Winter has happened this year, or at least February has already been properly cold and snow-filled. We’ve had some wonderful days of blowing, bitter snow storms. A thick layer of snow covers the ice on the local pond. The storms keep people inside, and so naturally I’m compelled to be out, wandering the streets and parks and open spaces. Even through the haze of snow and the monochrome winter afternoons, the promise of spring lurks in the tree branches tinged with yellow. Soon they will explode in the fresh growth of a new year. But not yet. Today winter still rules.
I paused to rest and to watch the sun hang in the orange sky. Breathing heavily, salt in my hair, and dust on my legs. The weak evening light doing little to warm me. These are the sensations that remind me I’m alive. Exertion. Fatigue. Dirt. Offline. Alone. Chill.
#210112
What, I wondered, reminds him that he’s alive? Exertion? Dust? Sweat? Followers? Texts? Is he ever alone? Is he lonely? Why did he come to the top of the hill this evening to look at his phone? Perhaps he gets better reception here.
I had been driving for hours when the sun finally clawed its way over the horizon. The endless black that had enveloped me since I had started out was replaced by endless sky and grasslands. And wind. Always the wind. Barbed wire fences suggested that cattle grazed on the land, somewhere. Windmills suggested that they got thirsty now and then. The ramshackle houses and barns suggested that the few people who used to live in these grasslands had moved away. I stood there in the cold wind, listened to it whistle through the barbed wire, blow through the grasses, and spin the rotor on the windmill. I enjoyed the emptiness.
#210110
Then the drone of a long-haul truck reached me. Carried forward on the strong wind, its engine sounded much higher pitched than the Doppler effect could have produced. Then, as it roared by, the drone stretched out into a long, low moan. I turned, climbed back through the barbed wire fence, got into my car, and continued north.
A cold wind whistled through the branches. The winter wind is different. Not simply frigid, though it is surely that, even the slightest breeze produces a haunting, lonely sound. I stand at the edge of a meadow listening to an arboreal death rattle, frozen branches creaking as dry air wheezes through a bronchial network of branches. The winter wind is bitter and unforgiving. But to confront that wind, to feel the biting cold on your exposed skin, to shiver as it steals inside your collar, is to experience life. The cold is a reminder that you are alive.
Roll after roll. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, lie in fields waiting to be retrieved, moved, sold, or whatever. Judging by the hundreds piled around the edges of fields and along roadsides, many of these rolls will end up rotting, reminders of how difficult it is to correlate production and consumption. That day in western Kansas, standing in a seemingly endless field dotted with more than a hundred amber rolls contrasting with the pale blue sky, it was easy to focus on just the beauty and stillness of the place, to ignore the interstate highway just a couple miles away over the horizon, the interstate that has both facilitated the overproduction of produce and helped sell those surpluses.
For years I couldn’t imagine walking into an office building or a bank or department store or any other public space and not seeing an ashtray. Not because I noticed them, but because they were ubiquitous. Standing ashtrays just inside the entry doors, ashtrays on counters next to the bank teller, ashtrays attached to the wall between sinks in the bathroom. Fancy ashtrays always adorned the executive’s desk, often a tendril of smoke wafting up from the half-finished cigarette lingering in one of the depressions along the edge. Today ashtrays have been reduced to decor in pseudo-nostalgic TV shows such as “Mad Men” that receive accolades for their retro-aesthetic.
As somebody who has never smoked, I don’t miss the days when the haze of smoke clouded offices and every restaurant reeked of burning tobacco. But I do miss the design and aesthetic of ashtrays (I find the aesthetics of vaping uninteresting). And I wonder what other furniture of our lives is disappearing as it is replaced by a new aesthetic.
Kanorado’s Grain Elevator.
Wandering across a couple states recently, I paused to admire grain elevators, so many of them interestingly different in small ways — a handful of tall, thin silos conjoined rising up from the plain, faded and flaking whitewash on the outside, “Co-Op” often painted near the top along with the community’s name, an array of elevators and conveyor belts and other mechanics attached to the outsides, train tracks running alongside some. Increasingly the grain elevator that seems so iconic are being replaced by squat, corrugated metal silos. These new grain elevators are, no doubt, more efficient or cost effective or something. But they lack something. Their homogeneity arising from their mass and therefore uniform production, their dull gray corrugated exteriors, their squat, uninteresting shapes all augur for an aesthetically boring future.
Birds and Grain.
I am not the first to pause on grain elevators. The pioneering work of Bernd and Hilla Becher is outstanding here. They became fascinated with what they called “nomadic architecture,” buildings that might last a century before disappearing. Their photographs of, inter alia, grain elevators, blast furnaces, and water towers reminds us to pause and appreciate the design of even the most mundane and utilitarian buildings and objects before they disappear.
I recently returned to the Park (the proper name is the Arcadia Community Regional Park, but to the hoards of us who marauded around it as kids, it was just the Park) where I spent so much of my pre- and early-teen childhood. Especially those long summer days. The sun, seemingly stuck in the sky somewhere just past noon, burning down with particular intensity, baking the metal merry-go-round and the rocket ship to a skin-searing million degrees, or so we claimed. The sand offered little relief from the temperature and no cushion from a fall. When we could no longer endure the heat, we would wander over to the pool and try not to get yelled at for doing flips off the diving board. In those eternal afternoons everything seemed harsh and faded in the blazing sun. Today I still see the Park as desaturated and overexposed.
