Outside exploring
Construct internalize
Uncluttered fringe
Object relationships have their own reality detached from subjective emotions and life. The inherent intricacy and complexity of an idea can be revealed with very few elements. Less is often eminently refined.
“It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate. The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting. ” – Donald Judd
Complex interplay
Seasonal pattern
Tilted axis
Solar energy on display in the frozen winter landscape of the American west inspires aesthetic gratification. Snow cover helps to regulate the temperature of the Earth’s surface and replenish the water table.
“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.” – Carl Reiner
Sacred ground
Nurturing realm
Internal reactions
A spirit of the landscape accumulates and evolves as an important way of participating. Experience of place is more than a static reproduction.
“I preferred to think that memory is never frozen, nor should it be.” – Maxwell Kosegarten
Detached pieces
Evaporate context
Rescue abstraction
Speeding through directional guidance systems, the dynamic interplay of existential forces impinges on consciousness. In the confusion of sensation, clearly somethings remain separate from their attributes.
“Imagination reintroduces into the isolated relation the idea of the related elements, but in a form in which they are only shadows of what we find in reality.” – Hans Vaihinger
Sort of acidic
Viscus effervescent
Clay-water mixture
Swirl patterns etched on hydric soil by slow-moving water appeals to the visual sense of beauty. Perhaps life evolved and dispersed across the planet from such a primordial ooze.
“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Need for wonder
Expository tone
Time awareness
Traveling due north through farmland on the way to the airport, the first stage of the existent journey uncloses. The immensity of things refines sensation pursuant to understanding.
“If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.” – Neil Peart
Gas station
Paradise of pleasure
Creation narrative
Equipped with rock formations, live plants, and a flowing waterfall, a roadside fast-food atrium is also the Garden of Eden. Paradise is complete with the tree of life featuring a serpent alarmingly perched in the branches above the dining tables. Under no circumstances should you follow the advice of the trickster snake.
“If you’re on the road and passing through Eden, Idaho make sure to stop at Travelers’ Oasis Truck Plaza.” – Dan Willie
Vertically mounted
Simple rope
Tire swing
In the middle of winter, an old-fashioned tire swing is ready for warmer weather. Sometimes the simplest things can bring great pleasure.
“And I never knew a thing about pain. Life was just a tire swing.” – Jimmy Buffett
Evaporation rate
Surface interface
Flow directions
Ongoing volcanism in abundance, winter reveals the many geothermal characteristics of the first national park established in the world.
“Yellowstone, of all the national parks, is the wildest and most universal in its appeal… Daily new, always strange, ever full of change, it is Nature’s wonder park.” – Susan Rugh
Thermal feature
Chromatic aquamarine
Radiation scatter
In their majestic elegance, the ecologically sensitive landforms of Yellowstone’s delicate thermal features are subject to consistent human interaction. At best this means an associated observational infrastructure must be built to allow close proximity. Perhaps more fundamental, however, is the premise of quantum theory which stipulates that the observer affects the observed reality by the very act of viewing.
“Near where we encamped were several hot springs which boil perpetually. Near these was an opening in the ground about 8 inches in diameter from which hot steam issues continually with a noise similar to that made by the steam issuing from a safety valve of an engine.” – Osborne Russell