigned her infamous essays as part of a school assignment. Sontag was very, very persuasive. By capturing an image of an experience, we were appropriating that experience. We were also forcing ourselves to be passive–a lens, rather than an actor. We were holding our camera between ourselves and our experiences, as a shield, of sorts, protecting ourselves from doing or feeling anything meaningful. We were recasting our experiences as interpretive acts, rather than events to be felt and had.

And I had to admit that, by this point, it was starting to feel very true. The Eckerd by my house had shut down, taking with it its photo lab with their precious and seemingly-rare matte printing. Carrying film was cumbersome. Sometimes, at parties, I felt like “a girl with the funny camera” rather than “a girl.”

So I stopped. Set my cameras aside for a time. Took a break.

In the years since, I’ve tried, on occasion, to pick up photography again. I had a few sub-par point and shoots. Their digital images were often blurry, off-color, wrong. I missed it sometimes–and so when I received a Nikon DSLR from some relatives as a very generous gift, I hoped my former love would be reinvigorated.

But carrying the Nikon was cumbersome. I still use it sometimes–and still will. But I couldn’t slip it into my pocket, much less my purse (what if the lens popped off, I worried, and was ruined?!). And honestly, I felt kind of foolish with it slung around my neck, like a huge and unwieldy albatross. Sontag was right, I thought. Cameras really do get in the way of our experiences with the world.

But lately something changed, shifted. I began to miss taking pictures something fierce. What I missed mostly was the sensation I had back in the days of my Olympus XA–that feeling of having a camera that’s an extension of your own eye, your own vision of the world. And I realized something.

When you’re a writer, you don’t need a camera to appropriate the universe. Just like a photographer, you’re always reinterpreting events around you, trying to make them fit some sort of narrative, trying to make randomness make some sort of cosmic sense.

So I gave myself permission. I bought a new camera–well, a new, used camera, a Lumix LX3. It came in the mail the other day. I took it out of its paper wrapping, looked at it skeptically. It had more heft and weight than I’d expected. Almost felt like it had been built in the 70s or 80s, like my old XA. Nervously, I went outside into the chilly day, and walked over to the cemetery across the street to take a few test shots.

I was very, very happy with the outcome.

I’m optimistic, excited about taking more pictures.This camera feels good in my hands, small and unobtrusive. It focuses quickly, takes clear pictures with little effort. I think, despite what Sontag said, that this is what cameras should be and do–a natural extension of one’s experience, rather than something that supplants it. It doesn’t just help you to see the world around you clearly, but it helps you to see the world around you better than your own naked eye ever could.

In that way, it’s a lot like writing.

I spent the weekend with my good friends Tarah and Charlie—it was a wonderful time, whittled away with shopping and Doctor Who and flowers and bees.

And The Baby-sitters Club. Charlie is eight and absolutely nutty about the BSC, as I was around her age.

Charlie and I chatted about our favorite characters. These days, I’m fonder of Claudia—such fabulous style—but back in the day, Mallory was my favorite. She was gawky, like I was, with braces and glasses and big hair, and she wanted to be an author. Hey, I did too!

Charlie’s not so into Mallory, though. It’s not because Mallory is geeky. It’s because she complains. “She thinks she’s so ugly and her life is so horrible!” Yeah, that’s a pretty accurate assessment. But she’s better than Kristy, I said. Kristy’s so bossy.

No, no, Charlie insisted. Kristy’s not bossy. She’s just a really good babysitter who cares about her job.

Hmm.

This conversation resonated perhaps a bit more than discussion of Ann M. Martin books with an eight-year-old should. It’s been an emotionally intense autumn, what with all the highs and lows of the writerly life that I’ve recently gone through. And I have to admit, I’ve sometimes given in to my kvetchier instincts. No, that’s not quite right. I’ve wallowed, even when I had no reason to. I’ve been a Mallory.

When really, my life is really pretty great. I’m just a writer who cares about my job, and I need to let myself enjoy that, too. I need to be a Kristy. A happy, proud, irrepressible girl.

(Okay, maybe I need to be a little bit of a Charlie, too.)

Do you know the word “ecotone,” Gentle Reader? It’s a liminal space, where, between biomes, where one environment and another overlap.

I love the suburbs. They seem to be full of ecotones, for better or for worse–the places where nature tries and tries to take over. The place where man beats it back. Dandelions push up through the cracks of the sidewalk. Tall grasses edge along the highway. Overpasses thrust up out of temperate rainforests.

I’ve always been a country mouse, ever since I read The Secret Garden as a girl, went out with my plastic recorder and pretended to be Dickon, trying my best to romance the New Jersey wildlife. But it wasn’t until seventh grade that I discovered that the wild world was there, too–not far from the cars and exhaust fumes. Ashley M. and Caitlin H. and I walked our bicycles out to the woods, where the boys had worn down paths and sprayed graffiti on the edges of stones. Brooks snaked their way through wild forests. Everything was green, green, green.

Two years later, Nicole and Robbie and I built a paracosm in the same woods, the last great imaginative gasp of a too-long childhood. We came home and tracked mud across my mother’s new carpet. But it was worth it; it was our kingdom.

I think you’re supposed to give up on these wild worlds at some point, when you start to become an adult? I haven’t. A few years back, I managed to get Lyme disease because every day I left the library where I worked and disappeared into the forest. I took off my shoes, dipping my toes in clean brook water. I watched the light filtered golden between branches. I flicked away mosquitoes. I breathed in emerald air and reminded myself I was still alive.

Now, I live in a suburb that’s so little boxes. And yet I’ve still managed to find a twisting, overgrown path. There’s the remnants of a castle there. Bamboo groves worthy of a thousand battles. Eagles (eagles! Bald eagles!) make their nests. I work all day behind a screen but every day I do my best to go out and breathe in the wet, woody air. Every few weeks a tree goes down, blocking the path. Nature still tries to take over.

I can’t blame her. In fact, I understand.