By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Semi-arid lands do not often come to mind when one envisions beautiful countryside. One attribute it affords the beholder is its accentuation of geology and a sense of timelessness. Left undisturbed, change is often not of importance to nature as it seems decades later to not have evolved. Only what humanity leaves behind tends to show aging in what we consider time, mirroring more of us than the environment.
The landscape does justice to tranquility.
(click each to enlarge)
What struck me of the above scene was the complete conveyance of “vastness”. To the eye, the hills epitomized what is known as a vanishing point. I realized then in experiencing this how strange this testament was to the notion of vastness. My thinking mind found it hard to dismiss when compared to that of the night sky, where one can at a glance witness distances of billions of light years, upon a humanly immesurable time continuum. But to us what appears in the night sky to lack depth perception to the human mind probably makes this desert scene appear greater. Billions of years compared to billionths of a second is the contrast between light’s travel from the stars compared to the hills. Yet somehow the latter seems farther.
The Basalt of the Earth
Purple from Rain
From Road to Ruins
What’s not to lichen
And thus begins tomorrow’s renewal.
Photographs (C) 2021 By Darren Smith