Month: February 2015
Elwha River, Mills Bed
February 2015
The Olympic Peninsula is almost devoid of color in winter. Not so much drained as diluted, like plastic flower dye from a seldom-visited grave. But the color in this scene was startling, like witnessing the very instance of color quitting the landscape. The iron-rich seep was an altogether magnificent orange color, a thin neon glow of mining tailings or mafic lava flow. By comparison these b&w versions feel like an Ishihara test, rare geologic signatures lost in the adjacent mud pie tones.
The landscape repeats so often here that distinction can be frustratingly subtle. Windfall can provide some occasional circumstance, but never in my travels here have I seen such a cluster of alphanumeric suggestion so close together. On a remote dusk hike, it’s a little spooky, and easy to reckon some local charm of doom or warding. But of course it’s just projective testing- watch puffy white clouds long enough and monsters emerge.
