A golden haze settled over the cornfields. The sun prepared to rest for the evening, and I intended to follow. Saying goodbye to the clan (宗族) I was staying with, I headed back to camp. I looked forward to setting my camera aside for an evening to reflect on my time in Ethiopia.

It wasn’t long when I heard a voice behind me, “Photo, photo, photo.” A young Surma boy about eight years old followed closely at my heels. I breathed a tired sigh. I had no energy to press the shutter button one more time, no matter how beautiful or eager he was.

Over the past four days, many in the camp had wanted their photograph taken. I hoped the boy would find someone else to snap his photograph, but he kept following me and saying, “Photo, photo, photo.” He managed to catch my eye. With eyes wide full of hope, he asked me again with anticipation on his face.

As I looked at him, half interested, an idea for a composition flashed in my mind.

I kneeled in the cornfield and instructed the boy where to stand and how to pose. As I prepared to take the photograph, his energy suddenly shifted from eagerness to shyness to fear.

No matter what I told him to do—how to stand and how to look—I just couldn’t get the shot. Frustrated, I gave up. I looked at the boy, who looked alone and awkward. He’d wanted his photograph taken, and now he’d gone camera-shy.

In an effort to cheer him, I clapped my hands, saying, “That was great. You were great.” Others in his clan gathered around, cheering and clapping loudly. The boy’s face immediately broke into a smile. I intuitively (凭直觉地) took a few shots of the moment. That photograph turned out to be better than I’d imagined.

Every corner of the small bedroom was filled with summer heat. Hot air snaked across my chest and made my already labored breathing more difficult. At nearly ten years old, I thought I was too old to have the croup (哮吼). The bad cough told a different story.

Earlier that monring, fever and congestion (鼻塞) had been my greatest enemies. I became mad because of the mix. As the excited voices of my sister and two cousins came upstairs, I squeezed deeper into the soft bed. The closing of the front door, followed by the noise of my uncle’s old car threw me further into disappointment. They went off on an afternoon outing adventure. They were close to nature while I was stuck in bed. AGAIN!

I complained, which only served to fuel my anger. Worn out by the bad cough and the heat, I fell asleep. When I awoke, my grandmother was sitting in a chair next to my bed, peeling peas (剥豌豆皮) into a big pot.

She looked at me and smiled, “Good, Max, you’re awake.” She reached over and pressed my hand against my forehead. “Better. In a few days, you’ll be up and running around.”

“Not soon enough,” I said unhappily.

Her hands stilled for a moment, several peas held in her fingers. “Ah, the trip.”

I hit the bed hard with my fist. “They could have waited. I’m stuck here and they’re off having a good time. Why always me? Why is it me that suffers a lot again and again? It’s not fair.” Tear welled up in my eyes as I spoke.

My grandmother remained silent. Her hands again moved smoothly, continuing to shell peas as if they had a life of their own. When she finally spoke, her voice had an edge to it. “So who told you life was easy and fair?”

I looked at my grandmother in surprise and asked, “What do you mean?”

Then my sister and cousins raced into the house and said, “We got these strawberries for you.”

Imagine sitting at your breakfast table having a cup of coffee when all of a sudden you see someone about to die. What would you do? Last Christmas, John Gelinne found out.

On Dec. 26, Gelinne, 60, was watching out the back windows of his home in Edgewater, Maryland, at frozen Beards Creek (河流). Children and grandchildren were running around the house. That’s when Gelinne looked up just in time to see a small plane a few hundred yards away, losing altitude (海拔高度).

As the plane disappeared behind the trees, Gelinne, a former Navy commander, realized it was going to land in the creek. He flashed on a moment from more than20 years earlier: Sept. 11, 2001. Gelinne was at work in the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., when terrorists (恐怖分子) crashed a plane into the building. He escaped but has always wondered if he could have stayed inside and

“To the right was the crisis, and to the left was escape. I don’t even know if I could have gone right, but I went left,” he recalled. “I always second-guessed myself about that decision.”

On this day, Gelinne didn’t hesitate. He ran down to the waterfront. The plane had slipped to a stop on the broad, frozen creek, far from the shore. It was now sinking. The pilot was standing on the wing. Gelinne knew from his Navy training that even a few minutes in the icy water could kill the pilot.

Gelinne tested the ice with his foot and decided not to take any chances walking on it. So he and his son, John Ir., 37, pulled two kayaks(皮艇) out.

“I figured, if it can float on the water, it can slide on the ice,” Gelinne says. The kayaks’ paddles (桨) proved easily broken, so the pair tried using shovels (铁铲) to push the boats along. Their first attempts left them moving in circles. But with some muscle, they made progress.