Blog Archives
Better times were but a memory
Scenes like this always get the attention of my photographic eye (you know that already, right?). There are so many stories here, and I can’t think that any of them had a very happy ending. The hand truck on the left side strikes me as the saddest part of this scene, but there are many things that are in second place.
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
photographed 9.1.2020
Falls & Fence
My challenge always is, when I’m in a place that’s been photographed a lot, is to find a different angle. Sometimes I’m successful, and other times I’m not…
Palouse Falls State Park, Washington
photographed 9.2.2020
Falls
Of course we did – of course we made a day trip over to see Palouse Falls. It is the State Waterfall, after all, and is also among the last active waterfalls on the Ice Age floods path.
The park’s website notes that it is a “remote recreational experience.” The park’s website is not wrong.
Palouse Falls State Park, Washington
photographed 9.2.2020
Park/Bench
If I were going to sit on a bench by a river, I’d want to maybe SEE the river. I’m sort of weird that way.
Wawawai County Park
Whitman County, Washington
photographed 9.4.2020
Snake River Hills
You know that I am primarily a b+w photographer. But the color of that water, though….
Maybe if you’re looking for something to read, you’d like River-Horse: a Voyage Across America, by William Least Heat-Moon. I read it, with an atlas at hand to follow the journey, when it was published in 1999. The day I made this image, I started to wonder if Heat-Moon had been along this part of the Snake River; it took me a couple of weeks after I got back to get around to finding the book on my crowded and unorganized book shelves, and I learned that he was indeed here. Here’s part of what he said, some of the loveliest words I’ve read in a while:
The shores rose steeply a few hundred feet into basins of basalt broken by fallen ramparts of volcanic crust and long ledges weathered into delicate traceries like petticoat hems or coarsely eaten into lacunas and strange shafts, the canyon virtually devoid of anything human but an empty rail line and impounded water.
– William Least Heat-Moon
along the Snake River, Washington
photographed 9.4.2020
PS: If you liked that quote from River-Horse, let me also recommend his books PrairyErth: A Deep Map and Blue Highways: A Journey Into America. (I read both of those with an atlas at hand, too.)
