Lost

Video Store, originally uploaded by shiphome.

Bostwick, Georgia is lost America. It is pride and dignity in a world that is leaving it behind. It is the soul of the rural South... a place separated less by distance than by time. Sometimes at sunset, in the warm light, you can feel the pull of the old dirt road.. the call of the wind across the cotton fields... the lure of the lonely building just in sight of Main Street.

Roots

Roots, originally uploaded by shiphome.

The world in a windowsill.

Wanderlust at Dusk

, originally uploaded by shiphome.

There is just something about the open road at twilight. That mystery that lies just beyond the range of your headlights beckons you onward.
The highway falls silent, and the night is dark and still... with only the vibrations of your tires on the pavement to keep you connected to the world. The radio crackles with sound as it picks up the signal of waves through the thick, southern atmosphere... an all night station to keep you company as you chase the morning.

Dusk to dawn... all the miles in-between. Closer to your destination, and closer to who you are.

The Range

Range, originally uploaded by shiphome.

View from Mt. Mitchell - 1991

The Black Mountains are the sentinels of the Southern highlands. They stand watch in the cold, thin air... high above the valleys, coves, and inhabitants below.
Deep within these mountains, the energy of ages exists. An energy that can be felt in the rough texture of the rocks and trees on your skin, drank like the water flowing from the high springs to the lakes, and breathed in from the wind that blows across the ranges.

They are the ancient, and the reborn. They are life eternal, as we mortals pass through... the humble inhabitants.


"We see the forest as a physical and spiritual source of life, perhaps an abode of the gods, in which case we may preserve it with feelings of gratitude and even reverence.." - Alan Anderson - The Wisdom of The Forest

Forever Young

Summer, 1947

Do the ideals of our youth ever truly disappear through the years? The times where our pure enthusiasm for each day... our longing for adventure... could be quenched by an afternoon spent outdoors, down a dusty mountain road at the shore of a lake, laughing with our friends.

Do they fade away like the twilight?... or do they continue to linger like the light in this photograph?... still shining brightly today, just as the sun burned down through the trees on my mom and her friends on this late summer afternoon so many years ago.

I look at these kids of years gone by.... and I see life's eternal young Americans. I see something that still lives in all of us.

Eternal Summer

, originally uploaded by shiphome.

"Already there have been too many words,
Too many versions of the way
The light fell across the water some certain dusk.
And the "stunned" trees on the far shore,
Caught fire: candescence, conflagration, blaze."

- Joe Bolton-
Elegy at Summer's End

Fade Away

"Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels. Only when the clock stops does time come to life. "

- William Faulkner.. The Sound and the Fury -

In the shadows, often unnoticed and just out of sight, are the remnants of time... of dreams lived and lost. The fading memories and stories never told... waiting for the clock to stop.

King of the Road

Trailers for sale or rent
Rooms to let...fifty cents.
No phone, no pool, no pets
I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah, but..two hours of pushin' broom
Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means
King of the road.

Photos taken in Athens, Georgia - 1987

Atmosphere

Summer in the south is dark, murky waters and dancing sunlight. The afternoon air heavy with humidity that energizes the storms building in the distance... bringing with them revitalizing rains and refreshing breezes.
It is the smell of cut grass in the morning, the heat of the mid-day sun on the back of your neck, and the sound of cicadas at night.


Summer in the south is atmosphere... and it is as fleeting as a river, rushing past in a hurry to get to the sea.

Sitting Still

, originally uploaded by shiphome.

Even as the days are long, the years are short. Time is perpetual motion all around us.. we ground ourselves in memories and reach out to dreams. And at times, we are simply sitting still.

Along the Way

The essence of the open road is a mystique... of places unseen and a journey that is never finished. It is a line on a map that unfolds in front your eyes as a new reality... as memories in real time. That is the call of what is over the horizon or around the next curve.

And sometimes we find answers at the stops along the way.

There's a darkness on the edge of town..

The last sunlight of a winter's evening falls across the streets of Rutherfordton, North Carolina. Soon, the shine of the street lights will fill the void..