I often feel more like a member of the clergy than of the medical profession, and it makes me realize how much the two professions have in common… I have seen fellow physicians retiring years earlier than they had planned after succumbing to compassion fatigue, the medical equivalent of battle fatigue known to veterans of armed conflict… When I feel stressed, I climb a mountain or get in my carbon-fiber canoe, and head for one of the thousands of ponds, lakes, and streams in the Adirondacks to reconnect with nature. Personal crises seem much less important when I am standing on a mountain summit or floating across a tranquil pond, surrounded by wilderness in every direction. There I can fill my brain (and my camera) with images of the heavenly landscape.

At other times Dr. Way’s camera captures portraits of his Adirondack patients that looks like they could have been from the previous century.