Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Wild Sage Growing in the Weeds

Hell is a strip mall. A travel plaza. Neither natural nor cosmopolitan, such places are horror in a Tim Horton mask.

Yet in the worst places in America, where we spend most of our time on tour, I am still able to experience nature in raw and surprising ways. In the shadow of many a Motel 6, I’ve found deer, red fox, rabbits, hawks, and even coyote. Manhattan is a lost cause, but in these remaining scraps of greenery, the struggle for control has not yet been decided.

This morning, with only an hour to spare, I went for a walk behind our Comfort Inn in Ohio. I took these pictures along an abandoned train track just a stone's throw from the hotel.

A newly sprouted hayfield, furrows full of mud from the last snowfall.



Fruits on the fringes.



A burrow.



My favorite kind of ice.



My least favorite kind of ice.



In the puddle of a construction site, brave young shoots penetrate the ice. The mud was so thick that it took my shoe, and stepping out of it, I landed my sock into the freezing mush.



Yellow corn.



Red Corn.



Shotgun shell.



And then, the trees took back the tracks.

1 comment:

Laura said...

home! sweet, midwestern home!