A Return to the Old Pen: Santa Fe, NM
Time ceased to hold any meaning for the weathered husk languishing in the musty cell. Had it been a lifetime, or a few years? Numbers now mattered as much as the rising and setting of the sun. Whether time was a thing measured by seasons, sunrises, or the ever-increasing ache in one's bones, at the end of the day, it all bled together like a fresh field after a Civil War slaughter. The old frontiersman knew it, as surely as he knew that fanciful notions like wealth and control were illusions. Freedom, gold, ambition, adventure...all were just grasping at shadows.
In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we had the privilege of visiting/photographing in the old notorious New Mexico State Penitentiary, which was the site of an infamous riot in 1980.
It was surreal to be in a place where few were allowed (at that time), and the experience is still fresh in my mind. It's impossible to describe the unsettled feeling in that place.
The weathered cowboy in the top image seems to be looking out the barred window as if he watched years and youth roll by, and found himself taking one last look before making the long journey home. The above image suggests what his lifelong view might have looked like.
The old abandoned homestead cast some interesting lines across a near-desolate landscape. Someone once called this home. It's a shame the old structure can't talk.
If one could capture the passing of time, I think it would look something like this. It may have actually once been a line shack providing shelter to cowboys as they tended cattle far out on the Arizona plains. With cameras in hand, we wandered around fascinated by our imaginations.
When it all passed, where would he find himself? When it had finally been an age, a century, an entire world's life cycle...was his house still waiting for him, holding out hope that its wild-eyed and ambitious resident would return? Were his acquaintances long-gone or were they still prowling the desolate lands in search of a dream they could see and touch? Like time itself, the questions and the uncertainty had come to mean as much to him as the death of another day. The careworn frontiersman knew how to handle the unknown, because there was, in truth, only one way to handle it. You rode on into the setting sun and swore a solemn oath to yourself: never look back.
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