Month: December 2012
Nurse cedars/snags + high-water mark
Aldwell lakebed, December 2012
I’ve been coming here since they drained the lake, trying to get a handle on the project. It’s such a cumulative landscape, difficult to isolate what you are seeing in distinctly-portioned frames. I usually end up wandering in the alluvial fan, taking a few images of miniature silt canyons that have no scale or distinction.
I went back with a 5″x12″ banquet format camera yesterday, which made it a little easier getting an overview. There’s a fugitive sense of the current (pun intended) with this wider view, as the flow lines add a sense of both duration and endurance, if not permanence outright.
Wind, Rain, Sun, Shack on Stilts
Artillery Hill, Fort Worden, November 2012
You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To make fun of my way of doing things,
Or else fun of Orion’s having caught me.
“Has a man,” I should like to ask, “no rights
These forces are obliged to pay respect to?”
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.
– Robert Frost, The Star-splitter
