NORTHSIDE Hawkins Pass, Eagle Cap Wilderness (VIII.27.09) [ click photo for next . . . ]
NORTHSIDE Hawkins Pass, Eagle Cap Wilderness (VIII.27.09) [ click photo for next . . . ]
HAWKINS PASS, is a major North / South divide in
the center of the High Wallowas. Seen here from the
North, and the summit of (Lost) Glacier Peak. The water
on the northside flow into the West fork of the Wallowa
River and Wallowa Lake, then on to the Minam and the
Grand Rande, the Snake, and ultimately, the great
Columbia. On the other side of Hawkins, the water
joins the South fork of the Imnaha which joins the
Snake River in Hells Canyon, and again, ultimately,
the Columbia. Land of 'winding waters,' indeed!
On the road in the Pacific Northwest . . .
DAMS? or ON THE UNITY OF INTELLIGENCE &
THE WATERCOURSE WAY
Water flows like intelligence
around unnecessary difficulty.
Poor design imposes arbitrary blocks
in the freedom of this flow.
or
Intelligence flows like water
around unnecessary difficulty.
Poor design imposes arbitrary blocks
in the freedom of this flow.
Just as no one wanted to cloud the skies with the smoky haze of
accumulated car exhaust, or wanted streams to run muddy with plastic
bags and human waste, no one wanted the world to become a noisy
place. But noisy it is, all the same.
And, now that noise has become a part of practically every landscape—
even the most isolated and highest mountain ranges have jets roaring
above them—how shall we ever know what the deeper, more subtle
effects of noise on the human psyche really are? Or on Nature as a
whole? For the question has in a way become: where are the untouched
control groups to be found? And where are we to find even a single
researcher who has not been to some extent profoundly conditioned—
even while still in the womb—by a sea of surrounding noise?
My guess is that noise works on the mind something like a slowly
contracting air-tight room. As the noise levels increase, the walls of
the room close in and the pressure builds. Finally, one finds one’s face
pushed up against the wall, until one can no longer hear oneself talk,
or even think. An ur-scream of almost unbearable angst would almost
certainly be the result.
Remarkably, no one designed this environment, or intended this to
happen. It just did. Think of it. Noise, like other forms of pollution, is
entirely a by-product, a side-effect. And yet it has become a dominant
factor of much of urban and even rural life. What kind of philosophy
of design is that?
ON NOISE . . .
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All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 1999-2015 picture-poems.com
(created: X.11.2008)
