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Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

🦉 Ditto That—The intro part

#theparkwaysprojects #ChestnutTrees #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #TheSixties #TheGreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark #EastCoasKin

"Progress however, like art, is in the eye of the beholders. Concert stems from such vision, and vision stirs the mind and heart." 🌙 🪔

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · 28d

🦉🪔🍂The final feed, with intro, which technically speaking, should have arrived first on the scene.

#theparkwaysprojects #ChestnutTrees #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #TomOgburn #TheSixties #1960s #TheGreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark

A legacy of long ago; phantoms in the now, and living art to come from trees which died circa 1936.

Short Takes » Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree » An Early Digital Art Experiment

theparkwaysprojects.substack.com

January 9, 2026 at 1:18 AM

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

🦉🪔🍂The final feed, with intro, which technically speaking, should have arrived first on the scene.

#theparkwaysprojects #ChestnutTrees #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #TomOgburn #TheSixties #1960s #TheGreatSmokyMountainsNationalPark

A legacy of long ago; phantoms in the now, and living art to come from trees which died circa 1936.

Short Takes » Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree » An Early Digital Art Experiment

theparkwaysprojects.substack.com

January 9, 2026 at 1:11 AM

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

"It is the portal some of us adhere to in our reveries, our visualizations."
#PoinsettStateParkSC #SouthCarolinaSP #CCC
#GreatSmokyMountains #BlueRidgeParkway #Nature #SkylineDriveParkway #ShenandoahNP #Photography
#History #Appalachia #ArtsYear #EastCoastKin

Tributaries at Poinsett State Park

One of the most fascinating of South Carolina's CCC built parks

theparkwaysprojects.substack.com

August 30, 2025 at 3:06 AM

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

A Deep Dive into Art & Walking Tour of #TheParkwaysProjects
🌙🦉
#ArtYear #dreams #landscape #photography #ghosts #memory #surreal #postmodern #digitalart #writing #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #EastCoastKin #microfiction #southerngothic #writer #GreatSmokyMountainsNP #ShenandoahNationalPark

An introductory tour of past artworks

And a sneak peek at works I'm creating for The Parkways Projects

open.substack.com

August 30, 2025 at 2:53 AM

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

Yay! 🌙💙🦋 I finally reached 600 followers for what I know is a very esoteric, historically inclined allegorical account 🌙🦉🪔
#GreatSmokyMountains #BlueRidgeParkway #Nature #SkylineDriveParkway #ShenandoahNP #Photography
#History #Appalachia #ArtsYear #EastCoastKin

A scene, a little bit ominous, depending upon your point of view, perhaps. It is the lowlands, just below & adjacent to the remnant white sands of the Carolinas Sandhills region. It is a South Carolina State Park. It is where in many ways, my love of Parks & America's Recreation Areas began, although at the age of three to seven years old, I would never have been allowed to wander into these arenas, for this is a tributary to a swamp. It is the portal some of us adhere to in our reveries, our visualizations. It is to others a threatening place, full of danger & omnipresent latent fears; somewhat founded trepidations, for there are more folks today Nature considers a threat than they do her. They should be the wiser but there is no indication of such at hand.

I place my bet on Nature, for our world is trying to shake us off like a dog would rid themself of fleas. When this Earth finally shakes in earnest, we will be gone. At the same time, we will always haunt the Earth's surface, no matter it's configuration & we will be stymied by loss of orientation, for I doubt we will recognize even our own homes & birthplaces.

We will be lucky to recognize the wake of our own immediately trailing currents, our passages, our departures.

If you were to be standing here on this spot, at the same time of year of this photo being made, you would be seeing an emergence of spring, new grayish-green leaves in the softness of their velvety bloom. A sonorous enclave of otherwise quiet & subdued beauty, until you inch closer to the waters. Then you see & hear the Life teeming beneath the reflection of blue skies above, leaves & sky providing camouflage of faded shades of the brown spectrum & the darkness of the water where the gray bark turns to black, mirroring your face as you wonder at the beauty of such existence.

A black mirror indeed.

This is a panoramic image of three blackwater tributary streams converging within Poinsett State Park, between Sumter and Santee, SC.

