summertime | In, Out & About: Hudson Valley

A solarized view of the Taconic Parkway, the infrastructure of my weekend getaways

Summer is slowly, yet relentlessly, fading away and I am posting a few of the visual memories of the places and events I have been intersecting with. Photography has become a storytelling medium and the narrative is increasingly expanded to include some vertical panoramas where backbending aids in framing the composition.

Framed views of an opening at John Davis Gallery in Hudson

Walking while interacting with dancers in the Fields of Art Omi

Suspended whales in the industrial archaeology of Basilica Industria, reminiscent of the Hudson past

A view of the Huson river with the Catskill Mountains background

Warren Street, Hudson

camminando | Nature + Industry

The day started with a short run in the south side of the Barwon Head river in proximity of Highton. The river crossing through the steel footpath took us to the first encounter with industrial archeology ruins. The Balyang Sanctuary marked the transition from industry to nature.
The second part of the river trip was another journey in abondend factories powered by water: Buckley's Fall trails offered view of the brown waterfall and finally the abondoned Fyansford Paper Mills, which once were born from the usual marriage between water power and man power.

 

 Balyang Sanctuary

 Total run/walk length: 5km

 Buckey's Fall and Fyansford Paper Mill

 

 Total run/walk length: 5km

on the road | Industry, Nature and History

My road trip has began, leaving Manhattan crossing the Lincoln Tunnel and adventuring through industrial landscapes, many resembling archeological sites: the New Jersey Pulaski skyway, Kearney, finally crossing the Pennsylvania border and arriving to the Bethlehem Steelstacks ruins. Here I encounter a very meaningful quoteL

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For

knowledge is limited to what we know and understand 

while imagination embraces the entire world, and all 

there will be to know and understand.

-Albert Einstein      

                                         

The Bethlehem steelscape turns into green rolling hills often covered by cornfields crossing the Allegheny Mountains, part of the Appalachian Range whose homonymous trail I encounter in Port Clinton.
I was not familiar with the utterly beauty of rural Pennsylvania, whose inspiring natural scenes are crossed by history in the state portion of the Lincoln Highway (Route 30).

Memorial Fountain (1878) in the main square of Chambersburg (founded in 1734) was dedicated to  the Civil War soldiers

Eon Stony Creek Wind Farm

camminando | Water Power: Lowell

Not to far from the "ruins" of the water powered mill of Turners Falls, the city of Lowell offers another encounter with an industrial past, still vibrant in the post-industrial info-technological present.

Lowell is the fourth largest city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; it was founded in the 1820s as a manufacturing center for textiles, located along the Merrimack River, about 30 miles northwest of Boston.

Lowell is also famous in literature as birth place and burial site of Jack Kerouac who staged in the city several of his autobiographical novels.

Lowell's National Park presents some of the greatest memories of the Industrial Revolution from the nineteenth century. Several mill buildings have been rehabilitated for commercial and residential developments.

Not to be missed unusual walks and boat tours among the canals, mills reflecting in the water and smokestack towers.