Mournful greenery
Lowndes County/Valdosta, GA, I-75 northbound, January 2009 [Click to enlarge]
About this photo: This week's Thematic Photographic zooms in on "aged" photos. If you have one in your archives - or are conjuring up a scene in your mind - please head here to share your vision.Just over the Florida-Georgia border, the Georgia Welcome Center offers delightfully clean bathrooms - complete with hurricane-force hand dryers that delighted our youngest son - along with homey wooden rocking chairs and benches, and enough pamphlets to clog the van for the rest of the drive home. It's offers just the right amount of temporary comfort when you're far from home.
And it has these freaky trees that seem to frame the parking lot. They hover over the parking spots like protective old men. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a time when these trees weren't here. They seem almost Pre-Cambrian. I wish we had more time to hang around and absorb the spirit of the place.
Your turn: An oasis in the middle of a long journey. Please discuss.
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10 comments:
You've got to be kidding? We just stayed at a treehouse hostel on tghe Georgia/Florida border and are now in Orlando. I wrote in my notebook today: There's no doubt about it my hair is turning the color of Spanish Moss ... the freaky stuff that hangs from the trees here.
netchick said to.
The last oasis for me was when I went with my daughter and her children to Disneyworld. We drove, and stopped in Savannah or Charleston to spend the night. After 6-7 hours in a car with 4 excited kids, I was certainly ready for an oasis, and the hotel that night filled the bill.
The Spanish moss in those trees is positively eerie!
I'm guessing cypress(?)... with a generous wrapping of Spanish Moss -- very common in this part of the country.
I didn't realize you were driving down and back! Quite a haul from A to B and back again. And assuming you were taking the I-95 corridor through the southern part of your journey, you passed within probably 30 or 40 miles of Casa Mojo when you hit the area around Smithfield and Selma, NC. Next time lemme know, eh? I'll meet ya at the outlet mall or some place for coffee and photos.
Your photo is marvelous!
Beautiful...I am not entirely sure but I am pretty sure that is Spanish Moss hanging from the trees. It is quite beautiful especially in a gentle breeze.
I bet those trees move nicely in a light breezy - all swishy and swaying :) I really like them for some reason.
Sounds like a nice place to stop at and I love your analogy of 'old men' LoL!
for me, the oasis was seeing the exact thing your picture shows...the moss in the trees in the lovely state of South Carolina. Oh...and the palmetto trees that grow in this sub-tropical area. Why is that an oasis to me? Because it was "coming home" to the south once again...after a small dalliance in Germany and Kansas. I love the south, and it was good to see the things that reminded me why!
Hey there Cami. I found your blog through a very empathic comment you left on Girl Found (Niki's blog).
I thought I'd say hi.
I enjoy your writing and even more your photographs! I'll be back to see more!
At the rest area I stopped at driving back from that area in 2000, what surprized me was several families sleeping in cars at the rest area lot after dark- obviously homeless folks with no where to go, taking advantage of the fact it was a warm climate n not illegal to be there.
I tried to bring some Spanish moss up here once, but of course it died in the winter cold.
Cypress are evergreens. Palmetto- probably. Hammock trees are tropical too, n the Mandrake trees in the Florida swamps were looking strange like that too.
The wonderful light on these trees is definitely a beacon call to sit and relax and absorb the beauty. Age give comfort; its suggests survival.
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