Category: Landscape
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Mountain | Prosser, WA | June 2019 Sunrise burns away haze, lights up the mountaintop. The peak is actually quite distant — more than 100 miles — but clear air and a telephoto lens allow western and eastern Washington to merge with no trouble. That’s rare, since the state’s two regions (urban vs. rural) squabble…
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LIGO | Hanford, WA | June 2019 Black holes and neutron stars collided long ago to produce gravity waves that ripple through the fabric of the universe. Which means the Earth, your body and that breakfast burrito you ate in the car were all crinkled for an instant by distant cataclysms. Me? I hardly noticed.…
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Shed | Trinidad, WA | June 2019 Emptiness has its own allure. Blank landscapes, barren hills, cloudless skies, walls enclosing nothing. It’s my desired mental state, if only for a
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Creek | Colfax, WA | June 2019 We don’t fully appreciate the play of light until we see it frolic across a stretch of Palouse hills. Together, photons and farmscape create a world new to most of us. Shadows shift. Shapes lack edges. Colors deepen and
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Cows Grazing | Dusty, WA | June 2019 Standing in a field doing nothing has to be one of life’s most underrated activities. It’s just you and the grass — and the insects, rodents, reptiles, birds, cows, breezes, sunshine and soul of the farmer who planned and planted the whole thing. All there, relaxed in…
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Darkness Ahead | Lacrosse, WA | June 2019 This ominous road sign (blacked out by work crews) stood against a landscape veiled in wildfire smoke and seared by noonday sun. It gave me pause. If God doesn’t speak in a booming voice but instead through earthly signs and symbols, then shouldn’t I take heed? Five…
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Painted Bus | Washtucna, WA | June 2019 In retirement I’m more alert to things transformed. People and objects that have found new uses — new paths, new purposes — prove that vitality lies ahead. For decades, this derelict bus (in a field at a rural intersection) has served as a
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Distance | East Wenatchee, WA | May 2019 Layers soothe and excite. Their repetition draws us away from the immediate moment (hard work, crying kids, overdue bills) and simultaneously deepens our yearning for
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Sign at Sunset | Coulee City, WA | May 2019 When I was a kid in Louisiana, Mom would sometimes drive us 40 miles to a Holiday Inn for comforts we lacked at home. Air conditioning, swimming pool, color TV, little soaps, drinking glasses wrapped in paper. “Honey, see if you can find some ice…
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Marmot | East Wenatchee, WA | May 2019 Urban Nature Series | Marmots are maddening critters. Just ask our poodle, who is tortured by their warning chirps from rocky ridges. “Over here! No! Over here!” I watch our dog dash frantically back and forth, chirp to chitter, and know that could be me — with…
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