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The letting go
We returned home from a Thanksgiving-weekend funeral through the remains of a winter storm that had slowed our travels two days earlier.
It is the season of letting go.
Dickens County, Texas
photographed 11.29.2015
For when the rains don’t come
So, we were driving along this farm to market road, when my spouse suddenly slowed down and made a u-turn. Those maneuvers are generally so I can make a photograph, but I hadn’t noticed anything particularly photogenic.
The reason for the u-turn was because he’d seen a big crescent wrench in the road and went back to get it. For highway-safety reasons, we will assume. Anyway, while we were doing that, I noticed this scene, and the way the weeds around the pump played off the clouds and the center-pivot irrigation system on the horizon. I’m glad for the wayward wrench.
FM 1471
Crosby County, Texas
photographed 7.3.2015
Wideness of being
This is my first attempt at a panorama, and was taken from the edge of Yellowhouse Canyon in Lubbock County, Texas.
Yes! In spite of all my talk about how flat it is around here, we’ve got this gem hiding in plain sight. This is (in my opinion) the very best view in the county. We are lucky enough to own some land out here; in theory this view will some day be my every-day view. In practice? Uh…we are still in the planning stages. Normal people would have bought the land a decade ago and been living out here already for nine years. Here’s the thing: my husband’s an architect, and I have a degree in architecture, making us the worst clients ever. We make design decisions, then endlessly second-guess them. We want a big house! Or a little one! Stucco! Or that cool steel that’s made to rust on purpose! It should definitely have a courtyard! Unless a courtyard’s a dumb idea! Something on the house should be yellow, as an homage to the location! But that’s SO predictable! And so on.
On the practical side: it’ll make my drive to work 60 miles, one way. It’s nearly three miles off the pavement. There’s a very steep hill that’s impassable when it snows. It’s a long way to the grocery store.
But this view. This wide and beautiful view…
Yellowhouse Canyon, Texas
photographed 5.29.2015
Flat Land
This is the geography that I am used to. Some people think there’s nothing to see out here. Some people are wrong*.
Lubbock County, Texas
photographed 5.24.2015
*I once had a conversation, via letters, with writer William Least Heat Moon. He’s one of my favorite authors, but I took exception to something disparaging that he’d written about driving across the Texas Pandhandle, where he claimed the drive was boring and there was nothing to see. We finally agreed to disagree. He’s still wrong, of course.
One Day | One Image 