July 30, 2025 at 6:16 PM

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025

@parkwaysprojects.bsky.social

🌙 The starting point of words & images🪔

#TheParkwaysProjects #Change #Landscape #Photography
#VintagePhotographs #NationalParks #AltNationalParks
#Nature #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway #ArtYear
#GreatSmokyMountains #ShenandoahNationalPark

"99% of Wisdom is Being Wise in Time"🦉 #TRoosevelt

The Parkways Projects | Tom Ogburn | Substack

A multi-stacked sequence of visual essays recounting the ideas, birth, formulation and construction of the Blue Ridge Parkways, The Great Smoky Mountains and Shenandoah National Parks, forward into th...

theparkwaysprojects.substack.com

July 15, 2025 at 10:36 PM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 11

"In the gloaming, a trail of Mists" a digital photo from The Parkways Projects. I've been going round & round—how to start this in here...🦋 For it's a multi-tiered sequence of art. Since it began really in 1964, as a 9 year old with a Kodak Instamatic—this shot from 2021, Mount Mitchell trailhead 🦉

A cold and thoroughly rain-soaked trailhead leading down to the Appalachian Trail from Mount Michell State Park in North Carolina. A stand of high-country alpine black spruce.

From the Parkways project, a reclamation of sorts to come. I walked down it for a ways, became very cognizant of Time winnowing away, took a number of other images, and then decided to push on up the Parkway, as it had become very real to me that the remaining 12 days were going to be very fleet.

By this time, I'd found passages which had been turned, the corners folded back so many times that the bookmarks crumbled and fell on the touch.

I was waylaid on the way back up the trail though, and burned the last remaining daylight because, in walking back one sees things that weren't there from the first perspective, or angle of view, depending on the way you see things. By the end of that relatively short and very wet hike, I offloaded over 400 images into a folder set aside for this one little episode that night, once back at my fog-enshrouded campground.

Does that make it a chapter, I wonder?

Digital photography will be the largest component of what I hope will be a photo-essay within a few years. I'll be launching a site soon which will include much older photos from 1964 through 1972. They are family shots made over five camping vacations through the headiest part of the 1960's. There's a patina of age, a soft depth to them. Then the archival National Park Service images. A sequence on the small bridges & structures now long gone. A series on the people. Two abstract sequences of works, both digital composite builds. A study on the Civilian Conservation Corps efforts to reclaim the old forests & build some of the most beautiful rustic structures in America.

June 30, 2025 at 5:44 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 12

The original image is blurred, the camera slipped or perhaps it was a windy day in the mountains. There's no name inscribed on back. She's unknown, but not on that day so long ago. She's my longest mystery to date.

“Oconalufty River (Missing Portal in Time) #BlueSkyArtShow #Layers #EastCoastKin

“Oconalufty River (Missing Portal in Time),” digital composite build from the ‘America: Lost & Found’ series, one of the few ‘A:L&F’ works which include a person.

They are the specters, the shades, the one gone missing, that one who must have done something wrong, or possibly just the one who remained unmarried and was eventually allowed to lie in the sun, flat on a table baked by sunlight each day until the albumin or nitrates faded, leaving their visage just an enigmatic ghostly shape.

Here is one of those images to me. She resides in the Bin of Kershaw/Lancaster counties, her life was lived between circa 1922-1928 to maybe as long as 2010-2015.

Yet I do not know who she is. I may never know, but I have an idea she is one of my maternal grandmother’s extended family. That narrows it down to abut 12-15 young women somewhere in their 20-33rd year between the years of 1946-1960. I can guess those years by the physical photograph shape and the undulating edge which in our family matches one of my Grandparents old Brownie cameras.

She remains nameless to this day.

June 30, 2025 at 5:43 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 19

1️⃣ Hello #Bluesky! I'm Tom Ogburn (@bardicarts artist account) I'm launching this dedicated "Parkways Projects" GSMNP-BRP-SDP & ShenandoahNP 🏕️

The theme is #Blur at the #BlueSkyArtShow & its still running—you can still post if it's still Saturday, Jan 18 where you are!

Here's a Blur from Here! 🧵⬇️

Th predominant image you see here is when we drove down to St. Augustine for a four day trip. Wee're at Fort San Marcos here. But come August, we were up at Little Switzerland and Tweetsie Railroad, which began our switch from Motels at the beaches to Camping/Motels in the Mountains.

