What Stories they might Tell?

Back in the last week of July and into the first few days of August I took a usual pilgrimage back East to Wyoming/Colorado to hook up with brothers and friends and do some backpacking. Although I sometimes bitch about the lack of map reading skills on some folks part I still have the best time out there. You don't hear phones, TV's, Cars, worthless people taking up oxygen and the list goes on. You get to see country (hopefully) that very few will ever see because they can not or will not venture to such places, and all the better for the rest of us that do.

But what I am really getting at is while I drive on the interstate highways and the US highways and state highways I along with many others pass by buildings, structures of time gone by. Maybe they are houses, mills or stores but now they sit still as the world moves on. At one time they served a purpose as a home, or a place to buy goods and now they are the home to mice and other little critters. Who lived there? Who worked there? Are some of the things I wonder as I drive by or sit and take a picture of them. Why? when? How did this place become no longer needed by anyone? Will it continually waste away or will eventually somebody or something tear it down or destroy it?

We as a country are just over 230 years young and think about the progression and transformation of our surroundings. Just over a 100 years ago folks were going by wagon in long trains working their way out to Oregon where my family and I now live. Did any of them travel along the same lines that my vehicle takes me along when I travel? Did they think that someday all that great open land they saw would someday be split, divided, fenced and taken for personal wealth, gain or independence? The herds of animals they must have seen roaming around and facing the world and peoples unknown to them must have been a tremendous rush. There were no interchanges, or rest areas along the road. Every step was a scenic byway to them and not a posted scenic byway by the state or federal DOT.

I am starting a new gallery on my website area dedicated to these things. I have not got any photos in there yet, but keep checking it and it will grow. Think about those things as we live our day to day lives. Is there really a hurry to find the end? I think you need to veer from the road, path now and then to continue the adventure. Don't loose sight of where you are going but don't be blinded by having to get there in a hurry. In this post there is a shot of a house in far western Wyoming near the Utah border and the othe is in central Oregon somewhere between Burns and Bend.


Thanks for reading.


Tim