Columbia County Backroads

by Steve Henderson

Original - Sold

Price

Not Specified

Dimensions

11.000 x 10.000 inches

Title

Columbia County Backroads

Artist

Steve Henderson

Medium

Painting - Watercolor On Paper

Description

We call them backroads.

They are not freeways, nor even highways, although they, like their urban cousins, are designed to take people to a destination.

But the difference lies in the destination, as well as in how fast they get a person there.

In the case of backroads, the journey to the destination is not a breathtakingly speedy one, one in which we drum our fingers on the steering wheel in our impatience to arrive, catapult out of the car, and rush off to do whatever is on our (long, long) list that day.

The journey, like the road itself, wends and winds its way through the landscape, and because this is not a car commercial, does not lend itself to racing car speeds. The road itself demands that we slow down, because it is frequently covered with gravel or, when it’s way off in the back country, consists of dirt rutted with potholes.

Sometimes, we’re convinced we could WALK faster. And sometimes, we’re right.

But when we find ourselves on backroads, we know (or should know, and will shortly know) that the destination is not the complete story. It is the landscape surrounding us, the landscape that emerges with each turn and bend of the road, that attracts our attention.

Focused on our driving – because we don’t want to run off the road into a ditch, especially way off in the back country where there’s no cell service – we are still also able to take in the surroundings, and sometimes we are surprised when we take a turn and discover a house or farm. “Someone LIVES out here?” we wonder. “It must be very, very quiet.”

Indeed it is, and that is something in which the backroads excel: they lead us to places of quiet, places where we can stop, emerge slowly from the car, stretch, and take a 360-degree look around.

“It’s so quiet out here,” we say to ourselves, “I can, for once, hear myself think.”

(Columbia County Backroads is located in Eastern Washington of the U.S., just outside a very small, quaint town called Dayton. But it could be anyplace that is remote, and beautiful, and quiet, and just waiting for us to discover its existence.)

Featured in 29 Fine Art America groups.

Uploaded

February 20th, 2019

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