Testimonies
On vacations, I am always fascinated by places where the water meets the land. I am from a desert and while the Great Salt Lake is a pretty big inland body of water, it has a sort of stillness that makes it feel lifeless compared to the rivers, oceans and water bodies I see elsewhere on my travels. Especially anywhere near the ocean where the dark gray overcast clouds seem to roll in and cover the sky in a drab blanket, something I am very familiar with from the Pacific Northwest and to no surprise I experienced in the northern corner of Wales. I think of a scene penned by Frank Herbert in Dune: Messiah where a Fremen warrior describes the alien feeling of visiting a watery planet during Muad'dib's interstellar jihad, and how it changed his perspective of his desert home world when he returned.
On The Cob overlooking Porthmadog in Wales though I can borrow a literary reference from another author I adore (and the title of a book I have yet to read). Porthmadog was a town where nautical influences from ships making their way up the Afon Glaslyn converged with the narrow gauge railways on land. Although steam ships were not uncommon by the time Porthmadog was making a name for itself as a slate exporter, many of the ships that came in here were powered by sail; old fashioned yet reliable clippers and schooners that could travel the world without worrying about expensive fuel costs. "Ballast Island" just outside the harbor, was formed by the ballast dropped by ships before taking on their slate loads; representative of the global ports of call the slate ships reached.
The water is an active element against the railway too... the trident signal in my photograph would collapse a few months later due to rot in its timbers caused by exposure to the elements.
Testimonies
On vacations, I am always fascinated by places where the water meets the land. I am from a desert and while the Great Salt Lake is a pretty big inland body of water, it has a sort of stillness that makes it feel lifeless compared to the rivers, oceans and water bodies I see elsewhere on my travels. Especially anywhere near the ocean where the dark gray overcast clouds seem to roll in and cover the sky in a drab blanket, something I am very familiar with from the Pacific Northwest and to no surprise I experienced in the northern corner of Wales. I think of a scene penned by Frank Herbert in Dune: Messiah where a Fremen warrior describes the alien feeling of visiting a watery planet during Muad'dib's interstellar jihad, and how it changed his perspective of his desert home world when he returned.
On The Cob overlooking Porthmadog in Wales though I can borrow a literary reference from another author I adore (and the title of a book I have yet to read). Porthmadog was a town where nautical influences from ships making their way up the Afon Glaslyn converged with the narrow gauge railways on land. Although steam ships were not uncommon by the time Porthmadog was making a name for itself as a slate exporter, many of the ships that came in here were powered by sail; old fashioned yet reliable clippers and schooners that could travel the world without worrying about expensive fuel costs. "Ballast Island" just outside the harbor, was formed by the ballast dropped by ships before taking on their slate loads; representative of the global ports of call the slate ships reached.
The water is an active element against the railway too... the trident signal in my photograph would collapse a few months later due to rot in its timbers caused by exposure to the elements.