The quiet reminder of what once was.

Isleton, CA  - 110710

It is not necessary to change.  Survival is not mandatory.  ~W. Edwards Deming

 The West was already near death when I was born out here.  It died a few years later.  No open lands.  No unmarked lands.  No signs of pre-settlement.  No way to go back and see it as the unspoiled virgin beauty it once was.  We defiled it.   We "owned" it.  We killed it.  I count myself as part of the "we".

We look back at the early pictures (of the west) and marvel that the sheer size and beauty of the space could have absorbed and hidden for so long the damage done by unrestrained self-interest.  Our destiny is to suffer the imprisonment of places like Los Angeles, with its twelve lane "freeways," though whether in this we have the courage to find self -knowledge remains unclear - Robert Adams

We catch ourselves thinking, in the bitterness that can accompany the unexpected sound of an aluminum can bending underfoot, that it would have been merciful if Columbus had been wrong and the world flat, with an edge from which to fall, rather than a circular cage that returns us to our mistakes. The geography seems hopeless. - Robert Adams