in the shadows of clouds
enf and i have safely returned from our whirlwind east coast tour de nostalgia...while there are many aspects of the trip that i'm interested in trying to write about, i'm going to first subject you to a somewhat lengthy rambling observation that, instead of editing, i will place behind a cut:
musings from an airplane
floating along above the baltimore washington area's maze of culs de sac...some glittering in the sun, some in the shadows of clouds
observing variations in the design on inter and intrastate interchanges...clover leaf and oblong partial cover leaf, a trumpet with an extra arm...
enf comments on how surprising he finds the east coast's lack of grids...yes, there are grid systems at work in the urban areas but the fields we're gliding over are irregular shapes bordered on one side by the line of a road, another by a curve of trees...
hills begin to radiate in rippling arcs...suburban sprawl gives way to more greenery and clusters of buildings following the topography...roads are sandy colored ribbons and the foliage on the hills is just starting to come alive (heh) with the fiery colors of fall...i miss that...bright orange, ochre, and red leaves...ooo, especially maples...the first chill in the air and the smell of fireplaces...a melancholy joy because as much as i loved the autumn, i was thrilled to leave behind the chapped lips, dry skin, big coats, grey days and icy sidewalks that accompanied winters on the east coast.
higher up now
enf is talking with the man in the next seat over...a kindly-seeming retired surveyor whose career also included creating computer models of terrain from usgs topography maps either for or with the us army corps of engineers.
enf says that we must be following us 70 across the country; the pilot just announced that indianapolis is coming up in 60 miles on our right. the patches of fields i can see between the islands of cottonball clouds are much more rectilinear here, though a wide stripe of freeway cuts some into diagonals while rivers and irregular necklaces of trees give others sinuous and irregular boundaries. there are fewer trees here than there were in the east and no vast areas of foliage...trees appear as lines rather than blocks.
passing indianapolis there is again a profusion of culs de sac, but also within more rectilinear constrains...winding streets and large houses on proportionally small yards squeezed into a rectangle.
moving west the rectilinear trend only intensifies. the land is a patchwork of tans, browns, siennas and greens; the pale streets form seams between the hues and the fabric is specked with farms. a city passes under us; is it st. louis? we see no arch. perhaps it is urbana? there is a wide river that seems to almost terminate at the western edge of town. its airport runways form a triangle. only moments later we are over the next city. i try, but fail to identify it from its shape around the river and the location of its urban core, which is mostly obscured by a cloud.
meanwhile the passenger in the seat in front of me resumes rocking back and forth causing her seat back to tilt the laptop screen to an even less visible angle.
more fields, but also more trees...dark fingers of trees spilling over the pattern of fields like ink bleeding into a nice rag paper.
a crop duster plane flies below us spraying and another small city passes under...this one hugs the east side of a curving river with an attractive suspension bridge. more fields trying to be rectilinear pass, but these are segregated by trees (bordering estuaries?) there is more green then more tan, almost in bands.
sweet enf trying to sleep against my shoulder.
clusters of clouds and clusters of civilization both become scarcer...rolling hills reassert themselves upon the landscape.
an hour or so further west and i am looking down at a large dam...there is no recognizable interstate...the topography is that of rolling hills interspersed with flat areas. a grid of seemingly perfect squares, formed by uniformly spaced roads that seem irreverent of the topography, now dominates the landscape in all visible directions. most of the squares are subdivided into equal quarters (by smaller roads?) the myriad of tan hued farms look almost like a burled wood grained checkerboard...the wood grain rings being, perhaps, terraced fields.
as we continue west the squares are getting ever more geometrical and patterned. many now contain green circles the diameter of a quadrant and patterns of stripes and "x"es, that when paired form diamonds, abound.
there isn't a rigorous pattern to the placement of the homesteads/farms. however, there seems to be most typically 1 per square, but occasionally none and sometimes two; and i haven't yet witnessed an instance with more than one per quad. while they are all relatively close to the edge of a square their positions along that edge varies. 1 out of 3 appear to be on a corner or within a yard's distance from it (where "a yard" is the amount of clearing around the farm complex).
what i'm sure must be a monotonous landscape when viewed from the ground is rich in subtle variation from above; yet, i remain almost awed by the vast sameness. i haven't seen a town in a long while (are towns there and just not visible from this side of the plane?) i can't imagine living this far from a cluster of buildings!
