In which our intrepid hero visits a ruined castle of glass…
Let me pick up where I left off, and show the final part of my excursion in late November 2013 north to Lake Erie and east to the environs of Cleveland. As I drove east along the shores of Lake Erie—or as close as I could get to the shores—I came an amazing site, east of Sandusky and Huron: a huge, overgrown ruin of a greenhouse complex.
In which our intrepid hero enjoys the pleasures of the horizontal plane…
There’s more than one type of flat. First, there’s Western Flat. Western Flat may be very flat and it may be very flat for a very long way but typically there are mountains in the distance. Among other things, this allows you to orient yourself. Then there is Closed In Flat. That’s when the country is flat but vision is obscured by buildings and/or trees. When I moved from El Paso to Columbus I went from Western Flat to Closed In Flat. You lose your bearings in Closed In Flat because there is nothing you can see with which to orient yourself. I easily get lost in Closed In Flat if I am not familiar with the area. Lastly, there is Open Flat. That’s just plain flatness to the horizon. Northwest and North Central Ohio is primarily Open Flat. No hills, not much woods, just a lot of farmland. That’s what I was driving through on this, the final leg of my eighth excursion.
In which our intrepid hero re-encounters a persistent mystery…
An interesting thing happened to me the other day. I was going on another excursion and had to pass through the town of Coshocton, Ohio, which happens to be a town in which I spent some time on this excursion as well (see Excursion 6, Part 3 as well as this post). I passed through Coshocton from a different direction and for a different purpose, and yet somehow the choices that I made in terms of streets to turn on managed to take me past the same old industrial buildings I had seen on my first trip and past the same urns (see below) I had passed by on my first trip. Although completely unintentionally, my brain had decided to take me on the same turns and I ended up in the same places. It occurs to me that this is a useful analogy to our own lives: all too frequently we think we are starting anew, but we end up back in the same old spots, despite all intentions.
Unearthed Ohio 