Sharon: You shouldn't have asked ;) I moved 12 times in my first 16 years. Luckily, kids are the perfect social chameleons so I usually landed on my feet. Hmm... that's cats.. Anyway: Our parents always did a great job of preparing us for new moves, introduced us to local kids etc. The summer we moved to this place, however, our new apartment wasn't finished yet (the one next to the hangar.) So we were temporarily quartered on base for some 2-3 weeks. No kids. Everything was still packed, and I was bored to pieces.
I remember a sunny day, sitting alone by the side of the main runway for hours. Just looking. It was my dad who suggested that when I nagged at him about what to do. He must have run out ideas too. A strange experience: Sounds fading in and out, culminating in thundering noise (and the stench) of engines.. and then fading out again to nothing. The "sound of birds in the distance" kind of silence, in a flat concrete landscape that seemed to stretch forever. And then a new plane. That's what this picture reminds me of. It's just the same feeling, but my POV was lower, and no mountains, so the landscape felt perhaps more isolated. No sentiments tied up to it.. only a sense of calmness.
The abandoned runway we later moved to was great for biking and ballgames. I had just turned 11 so I was a little old for hop scotch. We got a big new garden, a new dog, a new piano teacher lived close by.. etc. Life was good :)
-k2
Thanks, Mary Anne and Kiki! Mary Anne, I was shooting through the concourse giant picture window, fingerprint free! Kiki, thanks for noticing the crop, this shot had a vast amount of ice clouds in it but since this is a concrete challenge I took them out. What a curious childhood you must have had, did you like it at the time? You must have had immense hop scotch games on all that runway! ~Sharon
Nice crop and an eerily familiar scene. As an air-force brat, I used to play on grounds like these. For several years the street outside my home was an abandoned runway, and the nearest neighboring building a hangar :) We didn't have that beautiful mountain view though!
-k2
