Nearing the final leg of my journey back from Arizona, descending from the mountain pass and getting ready to turn left… South… so as to end up in San Diego and not… perish the thought… in Los Angeles… I took that photo. It sort of sums up modern life, in a way. I was in the high desert, surrounded by snow-topped mountains, and when I wasn’t seeing the mountains behind rows of palm trees, there were power lines and power poles and wind turbines.
We want to live surrounded by the beauty of nature… but we want our power too.
And humans have gotten really bad at coexisting with nature. The Pueblo Native American people did it really well, and I had just passed close to their original homelands. Have you seen pictures of their cliff dwellings? They blend in with the environment so well they seem to be a part of it. We do strip malls and housing complexes.
We scar and defile the very beauty we want to live near.
I think that a lot of people who live where they have a spectacular view get so jaded, so used to it, that they take it for granted. I grew up in the hills across the bay from San Francisco. I knew many people who had views of the Bay Area that would blow your mind. A lot of them just stopped looking at. Oh, they might glance now and then, or pause to look at a particularly nice sunset, but they didn’t drink it in anymore. It was just a thing that was there.
I find that unutterable sad. I do have to say that I don’t mind the wind turbines. Not just because they have their own interesting charm, but because I know that they are helping to save the very natural environment that they often block the view of. They will, hopefully, help that beauty stay around a little longer, or at least let humans survive to look at it for a little longer.
We could bury the power lines underground. They do it in some places, but it is expensive.
I don’t know what to do about the strip malls and the fast food places. Maybe we can bury them underground. That might help some humans live a little longer too.
And I do love clouds.
Almost as much as I hate strip malls.
Did you spot the dinosaurs? There were two of them. Or one of them in two of the photos.
Pouring My Art Out 