Archive for the ‘Loneliest Highway’ Tag
Image by kenne
My brother Tom shared this Galway Kinnell with me in 2010 with the note: “Years ago I copied [sic] this poem down . . .
something about it grabbed me. Perhaps, just perhaps, the ARBITRARINESS of it all.”
Hitchhiker
After a moment, the driver, a salesman
for Travelers Insurance heading for
Topeka, said, “What was that?”
I, in my Navy uniform, still useful
for hitchhiking though the war was over,
said, “I think you hit somebody.”
I knew he had. The round face, opening
in surprise as the man bounced off the fender,
had given me a look as he swept past.
“Why didn’t you say something?” The salesman
stepped hard on the brakes. “I thought you saw,”
I said. I didn’t know why. It came to me
I could have sat next to this man all the way
to Topeka without saying a word about it.
he opened the car door and looked back.
I did the same. At the roadside,
in the glow of a streetlight, was a body.
A man was bending over it. For an instant
it was myself, in a time to come,
bending over the body of my father.
The man stood and shouted at us, “Forget it!
He gets hit all the time!” Oh.
A bum. We were happy to forget it.
The rest of the way, into dawn in Kansas,
when the salesman dropped me off, we did not speak,
except, as I got out, I said, “Thanks,”
and he said, “Don’t mention it.”
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“Loneliest Highway,” US 50 In Nevada — Image by kenne
“Nothing is more real than nothing.”
— Samuel Beckett
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Open Road in the West — Computer Painting by kenne
Is there some principal of nature which states that we never know
the quality of what we have until it is gone?
— Herman Melville
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Small Town USA — Image by kenne
“The people feel and look the same,
like they’ve settled here even though
they know there’s something more-
something better-
just beyond where they are.
— Courtney Summers
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Geological Strata Along US 50 In Nevada (Loving the contrast!) — Image by kenne
“What counts is to be in the world, the posture is immaterial, so long as one is on earth.
To breathe is all that is required, there is no obligation to ramble, or receive company,
you may even believe yourself dead on condition you make no bones about it,
what more liberal regimen could be imagined, I don’t know, I don’t imagine.
No pomt under such circumstances in saying I am somewhere else, someone else,
such as I am I have all I need to hand, for to do what, I don’t know, all I have to do,
there I am on my own again at last, what a relief that must be. Yes, there are moments,
like this moment, when I seem almost restored to the feasible. Then it goes, all goes,
and I’m far again, with a far story again, I wait for me afar for my story to begin, to end,
and again this voice cannot be mine. That’s where I’d go, if I could go,
that’s who I’d be, if I could be.”
–from Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett
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Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) Blooming Along America’s Loneliest Highway, US 50 Between Eli and Reno Nevada — Images by kenne
(Click on any images to see larger view in a slideshow format.)
Driving
miles of asphalt highway
straight yellow and white lines
seemingly divides the golden range
forming a grid with unseen highways
surrounded by a labyrinth of mountains.
— kenne
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US Hwy 50 has the reputation of being the “Loneliest Highway in America, especially between the cities Ely and Reno in Nevada. On August 23rd we left Laughlin, Nevada on our way to Great Basin National Park and Ely. Once exiting I-15 north of Las Vegas on to US Hwy 93, we learned that this stretch of highway is also the loneliest highway, which could probably be said of most highways in Nevada. Here are a few of the images taken along one of the loneliest highways.
The Loneliest Highway — Images by kenne
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