Wabi-Sabi: a Japanese aesthetic that finds beauty and serenity in objects, landscapes, and designs that are simple, imperfect, and impermanent.

Wabi is about recognizing beauty in simplicity.

Sabi is concerned with the passage of time, the way all things grow, age, and decay, and how it manifests itself beautifully in objects.

Old Car City

Old Car City is well-known among photographers, a self-proclaimed “photogaphers paradise”. For many, it’s a regular Mecca. I was superficially familiar with it. I referenced it after wandering around Palmer, Alaska, and coming upon the Eklutna Tail Race with its old, rusted cars being reclaimed by nature.

There’s not much accessible local wildlife in February in northwest Georgia. So I left Dalton (the AstroTurf capital of the world) and took a short trip down I-75 to White to wander the “world’s oldest knowd junkyard.”

It’s unseasonably warm, 60 degrees, and sunny. There are 4000 automobiles in the woods surrounded by and being reclaimed by the pine forest. There’s a pond somewhere on these 34 acres among the seven miles of trails. There’s no map. Just an upside-down satellite image of the compound in the former general store. It’s just a wander.

The Entrance

Delightfully, there is all manner of junk collected here. I immediately understood why people return time and time again. It’d be hard to ever really explore it all.

The entrance is an artfully arranged series of collections: hubcaps, bicycles, box springs, mufflers, signs, and more before I pass through an old barn and emerge in the forest of cars.

The purveyor’s mom “parked the first car here in the ’30s.” There are older car sections, truck sections, and “newer” car sections. New is relative, the newest cars here are early 70’s models.

The rust, wires, pine needles, vines, squirrel nests, and patterns of lichens are enthralling. It’s slow going.

I wonder why we ever got away from these glorious hood ornaments.

I arrived a little before noon and spent three hours fully immersed in the exploration, and the art, only joined by birds and squirrels. It was the best thing I’ve done for my mental health all year.  Enjoy some of what I captured.

Keyholes

Emblems

Door Handles

Windows

Reclaimed by Nature

Lights

Nature’s Art

Wonderful Old Cars

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any of the images you see here, please email me: SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

Subscribe here to receive an email whenever a new blog posts.

The post Old Car City appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

I noticed a single car parked at the Eklutna Tailrace trailhead and a man walking his dog on a narrow spit of land extending into the Knik River when I passed by this morning.  It looked moosey, so I made a mental note to stop on my way back this afternoon.

A wide flat pedestrian trail extends straight to the flowing river less than a quarter-mile away. On my right is a large, still marsh perfectly reflecting the Chugach mountains in the distance.  On the left is the tailrace – the glacial blue turbulent outflow from Eklutna Lake that courses 4.5 miles via a tunnel bored through the mountains to provide hydroelectric power to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.  Fishing is popular below dams and hydroelectric plants, and this site is no exception.

I was only a few steps down the path when I veered off to the right down a slope toward the water’s edge beckoned by the enormous landscape with snow-capped mountain reflections. Following along the water’s edge, I paralleled the trail stepping through the trees trying to capture fast-moving warblers, examining bark, and photographing mushrooms when I saw something poking out of the earth. Almost completely buried, a sliver of a car mimicking a canoe caught my eye. As I walked, I saw another and another. Thick metal cables loop out of the ground as if tethering the vehicles. Were these cars placed here to create the jetty?

Carcasses of cars in various states of disrepair, all fantastically rusted and half-buried, litter the entire north bank of this small peninsula.

Consumed by photographing these relics, I forgot all about my search for moose and lingered until my stomach pulled me away for dinner, where I researched this surprising find on mile 3.6 of the Old Glenn Highway.

It turns out it’s not a deliberate earthworks project at all.  From the 1950s through the 1970s, cars were just dumped here.

The state of Alaska blames this on the era of federal ownership. The Electric Company bought the land in the 1980s, and since then, better surveillance and more people around seem to have stopped the dumping.

The speculation is that this secluded spot simply had easy road access for dumping cars.  Some were deserted by their legitimate owners (demolition derbies used to take place nearby), others were stolen and ditched after a joyride, and still, others were set afire when they got stuck.  To this day, abandoned cars sit along roadways throughout Alaska.  It seems commonplace to just leave your broken-down car where it stopped and figure out a new transportation plan later.

I could spend a whole day here. The details in these decaying cars are amazing. There is so much in Alaska. Always so much more than I expect.

Subscribe here to receive an email whenever a new blog posts.

The post Old Car City Alaska Style appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.