California, 2005

In a post a few weeks ago I mentioned a time in my life when I felt “blown about randomly like a tumbleweed.” The truth is, at that point in my life I had no personal experience with tumbleweeds.

I “knew” them through the lens of movie and TV westerns, a lonely, and sometimes ominous, quiet moment where the desiccated, rootless vegetation is blown down the single, dusty street of a few unpainted clapboard buildings, in a town inexorably turning into ghost status; maybe just a camera style to move the viewers’ eyes to a different location. It never occurred to me there might be more than one or two at a time.

My friend and colleague Nick Didlick and I were teaching a Nikon School in San Diego and added a few days onto the trip to do some four-wheeling. We had been following a road of sorts, a slightly rutted track that was a little smoother than the rest, and at some point the sides of the road starting rising, as we moved into a slowly deepening gully. We kept going, assuming since there was still a track in, there would be some route up and out eventually.

And that’s when I lost my tumbleweed virginity, and in a pretty spectacular way. We discovered the great, lost Tumbleweed Graveyard.

Apparently, as the weed is blown along the surface it falls over into the gully, gets trapped, and accumulates. I’m using Nick’s photograph here because I’m driving, while he tries to push them away enough to drive through. The rental car company never did say anything about the scratches.

For more of Bill’s photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index