Where Have the Frontiers Gone?
There are people who belong in cities. City people. Urbanites. There are people who belong in suburb. Suburbanites. There are country folk. And wild people who disappear into the wilderness, go native and fade into the background landscape so they become invisible to the eyes of the human world. Then there are people like me who belong in the edge space. The frontier between here and there. But the frontier I need has retreated to the north. I'm left to little patches of half-wild, suffocating between feeder roads and stacked houses, shopping malls and office buildings.
These spaces (empty lots, unused farmland, the untouched corners of parks) are some of the most fascinating places. A blend of worlds. They have their own unappreciated beauty. When we chase out to State and National Parks to see nature's beauty, we forget that nature isn't always grand. Nature operates equally on vast and minute scales. Our eyes our so fixed on the sunset over the mountains that we can't see the beauty around us all the time.
My goal is to capture the stunning diversity and drama of the edge spaces, and show them to you, so eventually your eyes will be trained to see them too. Then hopefully the world can take your breath away every day, like it does for me. It's the secret to my joy, and sadness. It is what makes me alive and wild.
So to answer the question: Where have the frontiers gone? They've retreated down to a smaller scale, but they're all around us. You just have to look a little more closely.
