Once there was life here

Everything comes to an end
Williamsbug, KY
January 2009
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I'm sure this old gas station beside an even older cemetery would tell countless stories.

Alas, it's been years since I shot this forgotten relic deep in the rolling Kentucky hills, and it has since been demolished.

Someday, perhaps soon, we won't need gas pumps at all. Maybe when we're all plugging in at home or ordering automated ride shares from apps that hang in 3D augmented reality space just beyond our noses, the concept of filling the car with dinosaur juice at a rusty old place like this will seem awfully quaint.

And perhaps it's just as well that we put every facet of the fossil fuel economy behind us. Gauzy memories from the golden age of autos notwithstanding, the planet deserves better.

But all of that could wait on the cold, windy, grey day just over a decade ago when I walked through a forgotten piece of local history and tried to remember it in two dimensions for the last time.

The simple truth was stark: There was life here once. But no longer.

The cemetery beside it stood, and still stands, witness to once was, to lives that echoed through the nearby town and hills. To stories written and told. Some remembered in monuments. Some removed from our midst, never to be seen or spoken of again.

#williamsburg #kentucky #ky #road #trip #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #vacation #explore #cemetery #i75 #stilllife #throwback #landscape #photography #Nikon #nikonphotography #nikon_photography #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything