Wild on the Interstate

The traffic and the drivers are one thing, but wilder yet is what lies just over the shoulder of our Jersey Interstate Highways.

One of my favorite places to contemplate nature is at the intersection of I-80 and I-280 in (approximately) Pine Brook, where traffic often slows to a crawl, making it easy to roll down a window and pull out the camera.

Driving west on 280, the last exit before it feeds into 80 is a service road you take if you want to wind up on I-287.

80, 280 and 287 all merge in this area, and you can throw in US-46 for good measure. In the middle is a vast triangle of untrammeled land. Nature has long since trumped whatever plan landscape designers might have contributed. What grows seems to grow of its own accord.

The colors of the wild grasses and the gnarled trees change with every season. Fall is spectacular, especially in the grasses. But spring is nice, too.

I pass this way every morning on my way from Montclair, where I live, to our office in Morristown. And though I dislike getting stuck in traffic as much as the next guy, when I see the line of cars backing up at the last 280 exit, my pulse quickens.

In fact, I'm rooting for total gridlock--at least until I can see what's new in no man's land.

Usually, I have to shoot on the fly, taking an extra second to lift my foot off the brake when the car ahead of me moves. I haven't been honked at yet, so I must be doing okay.

Tuesday morning of this week was sunny, traffic was at a crawl and I got off a few shots from my favorite vantage points.

The fact that you can see small reminders of the highway is what makes it for me. If it was nothing but unspoiled nature it wouldn't intrigue me as much.

Which is why I am a big fan of the landscape photographer Robert Adams and feel mainly respect for the paeans to nature of Ansel Adams.

The two men are not related. Ansel Adams died in 1984 at age 82. Robert Adams, much less well known than Ansel in the general culture (but of equal stature in the world of photography) is still going strong at 71.

In fact, today, May 8, is his 71st birthday. So Happy Birthday Robert Adams!

What they have in common is the American West as subject matter. But Google them both and you'll see the difference.

Ansel gave us the untrammeled west in all its pristine glory, requiring painstaking work in the darkroom to achieve the perfection of tones that brings us to our knees in awe.

Robert gives us the west as mankind has marked it. In his series of pictures of clearcut mountain forests a few years ago, you can feel both shock and awe. Mostly, he is more subtle. He doesn't wag a finger at us too often, though there is a mournfulness in his work that manages never to slip into nihilism. That's because, like Ansel, he has never lost his faith in beauty.

Robert's way of seeing embraces--or maybe the better word is accepts--even what it rues, or at least questions.

To me, his is a more complex and compelling vision than Ansel's. But don't take my word for it. Google him and see for yourself.

Tags: traffic | East Hanover | photography | Whippany

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