LANDSCAPE AND SKY.
LANDSCAPE AND SKY. In the article on traffic I linked to yesterday, Tom Vanderbilt quoted the writer Maurice Maeterlinck writing about the automobile in 1904: “Maeterlink enthused that ‘in one day,’ the car gave us ‘as many sights, as much landscape and sky, as would formerly have been granted to us in a whole lifetime.’” The speed of our cars makes the driving experience something that a writer in 1904 could not have imagined, but I submit that we take for granted the amount of landscape and sky that the automobile has granted us, even if we have to wait for the car to stop moving before we can appreciate that landscape and sky.
I’m fascinated by how the landscape visibly changes during a 5-hour drive. A prime example is the landscape of Pittsburgh vs. the landscape of Richmond, or even Northern Virginia or Maryland. Heck even the 45-minute drive from Richmond to Williamsburg, Virginia. As a kid I was fascinated by the scrubby pines and red earth of Williamsburg.