Abandoned Fence Tree
On one of my walks around a field not far from home I found a row of trees that used to be used for a fence. My guess is that the fence was abandoned at least fifty years ago. This is one of the trees. A bit of the fencing wire is still there. The tree is still growing.
This is gorgeous. I love how nature creates abstract images and old trees trunks are full of them. The lines of the burl and the small textures are mesmerizing. It starts to take on the character of foam residing from the land at the shore. Well done.
Thanks so much. I have a totally different picture in my mind of what this resembles. I almost gave it a title related to my mental image. I’m so glad I didn’t. Now I need to come up with titles for my abandoned fence pictures (there are several) that don’t suggest what someone might see.
The stump or root fences on the Corner road remind me of fossil remains of mastodons, etc., exhumed and bleached in sun and rain. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal (July 19, 1851)
Your photo reminds us that a walk in the woods can lead us to spaces where our present can commune with the past ; the stump fence a more ecological solution to creating borders? Thoreau compares this kind of weathering, the striations, to our own aging bodies- a kind of beauty depicted in this image as well as David’s flowers, their beauty residing beyond the bloom.
These stumps are fascinating for the reasons you’ve shared, and unlike seed pods (which I have studied in the past) they remain in the woods for me to visit and revisit. The next year they are like old friends I meet once again–still familiar but a little older and a little more weathered.
Thanks so much.
Such interesting contortions of wood, could be dancing flames, perhaps the wood’s foreshadowing of what could come. It takes a sharp eye to spot the potential art in a walk.
This is such a dramatic, engaging photograph. It reminds me7 of Robert Frank’s statement “Black and white are the colors of photography,” which was made in the days color photography had not become what it is today….but the black and white in this photograph make it a very strong image.
I love looking at other people’s work that is in color, but somehow not so much at my own. The shapes, especially curves, and textures of the dead (or not dead) fence trees tell stories that I want to share. And I’m still at that place where, most of the time, black and white are the colors of photography. Thanks!
Striking detail and shading!
Thanks so much!