Arrival in the High Country
About four years ago, we were driving through the Palmer area of Alaska in late August or early September, right when summer was beginning to loosen its grip. The landscape was still lush, but fall was starting to show itself in the grasses and brush. It was one of my favorite times to be there. The colors were changing, the air felt different, and even the bugs had finally backed off enough to let you enjoy the place.
Alaska has a way of making distance feel different. There is so much land, so much open space, that even a simple creek can feel like it belongs to something much larger. When I saw this one running hard through the valley with the mountains sitting far beyond it, I knew there was already a picture there.
At first, I treated it more traditionally. Beautiful water, mountains, fall color, a classic Alaska landscape. It worked, but it felt a little too polite. The photograph had more room for imagination than that.
So I decided to have some fun with it.
The valley became a landing area. A spacecraft appeared above the ground, not threatening, not crashing in, but hovering softly in the mist as if it had chosen this remote stretch of Alaska for a quiet arrival. I gave the scene a lightly painted treatment, softened the atmosphere, added a little fog and light around the craft, and let the science fiction settle into the landscape instead of taking it over.
That was the important part for me. I didn’t want an invasion. I wanted a moment.
The creek still leads the eye through the picture. The mountains still matter. The fall colors still belong to Alaska. The spacecraft simply gives you one more reason to look a little longer.
Sometimes a beautiful landscape doesn’t need to be changed very much.
Sometimes it just needs a visitor.
Asphalt Breakfast
I walk past this little clump of asphalt all the time. It was left behind when they put in the road in our fairly new neighborhood, and for some reason it always caught my eye.
One day I looked at it and thought about that old saying you hear when it gets really hot: “It’s hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement.”
Then I thought, why stop at an egg?
So I imagined turning that little leftover piece of road into a whole breakfast — pancakes, bacon, eggs, even a cup of coffee — all made out of asphalt and gravel.
This is where the idea ended up.
I’m pretty happy with it. I wouldn’t recommend eating any of it, but it definitely gave that forgotten little clump of asphalt a much more interesting life.
