Monday, July 25, 2011

Loos'd of Limits: The Open Road

One of Uncle Gene's
Amazing Travel Pics, October 2005

Here's the story behind it, in his words:

May 2006
Dear Friends and Relatives,

In the Sunday Wichita Eagle there is a "Travel Section." On the front page of this section there is a feature called, "Best Shot." Each Sunday a picture sent in by an amateur is printed with a short blurb concerning the shot and the person's name. The attached photo is the one used this Sunday and . . . ta da! . . . it's one I took & submitted!

At the roadside turnout above Lake Mono last October on our trip from Davis to Las Vegas, John, Marla, Elaine & I stopped for our first look at the lake down in the basin several miles and about 1,500 feet below us. It was a spectacular view with Highway 395 winding sinuously down the mountain and across the basin, miles away in the hazy distance.

After ohhing and ahhing for awhile we were ready to load up and go on. I took one last shot of the panoramic view spread out in front and below us. It was a magic moment for I truly caught lightening in a bottle and the picture I got is a really neat one, I think. I've never been the "shutter-bug" in the family so I consider this shot to fall in the "blind sow" category (taken with my Canon PowerShot A520 digital).

Strangely enough we didn't see the picture in the paper yesterday; I forgot to look. Someone told us at AARP today that it was in there. I'd submitted it months ago and had looked occasionally but gave up on its ever being used.

Technology is wonderful . . . Aim and shoot . . .

Love, Gene aka Bill

*************************************************

Wow! What a fabulous photograph, and what a great surprise to learn inadvertently that it had finally appeared in the paper!

And to go along with Uncle Gene's stunning panorama
what could be more fitting than . . .

. . . a few lines from Walt Whitman's visionary Song of the Open Road:

Part 5

From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me,
I would do the same to you.

I will recruit for myself and you as I go;
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.



from Part #13
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys;
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however long but it stretches and waits for you . . .
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road - as many roads - as roads for traveling souls.


by Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892
American poet, essayist, journalist, humanist


. . . or this parable from Franzlations [the imaginary Kafka parables]
by Gary Barwin, Craig Conley, Hugh Thomas:

"If you were walking across a barren plain and had an honest intention of walking on, then it would be a desperate matter, but you are flying, gliding and diving, SOARING and swooping, high above the plain, which, seen from above, is a tiny blot on a vast and various landscape."

P.S. Rest in Peace
Uncle Gene ~ 20 October 1926 - 21 July 2011
Aunt Elaine ~ 27 July 1929 - 23 July 2015

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