Memorial Day Hike
I did a Memorial Day weekend hike in the dry and cold Snowy Mountains and thought I'd share some photos to convey a sense of the landscape. Click for larger images. All pictures were taken with a Canon G7.
For contrast, here's a scene from a coastal city. The difference between the well-watered coast and the interior is very marked.
The picture above was taken from a cafe during a drizzle. As luck would have it, I met a Sikh fortune teller who gratefully offered to pierce the veil of my beclouded fate after I pointed out the directions to a suburb about half a mile West. There's a moral in there somewhere.
Taken through the windshield on the road, which on occasion would run along some a valley so deep and wide that you could actually see miles of landscape overshadowed by equal expanses of cloud from which the odd shaft of sunshine would descend, moving like a spotlight on the valley floor.
At a place called Lake Jindabyne, which is shrunken with the drought. You can hike up to the snow line from here, when it snows. The locals look forward to the somewhat meager snowfall each year because it drives the local skiing industry. But in summer there are wildflowers. Australia is the driest and flattest continent on earth. The landscape is minimalist, even prehistoric. And if you get lost you are typically a very long way from nowhere.
posted by wretchardthecat at 5/29/2007 09:49:00 PM
5 Comments:
It's a lonely road past a lonely tree, and a lonely lake by the lonely mountains at the edge of a lonely continent.
Beautiful!
We have similar tastes in minimalist scenery, Wretchard.
One of my favorite memories of Australia was visiting a small section of the Dog Fence near Coober Pedy. To those who've never heard of this fence--it's an ordinary-looking fence, but it's 3,000 miles long. Where I saw it, it ran directly through the middle of nowhere. Better than any Christo installation, because it's real.
Armed Liberal at Winds of Change also hit the road on Memorial Day. Maybe we should start a tradition.
"And if you get lost you are typically a very long way from nowhere."
Speedin' across Kansas about 6 years ago with a friend in a twin-turbocharged Volvo S60. Stopped at a Stuckey's on a knoll on the South side of I-80; the gas pumps were the old mechanical type and the house behind the station was connected by a cinderblock hallway.
Lots of interesting road junk inside to look at. My friend goes to the register...says to the lady "Where are we anyway?"
"'bout 25 miles from nowhere in all directions." was the reply.
3case:
If you were along I-80, you weren't in Kansas anymore.
But, I suppose you've realized that by now....
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