Royce Howland

The briquette processing building at the abandoned Brazeau Collieries mine operation processed crushed coal and tar into briquettes. These were run over 4 huge conveyors into a storage building, awaiting loading onto rail cars. Not a lot of folks now remember the days of coal furnaces in the home, or coal-fired locomotives. The conversion of the latter to diesel spelled the rapid end of a phase of the coal mining industry that included the shutdown of this mine. Coal was instrumental in opening the West, but this setting conveys for most a piece of history that we’re now removed from.

Various derelict vehicles lie scattered around the property at the abandoned Brazeau Collieries mine operation. These three old cars were thoughtfully parked together as if by a forgotten valet, who departed the scene after the drivers didn’t return to claim their wheels. These days you have to park your own vehicle in the visitor parking lot; valet service is not available.

Large storage tanks from abandoned mining works stand ranked behind a weather-beaten chapel in the ghost town of Goldfield, Arizona. This perspective on the series of geometric shapes provides a sense of order to these structural relics.

Driving past Agathla Peak in the Navajo Nation, on our way to Monument Valley, we passed a few horses at 60 MPH. I saw them coming when we were still a little ways down the road, but had only a split second to react as the elements lined up beyond the vehicle window.

Landmannalaugar is a region in Iceland’s southern highlands famous for its geothermal pools, lava fields and colored rhyolite mountains. It’s a strange and beautiful place to explore. Late in our visit here this day, clouds began to accumulate in the previously clear blue sky, echoing the snow clinging in calico patches to the warm, many-colored hills.

Svartifoss (the “Black Falls”) is one of the many famous waterfalls dotting the landscape of Iceland. Its dark-colored hexagonal basalt columns are cut through by the 20 meter cascade; the rock is blackened further by many years of corrosion, until chunks of the columns break off and expose new surfaces. The broken columns form an inverted pattern of rising ranks, as weather and the elements cause the column ends to drop under their own weight, cut loose quite evenly across natural fracture lines.