Playing with Google maps . . .

The world looks better right side up . . .



My apartment complex. Ridgewood Village. I used to think that the name was stupid because it wasn't on the ridge of anything. Then I realized that we are in fact just on the ridge of the freeway. A small concrete stream with no water runs between us and the power plant to the north.




The Black Hills, South Dakota. Mount Rushmore is less than a mile southwest of this picture, but it was cover by clouds, and the view in this direction was always my favorite anyway. I can point out secret spots in these hills that wouldn't mean much to just about anybody.




Hometown. Dallas, Oregon. Of all the pictures, this one looks the most plain to me, which I suppose is appropriate. My house is in the lefthand corner.




Fishing village on the northern Italian coast. You could see the bay from our hostel window, and google doesn't even have images of the path we hiked the next day, which was filled with more beauty than could fit into a year.




La Alhambra, since it seemed a crime to not include it. What strange geometry builds up over the centuries!




The Columbia River gorge which divides Oregon and Washington is so, so, so green. There's nothing more inviting than flying home over this landscape. I cannot wait to be in the midst of it all, but if I must wait, just watching this pass beneath me is not bad at all.




This one is zoomed out farther than the others, but I had to include it because: Venice looks like a little boot, attatched to an umbilical cord (the road to the left-hand corner) to its mommy, Italy the big boot! Who knew??




It's technically called the Orange Plaza, but come on -- it's clearly the Orange Circle, which is what everyone calls it, smack dab in the center of Orange, a central Orange County, California town. I guess the historic look and feel of the area was only preserved due to the fluke confluence of a bunch of antique stores in the same place, which somehow seems appropriate.




Minneapolis. A city built like a puzzle out of skybridges and shadows.




I never realized that Kenosha, Wisconsin was so close to the tiny ocean that is Lake Michigan. Erin told me she sometimes dreamt of flooding, and now I know why.




Granada's Parque Garcia Lorca was one of the last places I revisited before taking a bus to the airport to catch a plane to London, to Dublin, back to London again and finally to Oregon, away from Spain. My host family lived in an apartment in or close to this picture, as did many of my friends' families. I've walked those streets so many times I can see it up close if I just close my eyes.


"All the wild world is beautiful, and it matters but little where we go, to highlands or lowlands, woods or plains, on the sea or land or down among the crystals of waves or high in a balloon in the sky; through all the climates, hot or cold, storms and calms, everywhere and always we are in God's eternal beauty and love. So universally true is this, the spot where we chance to be always seems the best." ~ John Muir