06.23.05| ghosts of spanish galleons in Alabama

"Before them, surrounded by ferns and palm trees, white and powdery in the silent morning light, was an enormous Spanish galleon. Tilted slightly to the starboard, it had hanging from its intact masts the dirty rags of its sails in the midst of its rigging, which was adorned with orchids. The hull, covered with an armor of petrified barnacles and soft moss, was firmly fastened into a surface of stones. The whole structure seemed to occupy its own space, one of solitude and oblivion, protected from the vices of time and the habits of the birds. Inside, where the expeditionaries explored with careful intent, there was nothing but a thick forest of flowers."
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

Down Highway 65, just below Montgomery, Alabama lies a section of road where the meridian contains numerous trees, a collection of bearded old men lounging in the mid-morning sun. Often I passed this way, their forms always transformed to a soft blur on the horizon, the hazy landscape indistinguishable from the intentions of my travels.

During the last trip however, I forced myself out of the numbing flow of the ordinary, risked parking the car along the side of the freeway, and dodged oncoming traffic to capture a series of photos.

The gesture of their limbs, the texture of the spanish moss, plus the angle of the winter sun: all these elements established an atmosphere— they always remind me of ancient fleets of spanish galleons, lost ships wandering up the southeastern United States, only the spines of the timbers remain, arching out of the earth, encrusted with barnacles and torn sails.

ancient ghosts