Sunday, March 11, 2012

View from the Driver's Seat #7

Open road is a wonderful, but sometimes boring sight to behold especially the stretch of highway I have to drive through in order to make to and from college between breaks. Every once in awhile the view does tend to reveal some great aesthetic moments. I thought for this blog that I would talk about a few of them.

My first moment that I remember vividly happened in winter last year. We were crossing over a river that had been iced over until recently. Now the temperature was freezing outside, but the river was flowing pretty hard and was thus warmer than the outside air so steam was rising from the river in great pillars of fog. My roommate politely informed me that this was a common thing to happen during the winter months but since I have lived the majority of my life in a desert area, this was news to me and boy was it awesome.

To counter balance the natural phenomena of the river is a nuclear power plant that is nestled between one hil and another. There are always great, white clouds flying upward from the complex and it always makes me wonder if there are any albino animals running around there like we saw in Werner Herzog's movie earlier in the semester. It makes part of the balance of trying to find aesthetic value in a nuclear power plant which seems out of place surrounded by all that nature.

On my latest trip back I noticed the bloom of spring starting to dust the woods I pass through and of the violence caused by the storms that ransacked the midwest two weeks ago. It was not as bad in the area I was driving through, but there was visible damage that could be scene throughout various parts which was both frightening yet exhilarating to thin about how powerful the weather is and how vitally out of human control it is. I

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