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.
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…
The young birch is the odd man in the patch of pines we’ve planted—slender, somewhat delicate, with heart-shaped leaves that reflect light as they twirl. I like to watch the young birch when the sun is low in the sky. The thin trunks reach up. The tilting leaves drink in the gold light, then disappear…
After a good rain, the little falls at Yuko En will splash right up on you if you get down close. Closer, and you’re sliding toward the blue and gold light, the rising mist, the planes of crystal glare. From the edge of the sidewall your feet hit the falling water, the force pushing against…
Names of roads around here are evocative: Long Lick, Stamping Ground, Sulphur Wells, East Honaker, J.B. Lear, Burton, Glass, Lloyd, Skinnersburg, Josephine, Indian Creek, Pokeberry. I imagine a story in each of the names, and as I cruise along one and another road a little country world takes shape, and the stories grow day by…
The ducks are of two minds. I’m a bother, but I am something to yell at. Some jump to the ice. At dusk, the ducks might as well be ice. Winter pastels fade into brilliant blues and reds that spread from the horizon across the pond, the field, the day. “Those ducks . . ….
Backroads of Indiana through New Albany to I-64 through Louisville and on at dusk toward home, the sunset burning on the limestone and gray-green brush—as passenger, I can follow the light anywhere, would follow it . . . westward, somewhere, up into the trees. The road pulls on nights like this, and I let it…
A gray day has depth. “Let’s just walk right into it,” I tell the dogs. When we lose sight of home, the trees and fields in the deeper gray reflect thin light oddly, becoming shades and shapes of peculiar beauty. The dogs are happy to keep right on going into the crazy day, deeper, and…
G Bebs / Photographs 