Storm | Twisp, WA | May 2019
Landscape Week | Memory has little respect for spectacle. As I watch an approaching storm (in photo), complete with high winds and lightning, my attention goes to a patch of reeds. They’re similar to those that cowboys (including John Wayne) used for air tubes in Hollywood westerns. Our hero would breathe through a hollow reed while hiding underwater from the bad guys. Ingenious, yes? And didn’t Red Ryder (yikes! lightning very close!) and the (more…)
Riverbank | East Wenatchee, WA | July 2019
Landscape Week | Trees don’t always know which way to grow. Conditions change; needs shift. What seems a direct path towards light becomes blocked, then dims, and a new route emerges. Problem is: Every leaf in the forest faces that same direction, every branch reaches upward to the bright. Perhaps (more…)
Wire | Peshastin, WA | July 2019
Shapes in wire fences often corral my attention. The squares, rectangles and hexagons create an overlay on reality — a grid — that allows me to focus better on segments of a scene. A door knob, a bike wheel, a neighbor’s sunglasses, the comb of a clucking chicken. A fence’s wires (more…)
Kayaker | Lake Wenatchee, WA | July 2019
Boaters moving away from shore always seem courageous. Watching them leave land to float across a fluid world — a dangerous alien environment — ranks high, I think, on a list of history’s heart-rending moments. Such as: A husband’s schooner disappears over the horizon. A warrior’s canoe rounds the farthest river bend. A girlfriend’s kayak drifts out of (more…)
Tomato | East Wenatchee, WA | July 2019
I seek ripeness, but it’s stubbornly elusive. A full ripening requires patience, and most of society — whoa, wouldja look at the time? — has to be somewhere else. Tomatoes at their ripened peak are good role models, however. Yesterday, they were pulpy potential. Today, they’re prime perfection. They sit, do nothing, yet (more…)
Chalk Tray | East Wenatchee, WA | July 2019
The playroom at a local fast-food restaurant has a blackboard hung too high for kids to use. So adults have filled it with aphorisms most children instinctively know: “Be Happy,” “You Are Enough,” “Smile and the World Smiles with You.” Oddly, someone also scrawled: (more…)
Under an Overpass | Post Falls, Idaho | July 2019
We’re meant to be on top of bridges, not beneath. I’m comfortable traversing chasms on a sturdy roadway with guard rails. But a walk through a span’s dim underside always puts me on alert, as if I’m trespassing in engineering’s secret world. (Stress points and superstructure, oh my!) Even on well-traveled roads and paths, I pass under bridges on the lookout for (more…)
View through Dirty Window | Post Falls, Idaho | July 2019
Static can fog our lives. Everyday distractions divert attention from the real world, the right now. Focus becomes a luxury. One guru recommends a Senses Census — noting in the moment what you see, hear, taste, smell, feel — to plug into the present. Me? I’m (more…)
Fence | Odessa, WA | June 2019
Dad liked making improvements. So one summer he sent my brother and me to build a damn fence across our 10-acre field. Sweaty work for two pre-teen boys. We soon developed a combative relationship with our post hole digger. We dreamed at night about barbed wire (the stretching, the nailing, the infernal nicking). And we learned to coexist with newfound friends: snakes, fire ants, hornets and horse flies. Five decades later, I appreciate (more…)
IrwinFoto 