It was the last weekend of Summer as we stood above the local river in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Aryia and Bryson had made their ritual jump off the bridge which draws their Summer to a close each year. Ritualistic celebrations of the change in seasons are etched into the human experience; since ancient days we’ve used these as beats in the rhythm of our lives.

They are kids native to a Summer town. The change of seasons will bring a change in vitality and while people will come and go, year after year, these two have remained in the perpendicular to those pathways as they stand resolute in this image against the horizontal lines that surround them.

They exist in the crossroads, as they are kids on the precipice of adulthood, and their celebratory jump from an engineered structure into nature’s unsure landing is itself an allusion to the leap they soon will make as children, protected and guarded, plunging into the potential danger, but also exhilaration, of life as an adult. Emerging from the brackish water below, they rise as if baptized, ready to take on this new personhood.