#TheBlueRidgeParkway
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parkwaysprojects.bsky.social
🦉"The Seven Vacations (of nine tales) #TheParkwaysProjects
#TomOgburn #TheBlueRidgeParkway #Appalachians 🪔

An introduction of a place, a family, and a once turbulent Time called "The 1960's." #Photograph by me at age 12, 2nd #Photo by my father. #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #BlueSky🦋
The Seven Vacations (of nine tales)
Short takes » Instamatics » A glimpse into the summer of 1968 and glancing losses
theparkwaysprojects.substack.com
October 9, 2025 at 11:54 PM
bardicarts.bsky.social
Full Stop #Photography #Landscapes #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin #TheBlueRidgeParkway #TheGreatSmokyMountainsNP

🦉"Ninety-nine percent of wisdom is being wise in time"🌙
#TheodoreRoosevelt #Illustration #OpenParksNetwork
May 11, 2025 at 5:22 AM
bardicarts.bsky.social
🍃 Words between the lines of age #Photography #TomOgburn #Landscapes #TheParkwayProjects
#OpenParksNetwork #ClemsonUniversity
#Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin #TheBlueRidgeParkway

🦉"Ninety-nine percent of wisdom is being wise in time"🌙
#TheodoreRoosevelt #Illustration
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · May 10
Words between the lines of age #photography #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #BlueSkyArtShow #Lines #ArtYear #EastCoastKin ≈ a nod to Neil Young for the title 🪔

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.” ≈ #JosephCampbell 🌙🦉
A picnic table my family ate at on August 9th 1969, 50 years to the day before this photo was made. It's a 1940 vintage steel tubular legged frame with poplar top & benches. A small leaf, spotted green, yellow & brown on one plank, a red rock from Moab, Utah on another. "Someone & someone were down by the pond Looking for something to plant in the lawn Out in the fields they were turning the soil I'm sitting here hoping this water will boil When I look through the window & out on the road They're bringing me presents & saying hello Singing words, words between the lines of age Words, words between the lines of age If I was a junkman selling you cars Washing your windows & shining your stars Thinking your mind was my own in a dream What would you wonder & how would it seem? Living in castles a bit at a time The king started laughing & talking in rhyme Singing words, words between the lines of age Words, words between the lines of age" ≈ Neil Young From posts I made along the way while tracing the journey my family made in 1969, as Neil Young's star was rising. The trace based on Mom's journals she always kept along the way. The images will be divided into 11 correlated sequences of works, each addressing a different facet of the changes I've observed. There are some very different scenarios up there these days & places, almost haunted, brought forward by the entropy & abandoned areas—once large & resplendent picnic grounds. The thing is, the 5 or 6 interwoven narratives that are still extant, are winnowing away pretty fast along the parkways due to all the funding & infrastructure cuts. These old picnic tables being pushed up out of the earth are just plain eerie, considering the number of instances this is occurring. I finally learned what’s causing it, after drilling down on it for a week or so last year. Permafrost changes. Not like in the arctic of course but still around to enough of a degree to do what it’s doing to memories & concrete up there.
May 11, 2025 at 4:57 AM
bardicarts.bsky.social
🪰The Celadon Hallows Dragoons #Landscapes #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin #OpenParksNetwork #ClemsonUniversity
#TheBlueRidgeParkway #Photography #Illustration

🦉"Ninety-nine percent of wisdom is being wise in time"🌙
#TheodoreRoosevelt
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · Feb 25
#Photography #LandscapePhotography #MobilePhotography #TheParkwaysProjects #TomOgburn #ShotoniPhone #Nature

“The Celadon Hallows Dragoons,” 2018 A modern case-hardened concrete standard-issue South Carolina lowcountry bridge, with squatters.