This Projec will end up being a Photo Essay on the history of the Great Smky Mountains NP, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Skyline Drive Parkway and then Shenandoah NP. It was a grand plan by FDR, and introduced the CCC and eventually the WPA.

There'll be a lot of elements to The Parkways Projects, both happy, sad, dark and uplifting. For it is a story of the Appalachians.

June 30, 2025 at 5:42 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 25

"Rocky Knob Comfort,' A slow fog envelops the beautiful CCC buildings and picnic grounds #DigitalPhoto #Fog #EastCoastKin #BlueRidgeParkway #RockyKnob
#bluesky #blueskyphotogs #VisualArts #BlueSkyFineArts
#BlueSkyPhotography #CivilianConservationCorps
#MeadowsOfDanVA #mobilephotography #Parkways

June 30, 2025 at 5:36 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 28

"Upstream elevation," 1946. #EastCoastKin #Duotone
Photo Restoration, from NPS/OPN archives #blackandwhite
#MonochromeMonday #monochromephotography #SkyArt #photography #blackandwhitephotography #monotone
#Bridges #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway
#BlueSkyPhotography #NationalParks

Photo restoration of an old 1946 era photo of a CCC bridge across a large creek in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sepia toned look.

“The Parkways Project” began as an idea to tell a family story which was always occurred between two to three weeks per year, belonging to a family from Kershaw, a small town in South Carolina between the years of 1966 to 1972. The key years were the camping vacations, from 1968 to 1971, until a small business was opened in that same small town.

But in 2019, 50 years since 1969 (the year the hippies populated our vacations—again, inaugurating changes for one of us) I had gone into ghost picnic grounds, where spirits lived amid a new and thickly rooted understory. One by one, like dominos the size of dolmens, falling without a sound on thickly matted forest floors of fir needles, another strange but wonderful revelation emerged, for the forests themselves had altered. Eerily beautiful portions of memories had become each a wavering mirage of a bridge to Brigadoon in the mists shrouding the tree trunks and retreating grassy arenas.

"The Smokies have averaged nearly 12 million visits per year over the past decade. The highest record was set in 2021 when over 14 million visitors headed to the park in search of outdoor activities amid the COVID pandemic." ≈ Knoxville News Sentinel, Feb 27, 2024

June 30, 2025 at 5:36 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 28

"Covered Footbridge," 1938. #EastCoastKin #Duotone
Photo Restoration, from NPS/OPN archives #blackandwhite
#MonochromeMonday #monochromephotography #SkyArt #photography #blackandwhitephotography #monotone
#Bridges #BlueRidgeParkway #SkylineDriveParkway
#BlueSkyPhotography #NationalParks

Photo restoration of an old 1938 photo of a small covered foot bridge across a branch in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Sepia toned look. Hand-split shingles on the top lean-to roof. The planks below are actually split slate stone.

“The Parkways Project” began as an idea to tell a family story which was always occurred between two to three weeks per year, belonging to a family from Kershaw, a small town in South Carolina between the years of 1966 to 1972. The key years were the camping vacations, from 1968 to 1971, until a small business was opened in that same small town.

But in 2019, 50 years since 1969 (the year the hippies populated our vacations—again, inaugurating changes for one of us) I had gone into ghost picnic grounds, where spirits lived amid a new and thickly rooted understory. One by one, like dominos the size of dolmens, falling without a sound on thickly matted forest floors of fir needles, another strange but wonderful revelation emerged, for the forests themselves had altered. Eerily beautiful portions of memories had become each a wavering mirage of a bridge to Brigadoon in the mists shrouding the tree trunks and retreating grassy arenas.

"The Smokies have averaged nearly 12 million visits per year over the past decade. The highest record was set in 2021 when over 14 million visitors headed to the park in search of outdoor activities amid the COVID pandemic." ≈ Knoxville News Sentinel, Feb 27, 2024

June 30, 2025 at 5:36 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Jan 30

“Arlena McCarty's Otherworld," Clemson OPN/NPS Scan (public domain) used to create this #DigitalCompositeImage
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #America:Lost&Found #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #Collage
To see my NPS/OPN work: @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#BlueskyArt #Skyart

A young Appalachian woman is holding her baby up in her lap for a photographer to record this scene. She's seated on the stoop of her cabin, beside a varied selection of healthy herbs growing beside the steps. The cabin is handbuilt, the boards soundly and well-crafted. Once I recovered all of the the visual data, various items propped against a wall could be seen within the interior shadows of the cabin.

With the darkening & grunging up of the image, you can no longer make out the faint shapes of those items. I've created this work to be the lead illustration for a short story I have in mind about a young Appalachian mother.

June 30, 2025 at 5:35 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 1

“Polka Bear on the balance beam, 1951"🦉
#TomOgburn #MultimediaArtist #HybridWorks #DigitalArt #Photography #BlueskyArt #Skyart #BlueskyPhotography
To see my multi-media work: @bardicarts.bsky.social #EastCoastKin🦋#scape #BlueRidgeParkway #DigitalCollage
#DigitalCompositeImage #GreatSmokyMountainsNP

Evidently, on some fall day in 1951, a National Parks Service staff member saw a strange sight while driving through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. My guess would be they had a camera. It's a good guess—one worth betting on as here's a photo of that strange sight. One has to wonder, "Why would a bear do that?" I finally gave up on the mystery you see here and took to just enjoying it for what it is.

A digital collage from the Hybrid series of works, it's composed of four elements: the original negative scan from the National Park Service film collection, scanned and archived by Clemson University's Open Parks Network (OPN) located between Clemson and Anderson SC. 98% of the scans on file there are in the Public Domain. The border is from a 1969 print mad in a Kodak Instamatic 102 camera. Then the shrubbery, one set light, one dark. The colors are muted yellow ochres, siennas & grays. The bear is walking north on top of one of the old wooden guardrails from that era. Shrubbery in front is whitish, almost like an infrared photo, while the mountains below are dark grays to mid-level grays.

A very grandiose bear. The other mystery is the title, for I don't recall the logic of "Polka Bear," but I'm sure it was present at the time I did the initial workup. What has remained over the course of August 2023 and January 2025 is that I'm still chuckling, for this is an illustration in need of a story. I expect one be arriving via the polka bear’s ghost any day now.

June 30, 2025 at 5:34 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 1

"In the Mabry shadows of rainlight"
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow theme #Light

#BlueskyArt #Skyart #PhotographersOfBluesky
#DigitalArt #Photography #BlueskyPhotography

The interior of the Mabry Mill, Meadows of Dan VA is shown, two of the volunteer mill operators standing to the left in conversation. The men are in the shadows. A strong light enters the mill on opposite end of the building, although it's pouring rain outside.

June 30, 2025 at 5:29 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 1

"Those who will always elude us"
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow theme #Light

#BlueskyArt #Skyart #PhotographersOfBluesky
#DigitalArt #Photography #BlueskyPhotography

A large tree with deep green leaves leans over an array of boulders at Raven's Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Fogs are encroaching from behind. White wildflowers are in the foreground.

The Great Smokies are wrapped in the old world mists which hold memories, and I believe at times the essence of persons long, long past. You can not help but feel it, especially when you watch a cloud roll in slowly to merge with the fog which surrounds your knees and you are engulfed in the commingling.

June 30, 2025 at 5:29 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 2

“The invisible vistas”
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow theme #Light

#BlueskyArt #Skyart #PhotographersOfBluesky
#DigitalArt #Photography #BlueskyPhotography

Wiillis. Cathy. Jean.

Dad, my sister, and my Mom. Standing on a rock I've yet to find, but I will. It's just a matter of Time. Isn't everything?

1968. Now there is only me.

June 30, 2025 at 5:27 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 6

"Hot Springs Bridge," The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025‬
#digitalphoto #TomOgburn #photography #nature #skyart #skyart #skyart#skyart #landscapephotography
#blueskyphotography #blueskyart
#EastCoastKin 🦋 #photographersunited

In this western region of North Carolina, the bridges themselves were some of the most beautiful aspects of the landscape. Based on news reports on the flooding, they may have lost nearly a third of the old WPA and CCC built bridges, which just breaks my heart.

You are standing at the end of the longest bridge entering into Hot Springs, North Carolina. It spans the breadth of the French Broad River. All of the structure of this bridge is built from cast aggregate concrete, giving it the tan color of the land itself. While it has stood the test of time for decades, I'm not sure if it survived Hurricane Helene undamaged. But in this photograph, the sky was a brilliant blue with sunlight casting shadows of bright green foliage onto the structure from this end-cap down.

