Rural ranchland of southwestern Colorado.
We’ve been rambling through the rural western U.S. on a series of road-trips. Now it’s time to pause for a bit of reflection. I’m greatly enjoying this series and hope you are too. It’s been great to get away from photography topics for awhile and celebrate the reason I do it in the first place. I first got into photography on my first ever solo road-trip at the tender age of 18.
A couple months after graduating high school I escaped my east-coast birthplace and drove across country in my Pontiac. I’d been given a little manual camera as a gift. Knowing nothing of the rule of thirds or anything else about photography, I shot many rolls of Kodachrome on that trip. To this day documenting subjects I find while traveling is my #1 reason for doing photography. I’m more serious about it now, with the added motivation of artful expression thrown into the mix. But it’s still all about exploration and inspiration.
An old wood Baptist church sits in the Ozarks of southern Missouri.
America celebrates horses (and doesn’t eat them): wild foal and mare, North Dakota.
The trips I’ve featured in this series have balanced visits to natural wonders with route variations that take in remnants of rural America and its history. What is so fascinating about many parts of the country is the way that these three (the land, its human history and the way people interact with it now) are interwoven. It’s possible when traveling in sparsely-populated areas, especially in the West and parts of the Midwest, to feel the power that the landscape exerted on past explorers and settlers, both native and white. And it’s fascinating to see how the land continues to influence the way modern people live on it.
An old-time antebellum mansion on Georgia’s Atlantic coast.
Tending the land demanded bigger families in America’s past. These folks lived at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in what was New Mexico Territory.
But everywhere you go in this great country it’s impossible to escape the obvious: things have changed in fundamental ways. Gone are those days when most people made their living off the land, when they stayed at or very near their birthplaces for their whole lives. Here’s an important fact about American history: those relative few who did not stay home were critical to shaping the young country. They were responsible for America spreading westward to the Pacific. They created the reality of the American spirit and formed the basis for the myths that would later be woven into that reality.
A cemetery out on the windblown plains of western Oklahoma.
Interior of a round barn: southeastern Oregon.
Nowadays nearly everyone moves somewhere else. The same kinds of motivations are at work for us as for our forebears: a desire to start anew. But since travel today does not entail near the hardship of days past, many more people move. A person who is willing to take the chance that moving across country may mean that some of the family will die on the way is quite different than one who drives a U-Haul to California for a new job. The latter is taking risks, but nothing like the former, whose life could literally collapse around her.
A cabin draws a small herd of free-range horses at the base of remote Steens Mountain, Oregon.
Crystal River runs down one of my favorite little valleys in the Colorado Rockies, home to a lucky few.
In my own travels through the west I’ve often tried to put myself into the boots of those risk-takers. I imagine riding into rough country without maps, where my destination was more hope than reality, where I was in very real danger of being assaulted by robbers or bands of vengeful braves. The change that has overtaken the world has not spared the western U.S. But in out-of-the-way corners it is still possible to see things that have changed little, or even not at all. And that’s what this series was all about. (I say ‘was’ but I’ll return to the theme again when the mood strikes.) Thanks for reading!
Spring daffodils bloom at an old cabin in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee.
The Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee live up to their name.
