Traveling along the Ohio River Byway, we had to pull the Blazer over to the side of the road again and again to photograph barns and farms in the spring sun. Some were bustling and thriving... others had been long abandoned.
What struck me was the absence of noise. Even the cows were eerily quiet. All across Indiana and into Illinois, we found reasons to stop the car and take pictures.
Before reaching New Harmony, Indiana, we found a photo-op we couldn't resist at Wadesville.
Followed back roads through exotic Illinois villages named Carni, Eldorado, Muddy, and Vienna. At one point, we stopped to photograph cornfields gone fallow, filled with goldenrod, and dotted with natural gas pumps. One pump, spewing fire, and hissing like a geyser, did not seem to bother a red wing blackbird. No sign of humans, and I couldn’t help thinking of Michael Pollan’s account of the corporations and their dynasty of corn. We followed a backroad to track down Cougar Bluff 4 miles, but the rain had washed out the road so we had to turn back.The neon green, following spring rains, the lilac, spirea, and iris, competed with golden wildflowers thick in most former cornfields. After a while, I had to close up the camera. What follows are photos from an Indiana farm dotted with natural-gas wells, depleted corn fields, and flat flat land.
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