Potential Paintings

Last week I took a wrong turn looking for a detour Alice told me about and discovered some gorgeous scenery. Today I went back there to photograph the area with the idea of doing pastel paintings from the pictures. These are four of the fifty seven pictures I took. It seemed to me that every turn provided a better and better view. The area is quite isolated, though it is right off route 1, and I feel as if I have found a wonderful secret paradise.

The land is rough and harsh in a way, but so beautiful in the rugged way that speaks of eternity. You would think that nothing could ever hurt it, yet we human beings are in the process of destroying everything in our path. I feel priviledged to have found a place that looks relatively pristine, even though I know that our influence on the planet is eating away unseen. The air and rain so full of polutants is surely doing its damage, even here.

Despite my pessimism about its future, I wallowed in the illusion of the land's isolation and imperturbability. I had been given a gift and I didn't want to analyze or diminish my good fortune. I drove up and down the roads without seeing another human being, stopping often to get out and put my feet on this earth. I thought I would never see anything that rivaled the beauty of the ocean for me, but now I have. I thought for a minute that I would like to live there, but realized that if I did my presense would alter and ruin it. I would need a shelter of some kind, and my dwelling would intrude.

So, I know where it is and I can go back whenever I want to. I can memorialize it by painting it, though no painting could ever be more than a fuzzy memory of the real thing. It's wonderful to know that there are still things to discover that are unlike anything you have ever known before, and they can be just slightly out of view, just behind the tree line of route 1.