The Roadside Project

Hayek

Hurricane Jeff

The "Jeb" Shrine

This afternoon, I stopped just south of Charlottesville at the "corner" of VA RT. 20 and Thorn Rose Lane. It's the natural place to begin this project, because this is the first shrine I see heading south on 20, home from work.

This shrine is at the head of a rather sharp and dangerous curve that bears left after a straight stretch of road. From the road, the shrine is very visible, but obscured by the shade of the tree.

I pulled over on a deep shoulder between Daniel Morris Lane and Thorn Rose Lane, got out and grabbed both the 35mm and the digital cameras and walked over.

It's an elaborate shrine, with crosses and other ornamentation reflective of various holidays, including Christmas, Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day.

I also noticed the scarring at the base of the tree. As I got up to the shrine, there was a large heart at the base of the tree inscribed with the name "Jeb."

The tree has a crook in it about 5" from the ground. There were more crosses in the crook of the tree, one also inscribed with "Jeb."

Up at the upper left corner of this photo is a small, heart shaped frame with a very faded photograph. I believe it's a photo of a woman.

Here's another shot, showing the St. Patrick's day decorations, including a wind toy (left) and a shamrock (right).

I stayed there for about 30 minutes, mostly setting up shots with the Nikon. I was shooting B&W Pan-X film this time. I'll probably return and shoot a roll of color.

It was another hot afternoon, but this time there was a breeze which turned the propeller on the wind toy, creating a faint buzzing sound. There were birds in the tree, whose singing offset the rush hour traffic whizzing by. The shrine seems so undisturbed, and I did not disturb it in any way.

The Roadside Project

Well. Here goes nothing. Or we'll see about that.

Driving through from Charlottesville to Scottsville this afternoon was nothing out of the ordinary. The a.c. in the Pontiac is shot, which is not a good thing, as the temperature is up to 95˚ and it's humid as hell. I was going down Route 20 at a fair clip, in order to keep the hot, humid air swirling around me, doing nothing so much as tickling the sweat rolling off my brow.

I make this drive every day, to and from work, and this new blogging effort of mine is sort of an outgrowth of that drive. It's a lovely drive, irregardless of the dangerous idiots who feel it necessary to hurl their vehicles down the road like half assed thunderbolts tossed by drunken gods after a bender on Mount Olympus.

The landscapes are the rolling hills of the Virginia Piedmont; rich farmland and pasture, woods and creeks. Every now and then, along the way, there is a melancholy punctuation in the form of a roadside shrine; those small (and not so small) and personal memorials marking the loss of a life in an accident. These shrines dot the the sides of roads and highways all over the Commonwealth, testaments to the immediacy of grief and sorrow.

For the past year, I've bounced this thought around in my head: What if I started stopping and looking at these shrines and photographing them. Today, as I passed the Cross in Keene, I decided that it was time to begin. The plan would be to scout out these shrines, note their locations and particulars, research the circumstances of the accidents and shoot them both in 35mm and digital formats and posting the digitals to this blog as part of a journal for what I'm going to call The Roadside Project.

Tomorrow, for the first time, I'm going to stop, look and, in a way, listen.