Tag Archives: landscape

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6 (5/4/2013)

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Excursion 6, Part 3 (Builders of Special Machinery)

In which our intrepid hero comes across a graveyard of industry…

It is my opinion that travel is infinitely better when you are in control of the travel.  I hate being a passenger, whether in a bus, tax, train or plane.  I don’t like not being able to make decisions, I don’t like not being able to choose my travel companions, I don’t like looking out the side of something, as opposed to looking out the front.  When I was a kid, I did not like long trips at all—and why should I have liked them, stuck in the back seat for hours.  But put me behind the wheel of a car and it is very different.  Then, even when I am still not the master of my fate it still seems as if I have a role to play.  Give me a traffic jam over a long runway wait any old day of the week.

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July 7, 2013

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Excursion 6 (5/4/2013)

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Excursion 6, Part 2 (The Deception of Distance)

In which our intrepid hero encounters dead trees, dead cars and dead buildings…

One of the most interesting things about taking back-country drives is that the scale of everything changes.  The distance scale, for example, grows enormously.  Ohio is a relatively small state, and I am centrally located within it, so theoretically I can reach even the most distant parts of the state in three and a half hours.  But that is making a bee-line on a highway.  Once you start driving on curvy, back-country roads, especially driving relatively slowly to spot potential subjects for photographs (and stopping on occasion to actually take them), 20 miles somehow becomes a great distant, not a short jaunt.  Sixty miles is a huge distance.  On the other hand, the time scale slows down.  Because you are in no particular hurry, and paying attention to your surroundings rather than the clock, time passes quickly for you.  The combination of these two means that you can spend many, many hours in a vehicle and discover that you have really never driven more than 60 miles away from your starting point (though your total mileage may be much greater).

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June 17, 2013

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Excursion 5 (4/27/2013)

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Excursion 5, Part 1 (Head South, Young Man)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a mystery building…

One of the saddest things about life is that we can never re-live things we experience.  Do you remember a time when you were deep in the throes of a new love—how that person made you think, how it made you feel?   Do you remember the first time you saw your favorite movie and how it made you feel?   You can’t get those feelings back; you can only vaguely remember and appreciate what it was like to have them.  It’s a less illegal version of that first hit of heroin—even if you married that person you fell in love with and have been happily with that person for decades, you don’t physically feel the same way about them.  Literally, the chemistry is different.  And you can watch that movie again, but you won’t be scared or amused or moved to the same extent that were the first time.  The movie has worn grooves in your brain now; it is no longer as fresh.  You can’t get that “first time” back.

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June 11, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 7 (Visit to the Far Side)

In which our intrepid hero feels a sense of deja moo…

One of the sad things about driving around and taking photographs is that, even if the photographs turn out well, even if one of the photographs actually (purely by luck) turned out to be quite high quality, the person who sees that picture will still not have experienced the scene the way my eyes did.  There are times when I wish I could just invite people into my eyeballs so that they can see a scene in just the way my own eyes perceived it.

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June 11, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 6 (Bridges? We don’t need no stinking bridges!)

In which our intrepid hero discovers a perilous way to check the mail…

There’s a sort of development that I call “strip” development.  I am not referring to a strip mall but rather to an artifact of terrain.  There are many places across the country where there is only a small area of relatively flat land, backed up against a hill or mountain.  On the other side is perhaps a river or maybe another hill.  Along this terrain meanders a road, with a continuous train of buildings and houses constructed in that narrow strip of land between the road and the hill.  You can’t develop to the back, so you just keep on building to the side in a long, thin strip.  In regions dominated by hilly or mountainous terrain this sort of development is extremely common.

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June 9, 2013

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Excursion 4 (4/20/2013)

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Excursion 4, Part 5 (Take Me to the River, Drop Me in the Water)

In which our intrepid hero continues his journey towards the mystical Ohio river…

I am no student of architecture but anybody who looks at enough buildings, or pictures of buildings, will eventually begin to pick up on certain architectural styles from certain eras.  That is certainly true for mundane residences and businesses.  Often you can look at a house and pretty much know when it was likely to have been built, just from its appearance.  Leaving aside signs of aging, buildings go through fads and trends just like anything else.  One such trend certainly appeared in the 19th century.  If one looks at early photographs of American towns and farmhouses, certain types of brick structures appear so often that they are often a signature—though it is true that in the 20th century some buildings were constructed in a “retro” fashion, inspired by or duplicating that earlier style.

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June 5, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 5 (Rivers and Shacks)

In which our intrepid hero finds himself over a river without a paddle…

On my excursions—which don’t really have any specific endpoint—I drive and take pictures until my enthusiasm begins to wane.  Then I turn around and start heading back, either through more back roads or via faster routes, depending on my patience.  I’ve noticed though, that no matter how I drive back home, I always take far fewer pictures on the return leg of the journey.  Psychologically, I suppose, I have already switched into “get home” mode…

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June 4, 2013

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Excursion 3 (4/13/2013)

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Excursion 3, Part 2 (I am Ozymandias, King of Kings)

In which our intrepid hero encounters a triumphantly twisted ruin…

There is something about things that are old, ungainly and decaying that fascinate me.  I’ve always been that way.  This is why I exult in the glorious truck-hulks that appear in the much underrated 1977 film Sorceror, for example, and one of the reasons I like movies that depict slums, ghettoes, or old buildings.  These sorts of things have always resonated very deeply with me—this notion of things that once were strong or great but are so no longer.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had it dead-on with his sonnet “Ozymandias”:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away

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May 26, 2013

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Excursion 2 (4/6/2013)

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Excursion 2, Part 3 (The Mystery Vase)

In which our intrepid hero discovers an intriguing and mysterious urn…

When some people drive alone for a distance, they are able somehow to tune themselves out.  Perhaps they immerse themselves in music from the radio, or CDs or MP3s.  Maybe they just focus on the road.  Sometimes I am able to do that, especially if I am weary, or if the traffic or weather is such that I really need to concentrate.  But all too often I am very conscious that I am with myself.  My thoughts roam far and wide.  This is a bad thing if you are depressed or if something unhappy just happened; your mind gets stuck in a loop and you endlessly replay conversations or are simply unable to get away from fears and anxieties.  But if you don’t have those monsters lurking inside you that day, your mind can instead be a “happy place,” where you can absorb and process what you see in a mindset of peace and serenity.  You can almost feel the dopamine kicking in when you get into such a contemplative, almost meditative mood.  When this happens, I find it more than relaxing; it is almost as if my cares are falling away from me as I speed down the road…

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May 26, 2013

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Excursion 2 (4/6/2013)

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Excursion 2, Part 2 (“Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys?”)

In which our intrepid hero visits a graveyard of an unusual sort…

One of the most interesting things about driving in a rural area is that many people treat their property—their land, their front yard, or even their porch—as their own personal junkyard.  Junked cars, old refrigerators, broken furniture—you name it, you can probably find it alongside the road somewhere.   Most of this junk is fairly predictable, but every now and then something will surprise you…

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