I decided to go to San Antonio today to get away from my normal routine and see some new sights, get out of my head. The drive is four hours or so but I stopped in Waco to get coffee and do some writing for a while. After the stop I put on some albums from a very different period in my life and thought about all the iterations I’ve gone through since then. I live on a different planet now. I look at my writing from that period and I feel the same, likewise with photography.
Does it make sense to say that I hope in five or 10 years when I look back on my work I don’t feel the same? I want to always move forward but I don’t want that to mean I am dissatisfied with what I am moving on from. All of that earlier work was integral developmentally and from the beginning, somewhat by definition, less refined.
Anyway, whatever, because I was writing about being on a roadtrip. I took a different route down this time, bypassing Austin so I could try out the fastest highway in the United States, Texas State Highway 130. A portion of this toll-road sports 85 mph (miles per hour) signs. Despite being legally allowed to drive that fast, many people were disappointingly going well under that speed. I made up for it by hovering between 90 and 100 most of the way. It was exhilarating to be on a big open road, not surrounded by much of anything. The terrain was more varied than most stretches of Texas I’ve driven and it reminded me of driving through Montana and Wyoming, more in spirit than in scenery. Seeing something new, feeling free, it was something I hadn’t experienced on this side of the Pacific in some time.
Along I-10 headed west toward southern San Antonio I saw a sign that said “Woman Hollering Creek”.