Photo Safari: 4,360
Miles in Five Days by Troy Paiva
(continued
from page
5)
Troy
Paiva
is a commercial artist
living in the San Francisco Bay Area. For his
entire adult life he has been an abandonment
explorer and back-roads wanderer, especially
at night. Sneaking around in junkyards and dead
roadside towns in the middle of the night, he
was doing urban exploration years before the
term even existed. Troy is the author of the
critically-acclaimed Lost
America which features over 145 color
and black-and-white photographs. On April 27th,
2007, Troy launched a new version of his Lost
America Web site with hundreds of evocative
photos from around the west.
|
|
Day Six
- A Lifetime in 126 Hours
I am up at six again to watch
the sun rise like an atomic fireball, red in the churning
dust. An easy 400 miles in six hours and four Krispy-Kreme
doughnuts later I pull into my driveway. The trip totals
4,360 miles in five days and six hours for an average speed
of 34 miles-per-hour. This includes sleeping, shooting and
all other stops. No question, some kind of perverse personal
record.
The strange way you can see so
much, yet experience so little is a sensation that can only
be had behind the wheel on an epic grind like this. The
ultimate passive American "watching" experience,
it's an endless movie playing out through your windshield.
It's an emotional ride as well. There are moments of quiet
reflection contrasted with moments of steering wheel pounding
joy, contrasted with moments of soul-sucking dejection and
wry irony all blurred together. A lifetime in 126 hours,
the lifespan of an insect. By the end, you become best buddies
with the moths fluttering on the inside of the windshield.
You begin to wonder if they're horrified as they see their
brothers smashed on the outside of the glass, just a quarter
of an inch away. How much do they really understand and
for that matter, how much do we? On the road, the strangest,
most pointless things seem to matter and the "real
world" of bills and war that everyone else worries
about just slips away.
 |
|
 |
|
Trailer
in Barstow, California |
|
 |
|
 |
|
The American roadside of my youth
dies a little more every year. Every trip brings new melancholy
as familiar abandoned landmarks burn down, are melted for
scrap, get bulldozed and subdivided, or just vanish into
the desert sand. The rate accelerates every year. The little
that remains by the sides of the old Miracle Miles withers
in the blistering sun. But the soul-cleansing love of the
road keeps me coming back, just as the roadsides' decline
assures that I'll continue to bring my camera.
Troy Paiva
April 29, 2007
(Road trip completed in May, 2003)
This article reprinted with permission
