This spot of Burgess Smith Road is cool and green with a creek that’s narrow enough to jump over. The forests are thick and tall, nicely unkempt. A couple of gravel paths head up the hills and curve around, keeping their destinations secret. Who knows what might happen when I walk up one?
The air feels as cold as the water probably is as it crashes over the little falls, mist everywhere, hanging. The sun finally abandons scenes like this, though low light filters through. Following the flow of the creek, I feel like I’m walking on the earth, part of it, like the moving water, the trees,…
It’s a cold day for driving. River Road winds along the Ohio on the Indiana side, through New Albany and on to the Horseshoe Casino, the power plant, the little ranch houses on stilts. The river looks cold and soft, smooth, slow, reluctantly reflecting light. At dusk, the winter world is mesmerizing.
Approaching the bridge into Indiana on a warm winter day, I am again struck by the structure of the thing, the joints and bolts, the idea of building high over the river. I think about the people decades ago sketching and erasing and probably smoking a lot. I think about the Yoko Ono album I’ve…
I feel like I have the whole fair to myself. Nothing’s open or running, but it’s the idea that I love — a little spectacle that moves from place to place on the backs of a few semis, ponies and all. I get to feel out of time here, and out of place.
Thick columns reach from the marble floor up to rows of chandeliers so huge, so bright even Judy Garland must have stopped and cocked her head back to stare up like a mortal at the wonder the first time, like me. I follow one row and then another, back fifty, sixty years, a century. For…
After a few good days of rain, water flows into the Elkhorn from the eastern hills. The blissfully sedate creek swells up beyond all reason. Brown water surges over the little Great Crossing falls, splashing down into white swirls that give off tall sprays. When the water is high, danger and mystery loom around the…
I sneak in while everyone is still asleep. The midway is small—a few games of chance in the middle with low-lying rides to each side. At the end, though, by the barns, is the prize—the tall and graceful Ferris wheel with colored cages for seats. I walk around it as the sky lightens, looking up…
A few people sit in shady spots fishing, but other than that, Hector and I have the hot afternoon and the pond to ourselves. Hector has his nose to the ground, weaving it back and forth with intense seriousness, like a cartoon dog. We circle the pond, me trying to get the light as it…
When it’s hot like this a storm can blow in just like that, thunder and all, changing the whole look of things around here. The steady trees sway and dance as if explaining themselves, finally. The harsh light mellows through the dark clouds, and the little forest turns magnificent shades of blues and yellows and…
G Bebs / Photographs 