June 30, 2025 at 5:26 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

June 30, 2025 at 5:26 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 8

“Meadows of Dan Bridge” #TomOgburn #digitalphoto
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow theme #Reflections
#landscape #photography #art #photograph #digital
#landscapephotography #photographersofbluesky
#blueskyphotography #skyart #blueskyart #digitalart

A subtle gray light reflects upwards from the fresh blacktopped road at at the Meadows of Dan Bridge, just outside of the town with the same enigmatic name.

June 30, 2025 at 5:24 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 8

“No words at Rocky Top” #TomOgburn #digitalphoto
#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow #BlueRidgeParkway
#landscape #photography #photograph #blueskyart
#landscapephotography #photographersofbluesky
#photographersofbluesky #skyart

"In the society of illusion, reality must manifest itself." John Trudell

I love this photo. Because of what it's not. When I was a little kid I had to read every interpretive sign. My parents could have killed me and my sister tried once or twice to do so on each trip we took. But I loved those signs, the narrative ones especially. When I saw this one, I had to stop the Jeep again and figure out how to frame a shot around it, for there's just something beautifully poignant about an interpretive sign with no words. And at the same time, it could be Modern Art. Already vignetted. It was a beautiful patinae, and I've used it a few times in some of my digital image builds, but not for any of these images.

Yet.

You're looking at a parkway interpretive sign which was probably damaged, as there seems to be a lot of vandalism happening up there these days. By now, there will be new words, with a fully illustrated tableau of images. The sign is at an overlook, with a classic CCC built low rock wall, a vista in the distance of two mountain summits.

June 30, 2025 at 5:24 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 9

“Rocky Knob Agos” #TomOgburn #digitalphoto #art #skyart
#EastCoastKin 🦋 #landscape #photography#photograph
#landscapephotography #photographersofbluesky
#blueskyphotography #blueskyart #blueridgeparkway

Rocky Knob Picnic Grounds about to become enshrouded by fog, as most haunted places are in Time.

There are ghosts, and then, ghosts within us, and they are the embers near where we whisper their names, and they curl up beside us in our sleep, and calm our anxieties, and coo to our dreams. The tables, the fountains—they are still there, but vacant of people for they no longer exist.

They bend away from us now.

June 30, 2025 at 5:23 AM

Tom Ogburn 🪔

@bardicarts.bsky.social

#Landscapes #Photography #Nature #RESIST
#SkylineDriveParkway #BlueRidgeParkway
#EastCoastKin #ArtYear #Stunday #Solace
#BlueSkyPhotogs #landscape #photography

The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 9

#EastCoastKin🦋#BlueSkyArtShow Theme is #Reflections #TomOgburn #digitalcompositeimage #digitalart #skyart
#landscape #photography #art #landscapephotography #photographersofbluesky #blueskyphotography #blueskyart

The most reflective day compiled in August 2019. Period.

$You may glance at this and see nothing but a random collection of debris. It is that; debris. It is also a collection of concrete memories shattered by change; be a default in the atmosphere of passage. A paean to what must be removed. Had it not been by a random mention to a ranger at the gate of what I was looking for at Julian Price, this photograph would never have been made. He told me where to look for the orange tape, and gave me permission to enter the ruin. Permission. Permission to visit one's past? Well, okay then, here's my hand stamp; here is my pass. For on the day before, and that night before, I had not been able to locate the bath house, the "Comfort Station," as they had been designated by the 1980's, during the Carter Administration. We had camped nearby this latrine, as we called it, modern for it's day, and with every amenity possibly allowed by the National Park Service, including the requisite skunk terrorizing the piecemeal communities of spirit where we met each other shaving, showering, appealing to the day-to-day contingencies while we barely knew the other. To be honest, as I walked across the shattered realm of what once was a state of the art facility, it was a visit fraught with fractal memories. As I drove back to the area in the upstart rain, I saw the orange tape and wandered over. The water had changed the colors to jewel tones. I found piece after piece of shardic remains, each wrapped in cloth and kept for another day for when the Hybrid Works call for reality-driven constituent parts. I still have these parts. These shards. One rides with me in my Jeep to this day. They are the basest of lows, on the one hand. They are the pinnacle of highs on the other.$

June 30, 2025 at 5:22 AM