I am noticing more how from season to season, there are many views that look the same, year after year and that it is much more evident when I have my camera at hand.

If I look at pictures of scenes from year year to year that are from about the same time of year, they are almost interchangeable.


As I have mentioned many times here, I have about a 50 mile one way commute each day to work. I think of bygone times when such a trip would have required immense planning and packing for a the long journey. It makes me remember stories my grandmother told of wagon rides over the mountains for shopping in the bigger towns that were full day events.



Now I hop on the highway and easily cruise up and down the mountains and through the mountain passes and an amount of time that would have been unimaginable when my grandparents were young.




Yet in the eight years I have been doing this commute, the views of the mountains, especially in the winter are the same as perhaps they saw many years ago. The most significant different perhaps is that the highway I travel cuts through land that is near the old main road but sometimes a hundred or so feet above as it traverses large ravines. I remember large ice waterfalls as a kid and expect that for generations and generations that was a seasonal marvel to observe.



February is sort of bleak in that much of the landscape is in hibernation. Pauses in the snowfall allow the dried out brown and dirt from the run offs to shown through. The cold wind is biting and even the dried grasses seem cold and frozen.



But the days are getting longer and the sunlight brighter. That too is something observed by many before me and hopefully many after as well.