The Lawn Bowling greens were never very popular.
Wandering through the park I was immediately drawn to the Lawn Bowling greens. As kids we would hop the chainlink fence, which at three feet was surely more aesthetic than functional, and run around on the manicured grass until some worker would chase us out yelling something about ruining the lawns. Why, we thought, do the old people get the nice lawns and shaded benches while we have to put up with blazing hot, rough sand? Lawn bowling continues, apparently, to be something of a niche pastime.
Wasted many summer afternoons at this pool.
The pool was a mixed bag. It offered some respite from the heat, but you couldn’t chase each other around it (no running allowed, the sign said and the lifeguard enforced), you weren’t supposed to do flips off the diving boards (another rule announced by a sign and enforced by a lifeguard), and it seemed always to be crowded with moms and their little kids.
Wandering through the Park I couldn’t help but recall those summer days and to lament the loss not of innocence but of the rocket ship, the merry-go-round, and the sand. I also couldn’t help but see the Park in overexposed and desaturated scenes. None of the photos I took that day looked quite right — the colors too vivid; the light too soft. For me, the Park will always be vaguely overexposed and desaturated. Nostalgia seems to be what I photographed that day.
Looking out across the backyard this afternoon I watched a cloud of leaves fall to the ground. Despite the warm, humid day, fall is coming. As the days become shorter and the sun meanders more obliquely across the sky, I look forward to the most colorful season of the year.
Autumn hikes are magical. The rustling of dry leaves in the trees when a cool breeze blows gently through them. The sound of your footfalls muffled by the bed of red and orange and yellow leaves. These are the moments that make fall so special.
Soon, however, all the leaves will have fallen. And then winter will usher in its own quiet, monochrome beauty. But until then, I will enjoy the technicolor splendor of fall.
The deserts of the south west is an inhospitable place. Hot. Dry. Desolate. Even the plants and animals most adapted to the climate seem to struggle just to survive. Edward Abbey warned us against venturing into those deserts. Only the foolhardy ignore his warnings. And yet some of us are unable to resist the siren calls of those lands. Abbey himself was succumbed again and again to the lure of the deserts. His body lies in a concealed grave somewhere in the parched lands in southern Arizona.
Those of us drawn to the deserts can’t explain the attraction any more than Odysseus could explain the beauty of the songs coming from the Sirenum Scopuli. The beauty of the place is inexplicable.
I am happy that most people will never want to spend time in the desert. The emptiness allows me to contemplate the artistry and grandeur, the splendor and finesse of this country.
You had been wandering the streets for a few hours looking for some scene, some storefront, courtyard, or back alley. Now and then you sought shelter from the drizzle, ducking into a café or standing in a doorway. The dreary sky and glistening cobblestones suited the city, which somehow seems to glow with its own internal light. Although you started in the center amongst the cacophony of shoppers and strollers, you prefer the surrounding districts with their distinct personalities. Your path wound further and further out into the less trafficked neighborhoods. Then, when the snow started to fall, you left the streets behind and wandered into ….
Alone in a garden with snow-covered fountains.
A heavy snow had been falling for a couple hours by the time I passed through the gates. It was a lovely evening, I thought, to linger in the imperial gardens. As I wound my way deeper into the gardens I passed the occasional visitor walking back along the pathways toward the exit and the city beyond the walls. We exchanged nods or fleeting pleasantries about the weather. At some point I realized that I had stopped seeing other people. Even their footprints were disappearing gathering darkness. Wandering amongst the trees and past the empty fountains, their sculptures blanketed in snow, I felt as if I had the place to myself.
Soon even their footprints would disappear.
Oh shit, I thought, I do have the place to myself. I haven’t seen anybody for at least 30 minutes. It is unmistakably dark now. And although it is not cold, a heavy, wet snow continues to fall from the leaden sky. It’s 7:00 now. What time do they lock the gates? I had only glanced at the sign as I entered, but I seem to recall 5:30. Surely that was just a suggestion, or when they stopped letting people into the gardens.
Fifteen minutes later, standing in front of the really tall, really locked gates, I am rethinking my decision not to pay attention to the time. There is no one-way turnstile to let people out, as I had vaguely hoped there might be. There is no guard in the guardhouse to save absent-minded visitors from themselves. No. There is just a formidable gate, topped with spikes that are clearly more than just aesthetic embellishments. I have a perverse appreciation for the symmetry of these gates. Originally designed to project an image of strength and authority outwards to the masses, and to keep those people out, these gates and the walls surrounding the gardens work equally well to trap people inside. Just to be sure, I push on the gates. They neither move nor even make a sound. Standing there in the dark silence of the garden, I can hear cars accelerate from the intersection just 50 yards and a 10-foot wall from me.
Worth every minute of effort.
After checking various other gates to confirm that they too are locked for the night, I begin looking for the section of wall I can most easily scale, importantly a section without the big, sharp spikes along the top. And I’m wondering what the penalty will be should I get caught. Surely I can talk my way out of a night in jail, but given the local preference for fines, I suspect it will cost me.
Speaking of fines, isn’t there a police station by one of the entrances? Not, of course, the one close to me. In fact, given the direction I wandered the perimeter, that entrance is rather far from me. Did I mention the snow, which an hour ago was lovely but is now considerably less so? As I trudge back through the snow, I think: I might be spending the night under the stairs behind the palace. At least that’ll be a story.
Oh good, there’s the station. And I see somebody inside.
