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
Mystical perception
Sovereign realities
Unit of value
Ebullient enchantment emerges and vibrates to antediluvian echoes. Pride of place is embodied in the magical solitude of the winter landscape.
“No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.” – John Locke
Integrating into
Habitat randomness
Emanation immersion
Environmental concerns are fully considered in the decisions and activities of the shadowself. You are always located in some relative position offering philosophical potential, even at the convenience store purchasing costly gasoline.
“Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)” – Horace
Instantaneous rates
Differential integration
Quantity accumulation
In constant motion relative to energy sources, the night comes alive on the road.
“This is the best of all possible worlds.” – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Existing reality
Objective knowledge
Philosophical alternatives
Dead tree skeletons punctuate the Gibbon Geyser Basin. Associated hydrogen sulfide gas yields the characteristic rotten egg odor of the active mudpot. Some things that inform consciousness exist beyond consciousness.
“But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals – mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.” – Winston Smith
Auxiliary cause
Vibrates from within
Capsizing meaning
Echoing observations among its own desolate ruins, an abandoned place exhibits a timeless allure. Imagination fills-in the provisional gaps.
“As time moves on these buildings get left behind, they have no families or owners to look after them any more and as time rolls on they are left for nature to claim back.” – Rebecca Lillith Bathory