shadow cities and windows

[asakiyume]

I've photographed this before, but I keep doing it because I keep being fascinated by the image: the snow that's pushed up by the sidewalk snowplow casts shadows that look like marvelous city skylines. This one seems to have a dome in the center--a mosque or Eastern Orthodox church:



And this one has some impressive spires and minarets:



We went on a hike on Mt. Tom late this afternoon (there is another mountain called Mt. Toby ... it feels like a rather-too-familiar naming convention? I prefer mountains to be named things like Sugarloaf or Norwottuck... which, indeed, are names of other nearby mountains). The ruins of an old 19th century hotel, the Eyrie House, look out on the Oxbow, a feature of the Connecticut River that the Hudson River Valley painter Thomas Cole painted in 1836:



The Eyrie House has its own entry in Atlas Obscura--it has an aura of tragedy, and indeed, so does Mt. Tom generally--a B-17 bomber crashed into the mountain in 1946, killing the 21 people on board. ... And people keep on needing rescuing, for some reason, from it. A woman was rescued from the summit in September this year, and someone else in November. Go figure!

I am happy to report we enjoyed our hike without incident. The evening light was beautiful.

Comments

[sartorias]

What lovely photos, though that is awful about the tragedies and close calls on the mountain.

[asakiyume]

It was a beautiful walk--there were several other groups of hikers--families with young children and dogs--and we were all moving up at more or less the same pace, so we ended up traveling in sort of one big gang, and coming down as one too (and yet not so together as to feel oppressed? We did all our own exploring and felt like we had the place as much to ourselves as we wanted, but the other families were there too--the dogs would come running up to us for pats on the head.) Anyway, the effect--for me at least--was wonderful, this unspoken kinship and camaraderie. We were the Party of December 27, 2020.

[sartorias]

How lovely!

[sovay]

the image: the snow that's pushed up by the sidewalk snowplow casts shadows that look like marvelous city skylines.

It's wonderful. I love the evening light from the mountain, too.

Are Mts. Tom and Toby named after any people in particular?

[asakiyume]

Wikipedia says, "According to popular folklore, Mount Tom takes its name from Rowland Thomas, a surveyor who worked for the settlement of Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1660s," while the same source says of Mt Toby, "Mount Toby is named for Captain Elnathan Toby, a settler from colonial Springfield, said to be the first Caucasian to summit the mountain." ... The use of Caucasian is a little weird there, but I guess that's what a group-sourced encyclopedia gets us.

--So yes, apparently so! And thanks for the prompt--I had wondered but not taken the next step.

[cmcmck]

These are stunning!

[asakiyume]

I'm so glad you like them! I think it helps our photos that we can never manage to organize ourselves for a walk until just before sunset!

[kore]

Those snow-shadows are gorgeous!

[asakiyume]

You can tell such stories about them! As I walk along I imagine I'm a tourist there.

[teenybuffalo]

These are wonderful. I never knew the thing about Eyrie House -- thank you for that. The view through the doorway is making me long for a walk in the mountains in WMass.

[asakiyume]

You're welcome--I'm tickled that I was able to get the write-up from Atlas Obscura instead of the more usual Wikipedia. Recently someone/some organization has affixed laminated photos at various points on the Eyrie House site (must have been recently because they're only staple-gunned to trees and things, and already some of them are coming off, so it's not a very long-term way of sharing information), showing what the place looked like back in the day. Fascinating.

This January it'll be 23 years I've lived here, but it wasn't until This Pandemic Year that I climbed Mts Toby, Tom, and Sugarloaf.

How long have you been at your current address? I'm trying to remember... four years?

[osprey_archer]

Oh my God! I saw that picture of the river through the archway on Twitter yesterday, and I thought, "That looks like a nineteenth-century American landscape painting." And I was right! That's literally a Thomas Cole painting! Goodness gracious.

It's striking to me to think how long the center of gravity, so to speak, of American culture remained on the east coast. Up through the Civil War, the big landscape names were all painting in the Hudson River Valley and the Catskills.

Those shadow cities from the snow are also so striking. You can almost imagine someone walking into one...

[asakiyume]

I love that you are so soaked in 19th-century culture that you saw that as a painting even without directly knowing about the painting! Yeah, cultural hegemony, man. We think about it in terms of, say, US (or Anglo) culture smooshing over the cultures of other areas, but even **within** the United States or the United Kingdom--or even just within England--it's present.

And absolutely, I imagine being in those cityscapes. I'm tempted to draw doors and windows and winding walkways...

[anna_wing]

What absolutely beautiful photos! And you are totally right about the snow cities. I will add them to the watermelon marshlands in my mental geography!

[asakiyume]

Thank you! And hurray, maybe we'll meet canoeing through the watermelon wetlands or walking on the silhouette streets one day.

[mallorys_camera]

Lovely photos. Very The City and the City-ish: The real snow jags and their spectral twins...😊

[asakiyume]

I really need to read that one!

[mallorys_camera]

You do! 😊

[nineweaving]

Oh, how beautiful! I love your fantastical cities, and the view from Mt Tom is stunning. That keyhole picture is magic.

Nine

[asakiyume]

Very happy to add some beauty to your week!

[wayfaringwordhack]

Those snow skylines are fabulous. Thank you for the voyage to three distinct places in this one post. :D

[asakiyume]

If we can't travel together in real life, at least we can do so in this asynchronous way (might be better, even: who knows what habits we have that in real life would drive each other nuts!)

[wayfaringwordhack]

who knows what habits we have that in real life would drive each other nuts!

This made me laugh out loud because it is so true. :P

[asakiyume]

I love fantasy, but I'm also a pragmatist/realist!

[wayfaringwordhack]

ditto ;)

[zyzyly]

I love those snow shadows.

[asakiyume]

Such great cityscapes :-)