2017 retrospect

Here are a few unpublished pieces from the past year...

Poison: January, Portland OR

Cold: February: Portland OR

Resort: March: Winlock WA

Last ice: April: Bellevue WA

Spit: June: Whiskey Creek WA

Pumpless: July:  Pe Ell WA

Eclipse shadows: August: Bellevue WA

Dairy: September: Skagit Valley WA

Pond: October: Portland OR

Crashpad: November: Salton Sea CA

Patchwork: December: Chehalis WA

Once upon a time in Oregon

Grass Valley

Oakridge

Madras

Kent

Kent

Mission District Walk

An afternoon in San Francisco...

Quarry

Wrap

End of the Petroleum Age

Look Both Ways

Blue stucco

Triple door

End of the Petroleum Age Pt. IV

In oblique honor of this week's Sepia Saturday theme of Bibles...

I recently spent a night in Long Beach, Washington ("World's Longest Beach," a dubious distinction). On the way out of town I happened to cast my eyes to the left as we passed a defunct Union 76 fueling station and I saw to my astonishment these frescoed gas tanks. I reckon you might call these "Gas Stations of the Cross."

Here they are in detail. The juxtaposition of abandoned petroleum infrastructure and Christian symbology blows my mind.

Annunciation

Baptism

Crucifixion

Ascendancy

Near the End of the Age of Petroleum, Part III

Footprint of one of the gigantic petroleum tanks now removed from Mukilteo, Washington, on the edge of Puget Sound.

[Header photo from Google Earth]

Near the End of the Age of Petroleum, Part II

Trekking through rural Washington I come across these relics of an earlier age...

Yakima WA

Mazama, WA

Maltby, WA

Carnation, WA

Near the End of the Age of Petroleum

I've been scanning the roadsides for the telltale canopies that once covered the gas pumps...

Cle Elum, WA

Ellensburg, WA

Countdown: 12,11,10, 9...   Bellevue, WA

Easton, WA

After the afterlife, Aberdeen, WA

Camouflaged,Bellevue, WA

Future not foretold, Eugene, OR