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| 8/25/24 Maple Leaf neighborhood |
Since nostalgia is generally associated with pleasant
memories of the past, it’s weird to think of a potentially traumatic, anxious
time like the pre-vax pandemic era as nostalgic. And yet that’s exactly
how I feel now about some walking routes that became overly familiar during that
first year when we walked daily on the same streets. They feel like “going home
again” after being away in the big city or something. I recently walked on
First Avenue Northeast near Northgate, which runs parallel to Interstate 5, separated
from the highway only by a noise-blocking wall. I enjoyed walking here during
the pandemic because it was usually empty of both cars and pedestrians, so I
could easily walk or sketch from the middle of the road.
Such was the case on a recent morning when I observed that
nothing at all had changed in the past four years since I used to walk there
regularly. Cars still park in awkward, non-linear ways. The same vintage Volvo I had sketched back then was still there.
On Northeast 91st intersecting First Northeast, I
noticed a tree had been drastically hacked to accommodate utility wires. Taking
off all the limbs on one of two central trunk lines, it now looked like a tuning fork
reaching for the sky.
Revisiting this location and seeing that it has mostly stayed the same must feel strange. There were so many place and things that take us back to that time. I can't pass a Walgreens without thinking of the vaccinations.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's weird how some places changed drastically during the pandemic, and others didn't change at all!
DeleteThat top spread is oddly compelling. It may have been sketched now but it has that desolate deserted feel of the pandemic days. Or maybe I like it because I love the way you include cars in your sketches.
ReplyDeleteThat street always feels desolate... and yet it's adjacent to the busy freeway!
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