++++ + ++++ + ++++ + ++++ + ++++
i found out not too many minutes later that we were just east of denver. the squares eroded into housing developments that gathered density to culminate in a distant cluster of tall buildings lost amid sprawl that stretched to the rockies. grey mountains became snow peaked mountains then plateau-topped megaliths striated with reds and tans as we moved into utah and the lowering afternoon sun. canyons were abysses lost in the shadows.
then came seas of sand before the golden rolling california hills dotted with puffs of green trees and brush. even from the ground they look fake to me, like the terrain on railroad models expanded to life-size proportions. then came the altamont pass windmills from above, dwarfed by the distance, and the sprawl of the central valley where we could start to point out specific known buildings as we descended into oakland...
musings from an airplane
floating along above the baltimore washington area's maze of culs de sac...some glittering in the sun, some in the shadows of clouds
observing variations in the design on inter and intrastate interchanges...clover leaf and oblong partial cover leaf, a trumpet with an extra arm...
enf comments on how surprising he finds the east coast's lack of grids...yes, there are grid systems at work in the urban areas but the fields we're gliding over are irregular shapes bordered on one side by the line of a road, another by a curve of trees...
hills begin to radiate in rippling arcs...suburban sprawl gives way to more greenery and clusters of buildings following the topography...roads are sandy colored ribbons and the foliage on the hills is just starting to come alive (heh) with the fiery colors of fall...i miss that...bright orange, ochre, and red leaves...ooo, especially maples...the first chill in the air and the smell of fireplaces...a melancholy joy because as much as i loved the autumn, i was thrilled to leave behind the chapped lips, dry skin, big coats, grey days and icy sidewalks that accompanied winters on the east coast.
higher up now
enf is talking with the man in the next seat over...a kindly-seeming retired surveyor whose career also included creating computer models of terrain from usgs topography maps either for or with the us army corps of engineers.
enf says that we must be following us 70 across the country; the pilot just announced that indianapolis is coming up in 60 miles on our right. the patches of fields i can see between the islands of cottonball clouds are much more rectilinear here, though a wide stripe of freeway cuts some into diagonals while rivers and irregular necklaces of trees give others sinuous and irregular boundaries. there are fewer trees here than there were in the east and no vast areas of foliage...trees appear as lines rather than blocks.
passing indianapolis there is again a profusion of culs de sac, but also within more rectilinear constrains...winding streets and large houses on proportionally small yards squeezed into a rectangle.
moving west the rectilinear trend only intensifies. the land is a patchwork of tans, browns, siennas and greens; the pale streets form seams between the hues and the fabric is specked with farms. a city passes under us; is it st. louis? we see no arch. perhaps it is urbana? there is a wide river that seems to almost terminate at the western edge of town. its airport runways form a triangle. only moments later we are over the next city. i try, but fail to identify it from its shape around the river and the location of its urban core, which is mostly obscured by a cloud.
meanwhile the passenger in the seat in front of me resumes rocking back and forth causing her seat back to tilt the laptop screen to an even less visible angle.
more fields, but also more trees...dark fingers of trees spilling over the pattern of fields like ink bleeding into a nice rag paper.
a crop duster plane flies below us spraying and another small city passes under...this one hugs the east side of a curving river with an attractive suspension bridge. more fields trying to be rectilinear pass, but these are segregated by trees (bordering estuaries?) there is more green then more tan, almost in bands.
sweet enf trying to sleep against my shoulder.
clusters of clouds and clusters of civilization both become scarcer...rolling hills reassert themselves upon the landscape.
an hour or so further west and i am looking down at a large dam...there is no recognizable interstate...the topography is that of rolling hills interspersed with flat areas. a grid of seemingly perfect squares, formed by uniformly spaced roads that seem irreverent of the topography, now dominates the landscape in all visible directions. most of the squares are subdivided into equal quarters (by smaller roads?) the myriad of tan hued farms look almost like a burled wood grained checkerboard...the wood grain rings being, perhaps, terraced fields.
as we continue west the squares are getting ever more geometrical and patterned. many now contain green circles the diameter of a quadrant and patterns of stripes and "x"es, that when paired form diamonds, abound.
there isn't a rigorous pattern to the placement of the homesteads/farms. however, there seems to be most typically 1 per square, but occasionally none and sometimes two; and i haven't yet witnessed an instance with more than one per quad. while they are all relatively close to the edge of a square their positions along that edge varies. 1 out of 3 appear to be on a corner or within a yard's distance from it (where "a yard" is the amount of clearing around the farm complex).
what i'm sure must be a monotonous landscape when viewed from the ground is rich in subtle variation from above; yet, i remain almost awed by the vast sameness. i haven't seen a town in a long while (are towns there and just not visible from this side of the plane?) i can't imagine living this far from a cluster of buildings!
++++ + ++++ + ++++ + ++++ + ++++
i found out not too many minutes later that we were just east of denver. the squares eroded into housing developments that gathered density to culminate in a distant cluster of tall buildings lost amid sprawl that stretched to the rockies. grey mountains became snow peaked mountains then plateau-topped megaliths striated with reds and tans as we moved into utah and the lowering afternoon sun. canyons were abysses lost in the shadows.
then came seas of sand before the golden rolling california hills dotted with puffs of green trees and brush. even from the ground they look fake to me, like the terrain on railroad models expanded to life-size proportions. then came the altamont pass windmills from above, dwarfed by the distance, and the sprawl of the central valley where we could start to point out specific known buildings as we descended into oakland...