Sometimes, when the road is closed, you just need to get out and walk.
Sometimes a 'Road Closed' sign is just a hike you've been meaning to take for years anyway.
This weekend, while recovering from the flu, I struck out driving around in the backwoods, river-hugging, barely-paved roads of Old Ellicott's Mills, (now Ellicott City) Maryland, trying to get a bit of a nature fix and mind-clearing time without a real hike through the twenty-two square miles of state park accessible from town. I turned onto the aptly named River Road, blithely ignoring a sign taking up a lane of the one-and-a-half-lane paved mud pit that road becomes in certain weather, a sign which read 'Road Closed Ahead Local Traffic Only'. I am local traffic, after all. But just past the currently-inhabited houses, past the first of a series of long-abandoned barns and outbuildings from the mill town that once stood on the oft-flooding banks of the Patapsco, past the single parking space and easy point of turnaround on that stretch, the road was well and entirely blocked off. So, against all good sense, I turned around and parked my car in that one little space. And I hiked up the hill, away from the flooding river that may well have been the reason for the official roadblock further on, toward a house I had been meaning to investigate for close to ten years.
I've always had an excuse not to explore it: the road being slightly too busy in terms of vehicular traffic, the parking space being full of mud, occasional 'No Trespassing' signs (though those have long since fallen down), cold weather, hot weather, bug-filled weather, wary passengers, schedules. All I had this time was an uneasy feeling I'd relapse into the flu if I spent too much time walking around in leaf mold and other unknown allergens this unseasonably warm day. So I went. And I wound up standing ten feet from a deer who hadn't yet seen me, a gorgeous lady tree-cow at home in the shelter of a barn that hadn't seen human interference in decades. I wound up discovering something like the holy wells one practically trips over in Ireland. I watched the sun set through the forest over the river from one of the very few abandonments of our old railroad town that hadn't been covered in graffiti, probably for the same reasons I hadn't previously explored the tiny set of buildings myself. And I got an inkling of an idea for a new Big Photo Project. We'll see if it turns out.
For quite some time now, I've had a statement of kylecassidy's rattling around in my head that the photo you don't take today is one you never do. Shooting abandonments in a quickly gentrifying area as I do, this is as true as it is for portraits and events; I have seen many historic buildings razed for overpriced housing before I took the opportunity to photograph them. It was good, just this once, to let that reminder stand as a challenge and prove it wrong. Even if I relapsed a little. Now that I've been there once, I'll be back. It's easier now. And I'll be back with a better camera, and a worse, film, one. And, if I'm lucky, company.
This weekend, while recovering from the flu, I struck out driving around in the backwoods, river-hugging, barely-paved roads of Old Ellicott's Mills, (now Ellicott City) Maryland, trying to get a bit of a nature fix and mind-clearing time without a real hike through the twenty-two square miles of state park accessible from town. I turned onto the aptly named River Road, blithely ignoring a sign taking up a lane of the one-and-a-half-lane paved mud pit that road becomes in certain weather, a sign which read 'Road Closed Ahead Local Traffic Only'. I am local traffic, after all. But just past the currently-inhabited houses, past the first of a series of long-abandoned barns and outbuildings from the mill town that once stood on the oft-flooding banks of the Patapsco, past the single parking space and easy point of turnaround on that stretch, the road was well and entirely blocked off. So, against all good sense, I turned around and parked my car in that one little space. And I hiked up the hill, away from the flooding river that may well have been the reason for the official roadblock further on, toward a house I had been meaning to investigate for close to ten years.
I've always had an excuse not to explore it: the road being slightly too busy in terms of vehicular traffic, the parking space being full of mud, occasional 'No Trespassing' signs (though those have long since fallen down), cold weather, hot weather, bug-filled weather, wary passengers, schedules. All I had this time was an uneasy feeling I'd relapse into the flu if I spent too much time walking around in leaf mold and other unknown allergens this unseasonably warm day. So I went. And I wound up standing ten feet from a deer who hadn't yet seen me, a gorgeous lady tree-cow at home in the shelter of a barn that hadn't seen human interference in decades. I wound up discovering something like the holy wells one practically trips over in Ireland. I watched the sun set through the forest over the river from one of the very few abandonments of our old railroad town that hadn't been covered in graffiti, probably for the same reasons I hadn't previously explored the tiny set of buildings myself. And I got an inkling of an idea for a new Big Photo Project. We'll see if it turns out.
For quite some time now, I've had a statement of kylecassidy's rattling around in my head that the photo you don't take today is one you never do. Shooting abandonments in a quickly gentrifying area as I do, this is as true as it is for portraits and events; I have seen many historic buildings razed for overpriced housing before I took the opportunity to photograph them. It was good, just this once, to let that reminder stand as a challenge and prove it wrong. Even if I relapsed a little. Now that I've been there once, I'll be back. It's easier now. And I'll be back with a better camera, and a worse, film, one. And, if I'm lucky, company.