Here on Highway 1
c. 2021
FRONTIER REFLECTIONS: Beneath the breezy blue sky and steep mountain ranges, love remains the force that unites us. There is no tabula rasa—no neutral observer. We are pawns and tools, exploiting and disrupting nature. Our choices shape the environment where leisure, freedom, overconsumption, and natural resources converge. We participate in and consume a significant part of North American life. Like many, you might struggle (as I have) in this neo-socio-political era, known as the "great conjunction," where renewable and nonrenewable resources are both relevant yet fleeting and volatile. This dual-natured, regenerative American Frontier, brief as the gold rush, is both idyllic and destructive, offering beauty and cost. Shaped by changing eras, the landscape faces threats from human-induced political upheavals that destabilize it. Life pulses with spirit here and accelerates rapidly up and down the coast, swiftly moving biz offshore. In this lively, energetic wilderness of the Great West, amid these shifts, at the edge of Highway 1 where waves meet the sky, a late-capitalist, dynamic empire churns—burning by its own design. My quiet, delicate American eyes are awake and filled with tears in this culturally layered 21st-century moment as I reflect on what it means to be an American, a human being with access.
