Category: Landscape
-
Looking Up | East Wenatchee, WA | 2013 When the weather warms, homeless folks camp under our city’s bridges. The most popular spot is the river bridge near the 7-Eleven. Cheap coffee, nice bathrooms. So I was surprised to find a makeshift camp tucked beneath a high span miles from any conveniences. But then I…
-
Survivor | Bridgeport, WA | 2012 A few years ago wildfire scorched much of Dyer Hill, a place I never knew existed until it was burning. Driving later through the area, where charred trees still smoked, I noticed a half dozen old homesteads untouched by the flames. Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, owners had…
-
Basalt Cliff | Electric City, WA | 2013 Around 5 million years ago, heated basalt oozed repeatedly through cracks in the Columbia Basin’s surface. The flows spread and cooled, forming a vast, rolling volcanic plain. The basalt hardened into six-sided columns that continue even now to tumble, crumble and shed pieces. Highway 155 between Coulee…
-
Hush | Lake Wenatchee, WA | 2012 Wind whistles, rivers rush, footsteps fall with a stomp or scrape. Movement in nature rarely happens without producing sound. Yet we can stand deep in a forest and witness trillions of snowflakes, hundreds of tons of frozen water, succumb to gravity with barely a whisper — no, make…
-
Winter Trailer | Twisp, WA | 2013 William died a few years ago, but his trailer stands resolute through the seasons. It looks small from the crest of a nearby hill — too tiny to house such a big-hearted guy — and mice and birds have likely moved in. But William’s presence lingers even as…
-
White Shed | Moses Lake, WA | 2013 Poplars bring straight-up relief to the Columbia Basin’s recumbent landscape. Thousands of the limber trees have been planted as windbreaks, but Basin travelers most appreciate them as skybreaks — foreground high rises against a backdrop of billowing clouds.
-
Swaybacked | Badger Mountain, WA | 2011 Visual evidence of the weight of time is everywhere: eroded mountains, fallen trees, lined faces. But you can’t beat isolated farm roads for what I call scenic dilapidation, the sad but joyous consumption of once vital structures by Mother Nature. We can often see our aging selves in…
-
Bridge | East Wenatchee, WA | 2012 Underneath, I mentally map the bridged terrain. How would I cross if the span wasn’t there? It’s an easy lope down sage-and-grass hills. But to cross the surging river I’d need a boat or superior swim skills. On the other side, only an experienced rock climber could scale…
-
Field | Badger Mountain, WA | 2012 You don’t have to wander far to witness unexplained phenomena. Ants massed in a roiling ball. Orange dust blown from Asia. Or a cylinder of vapor forming and reforming over a slushy wheat field. All reminders that mysterious impulses churn our world.
-
Wenatchee, WA | 2012 This riverbank has lessons to give. Its openness accepts air and light. Its rise provides a panoramic view. Its solidity
IrwinFoto 