ALTtext ⬇️
I’d stopped to make something of an odd blemish on a newly blacktopped road in the low country swamps of SC. I have a few workups of an up-top scene of the roadbed itself within my prep folders awaiting some thoughts, but Nosferatu comes to mind more often as its ultimate resolution. No kidding. Yes, that Nosferatu. And Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place. What? In South Carolina? You'd be surprised. I’d stopped to make something of an odd blemish on a newly blacktopped road in the low country swamps of SC. Which is what I’d come to borrow for images on that day. As I finished with the blemish I noticed an odd absinthe-colored tinge to the light reflected on the blackwater, underneath the bridge. I wandered down below. Happenstance is often an invitation to old worlds and new encounters if one follows their gut instincts, curiosity and intuition. A brilliant celadon green, which always grabs my attention, has coated the under-structure of a bridge in South Carolina. Time of day was also at play, for the afternoon light was bouncing off the creek, illuminating the strange green element, which had to be either some kind of mold, or possibly a sprayed-on treatment by the state roads commission. The case-hardened concrete, new steel girders and best yet, all the dirt dauber and regular wasps have a real nursery down here. And yes, they were all flying about as I was walking through the brackish water to get some good angles of view, buzzing around me as if I had invaded their Celadon Hallows. For I had done just that. The things we do for Love. And Art, not to mention when the two come in recombinant forms. Ars longa, vita brevis, indeed.
May 11, 2025 at 4:52 AM
bardicarts.bsky.social
🪔 #OpenParksNetwork #ClemsonUniversity #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin
#TheBlueRidgeParkway #TheGreatSmokyMountainsNP

🦉"Ninety-nine percent of wisdom is being wise in time"🌙
#TheodoreRoosevelt
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · May 10
And...90% of Clemson University's collaboration with the National Park System which is named the Open Parks Network, are Creative Commons or Public Domain.

If you do not see the Creative Commons or the Public Domain marks, contact OPN and they'll help determine if you can use the image. Be Safe 💙🦋
May 11, 2025 at 4:34 AM
bardicarts.bsky.social
🪔 Trail worn by use; burnished in time #Landscapes #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #Stunday #ArtYear #EastCoastKin #OpenParksNetwork #ClemsonUniversity
#TheBlueRidgeParkway

🦉"Ninety-nine percent of wisdom is being wise in time"🌙
#TheodoreRoosevelt #Photography #Illustration
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · May 10
🦉🪔Trail worn by use; burnished in time #photography #nature #landscapes #TomOgburn #TheParkwayProjects #BlueSkyArtShow #Lines #ArtYear #EastCoastKin 🌲

I'll add the original image below in the comment thread.
🧵⬇️4ALT
Black balsam firs are very odd looking trees, because they are ancient, evolving at higher altitudes. A very dense bark, often covered in green moss & lichen create a display of dark needles & bark set off by brilliant electric green moss, yet this image in black & white & toned sepia by me. Archival Librarians working very much in their own high tech universe derived from our own past the incremental moments when those who have come & gone long before us in their race to record a world lost to Time, now being recovered by a very skilled & dedicated team of very creative folk. As soon as I saw this image I noticed first the moss. It looks like it envelopes all of the tree trunks, even the smaller foreground ones. It was then I noticed the curve of the trail, the pitch—then the limbs, all close to each other & the 90º angle as they grow out from the trunk. I'm pretty sure I know where this trail lies. It's likely near the pinnacle of Mount Mitchell just off the main asphalt trail to the observation structure. I'll hike down it again soon & see it I can get a read on which part of that trail it is. The info listed by the NPS assigns it within The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Mount Mitchell & the Parkway overlap at the place I'm almost certain is this location. In titling this work, I used the NPS title at front, then "burnished in time" to align or pair with another image soon to be worked up & titled in an inverted way. The other clue that's evident here seems to be the work of a motorized chopper or trimmer. Not the slingblades, machetes or bush axes of earlier years, which left a more controlled looking cut—but rather the the mangled cuts so indicative of motorized trimmers. Based on that observation I think this to be no earlier than from the late 1960s; more likely 1985 to 1995. If it is a later photo, then the odds are even better I'm correct on where this original image was made. The mysteries of the Clemson OPN system are just mind-boggling.
May 11, 2025 at 4:29 AM
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social
🕊️ I thought it fitting to loft this one again as it has = double lines = which parallel each other, the poems words to the signs homage in honor of Elisha Mitchell.✒️

🦉Elisha #TomOgburn #photography #BlueSkyArtShow #Lines #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #TheGreatSmokyMountains
#TheBlueRidgeParkway🌙 ⬇️4ALT
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social The Parkways Projects 1934≈2025 @parkwaysprojects.bsky.social · May 5
I passed into the deep forest,
And the dark night closed me round;
The dark spray flung its mist in my eyes,
The boughs crashed.

