Most pictures have a subject. It’s the thing the photographer wants you to notice. Maybe it’s a person, an animal, a tree or a mountain. Whatever it is, your eye is drawn to it.
This picture has no subject. There is nothing in this photograph to draw your attention. The fact is, this is a picture of something that is missing.
It didn’t walk away. It wasn’t stolen. It’s just gone.
Thankfully, we have Google and the internet has a long memory. I snapped some screenshots from before it disappeared.
A drive down a nearby highway used to yield a view of a tower. It hung in the air on a rickety metal framework. The whole thing looked like it might collapse to dust in the breeze of a passing big rig. Maybe that’s what happened to it.
I don’t know where it came from, when it was erected or who was watching what from up there. I’m not sure who climbed the ladder to stare out the large windows overlooking the highway. Was the highway there when it was built?
But today when I stop to take a picture it’s gone.
I stare across the street. From ground level I can see nothing that looks important enough to have built a tower to watch. At least, not anymore. There are some cows drifting over the grass, wind waving in the sparse trees, birds busily going about their business. Is that what the tower watcher watched? Somehow, I don’t think so.
At home I pull up Google – the internet is always down where the tower was – and start trying to prove to myself it existed at all. At first there is nothing. The satellite image shows bare dirt where I remember the tower standing. I switch to street view and move slowly up the road. Then suddenly there it is, frozen in March of 2024 in all its decrepit glory. I take far too many screenshots and start looking outward from the tower instead of at it.
I turn off street view and start panning out. I imagine I’m standing in the tower looking out its large window. What is across the street? What was important enough that someone built a tower just to watch it?
Even on the satellite I’m not sure I see the draw. There is a large pond in the distance. Was this once a quarry? Beyond that, it is just open field.
I have a confession to make: I drove by twice before I knew for sure it was gone. I thought I drove past it without noticing. Then I realized that was the point. At one time this tower was important enough that someone climbed the ladder on purpose to keep watch over whatever was here. Now people pass at 70 mph and never notice it existed at all.
That’s all for now. See you further along the road.
Barn Owl Exploration 