It was one of those overcast winter days when the landscape seems colorless. The sky, the trees, the hills all wore the same sheen of a muted, dull gray or a washed-out green. The trees looked black against the sky and as we walked away from the house to the edge of the hill at Kentuck Knob, it was only then that color came back into the world when we looked down the hill at the farmhouse in the distance.
Winter really hit us last week. We'd had a few snowfalls here and there, two or three days where I had to get out the shovel and clear the sidewalks, but our first storm of the season came on Friday. Four or five inches covered the ground by the time we left for work at 8 a.m. and we walked down the middle of our street because the inch or two that had fallen since the plow came through made it easier to walk than trudging along the untouched sidewalks. Trains were running a little behind schedule, but we settled into a seat and watched the blanketed landscape as we passed through the towns and crossed the Meadowlands. On the bridge over the marshes, the clouds obscured everything to the north, so that looking out over the water we saw nothing beyond a few hundred feet -- no sports complex, no Harmon Meadow office complex and condo tower, no highways. It could have been the open ocean out there in the mist.
Moments after I took this photo, I was informed by security at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh that photography was not allowed in this part of the exhibition, so I put it away. But I loved the fact that I got this shot of a woman looking at one particular work of art. I wish I'd taken note of what piece it was, exactly, but I don't think I have that anywhere. I was drawn by the colors and the chaotic lines, but the otherwise calm woman gazing upon the canvas gave it scope and made this picture for me.
Nebraska Route 71 seems infinite, a straight line to the horizon, disappearing over the slightest bulge in the landscape, no doubt continuing straight on the other side.
Is this not iconic or what? The Golden Gate Bridge belongs in the mist.