≈ John Peale Bishop ‘A Ballad of the Blue Ridge’

🦉Elisha #TomOgburn #photography #Stunday #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #TheGreatSmokyMountains
#TheBlueRidgeParkway🌙 ⬇️4ALT
One of the very standard historical place marker signs, in August 2019 was bathed in very cold gray mists and camouflaged by lichen-covered fir branches. One could almost walk past it without notice, save for the scratching of he branched on the steel. The sky is a pale silver gray with black border and letterforms raised in the cast steel, with pale ghostly gray-green silhouettes of more firs far in the distance. Atop Mount Mitchell lies a story. This one is for another day, another format, but currently in the works. Soon to be a substack short, transmitted through the ether here, into #Bluesky. Stories like his are ones worth delving into, for the entire story of the Parkway lands being acquired by the federal government are deeply human and eloquent within the range of emotional effect upon the peoples of the Appalachians. Mitchell of course died long before the parkways were a dream, and I'm gathering many of these dreams and memories along the way and throughout the lifetime of this project and my own. Ancient mountains yield ancient stories of geology, of archaeology. Anthropology and genealogy. Always, always fascination of place and time by someone once somewhere amid all those sciences. "Elisha," from the Parkways Project photographs.
May 10, 2025 at 2:24 PM
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social
I passed into the deep forest,
And the dark night closed me round;
The dark spray flung its mist in my eyes,
The boughs crashed.

≈ John Peale Bishop ‘A Ballad of the Blue Ridge’

🦉Elisha #TomOgburn #photography #Stunday #EastCoastKin #ArtYear #TheGreatSmokyMountains
#TheBlueRidgeParkway🌙 ⬇️4ALT
One of the very standard historical place marker signs, in August 2019 was bathed in very cold gray mists and camouflaged by lichen-covered fir branches. One could almost walk past it without notice, save for the scratching of he branched on the steel. The sky is a pale silver gray with black border and letterforms raised in the cast steel, with pale ghostly gray-green silhouettes of more firs far in the distance. Atop Mount Mitchell lies a story. This one is for another day, another format, but currently in the works. Soon to be a substack short, transmitted through the ether here, into #Bluesky. Stories like his are ones worth delving into, for the entire story of the Parkway lands being acquired by the federal government are deeply human and eloquent within the range of emotional effect upon the peoples of the Appalachians. Mitchell of course died long before the parkways were a dream, and I'm gathering many of these dreams and memories along the way and throughout the lifetime of this project and my own. Ancient mountains yield ancient stories of geology, of archaeology. Anthropology and genealogy. Always, always fascination of place and time by someone once somewhere amid all those sciences. "Elisha," from the Parkways Project photographs.
May 5, 2025 at 3:51 AM
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social
"Wedded wood fence at Julian Price Lake" #TomOgburn #photography #TheParkwaysProjects #EastCoastKin #TheBlueRidgeParkway #landscape #mobilephotography #ShotoniPhone #PhotographersOfBlueSky

The Parkways Projects—A multi-tiered photo essay to come in 3 arenas: a Substack/Patreon/Bluesky trio.
An example of lean to fence making. Two trees cut and roughly worked into symmetry for use as sturdy rails. They were probably spiked originally. As the years passed the nook between the two trees. With time, the trees grew around the two locust rails. There is a wooden observation and fishing deck just behind the cluster of three large trees. The air is crisp so the varied greens are bright and sharp. Tomorrow I'll add a comment which will be an illustrated example of how I want to create the look of the old Brownie cameras within the photo essay. I'll rework this image in Photoshop so that it would seem to be a snapshot from 1935.
February 22, 2025 at 6:08 AM
parkwaysprojects.bsky.social
"Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path."
#JosephCampbell

“The wizened emerald path” #TomOgburn #Photography #Stunday 🦋 #EastCoastKin #TheBlueridgeParkway
#Landscape #DigitalPhoto #BlueskyPhotography #Skyart #BlueskyArt #DigitalArt #BlueRidgeParkwayNP #Art #SkylineDriveParkwayNP
A steep mountain knoll holds a narrow path, in places becoming grown over from lack of use. The grasses and groundcover foliage are all brilliant emerald to chartreuse greens, wet with fog and cloud mists. Trees in the distance recede into these mists. In August, in these mountains, all things are bathed in mists. "The wizened emerald path," from the Parkways Projects. A remembrance of place and time—and being. In that year, August 2019, especially the memories of the year 1969, when I first hiked this trail while my family enjoyed their picnic lunch.
February 10, 2025 at 4:54 AM