Disoriented with Time: Ruins in the Switchbacks

Artist Statement

In this photography series, I highlight the architectural remnants in the Switchbacks located near Spokane, Washington. Reclaimed by graffiti artists and moss, these decaying foundations and dams now burst with vibrant color, life, and arcane narratives. The intersection of the wetland environment and the nonnatural human touch challenges one’s perspective on the relationship between humanity, nature, and time: there is nothing on earth that can escape its season.

Out of everything in the Switchbacks, this graffiti mural is hands down the most tasteful. As I stand beside the stream that rushes from the pipe, an earthy smell hits me. Geosmin, maybe? The sun comes and goes that day, so I wait for the rays of sunlight to peek through the clouds. When they finally do, I capture this moment: the girl’s golden face and the dragonfly’s wings glowing as they were meant to.

As a kid, I would often trim away branches with a cheap pocketknife in the woods across from my house, forging a walkable path for me, my sister, and my band of wild friends. I am still as crafty and adventurous as I was then, and yet I now find myself assessing how I might inflict as little damage as possible. I suppose I’ve taken “be a good steward of the earth” to heart in adulthood.

Science tells us that plants don’t feel pain, that their defense mechanisms respond to injury or stress; they heal themselves. Yet when I think of teenage boys and girls cutting into a beech tree’s skin with a pocketknife, I imagine that this mark brought pain. If it could feel pain, would this tree react differently? Would it care? I ponder these questions knowing that the tree likely responded to the invasive slashes to its bark the same as it would to a buck rubbing the velvet off its antlers in late summer.

Among crude tagging, a green caricature stands out. Apparently, it’s the robot-dog companion GIR from Invader ZIM, a cartoon from the early 2000s. I have never seen the show, but as someone who feels nostalgic for that era of animated television shows, I can understand people’s obsession with the derpy-looking character. In elementary school, I had a GIR obsession of my own: Spike, the little purple dragon from My Little Pony. Unfortunately, there are no dragons in the Switchbacks. In this space, GIR is the mascot. He is as unpredictable as the self-paved path of water or concrete cracking from pressure.

I had a fascination with spiders as a kid. I’d scoop up daddy longlegs and let them crawl in my hands and on my forearms. It should come as no surprise that because of this, “daddy longlegs” was one of my favorite nicknames growing up—though it was more so a reference to how I shot up like a bean sprout.

I developed a healthy fear of the creatures as I grew older, though. Being more predator than prey, and sharing an affinity for creativity, I decided that spiders and I deserve to be left to our own devices. I won’t go within a foot of a spider willingly, and I certainly don’t invite them to crawl on me anymore. Instead, I look at them with awe and wonder through the lens of a camera—several feet away, of course. Some spiders enjoy invading personal space.

One of my favorite things to see in nature is a random, broken-down object. How odd it is to see an old oil drum in the middle of the woods, rusted over and crumbling. It makes you wonder what happened there before. My dad told me that this land was once used for logging way back when. Was it? I guess I’ll never know.

Maybe the tagger thought the same thing and, in an effort to keep the drum alive, sprayed hurried streaks of blue and white on it. But its beauty is in its decay. Far be it from me to glamorize a metal drum in a stream, but I’ll quote Robert Frost like Ponyboy Curtis: “Nothing gold can stay.” And neither can this trivial relic.