I have this not so secret but rather unrealistic dream of going into space. I went to Space Camp, subscribed to a NASA photo service, watched and rewatched Apollo 13, went to rocket launches, and was going to be an astronaut… a long time ago.
The reasons for my space romance are a few, but now I am mostly seduced by poetic sensations like looking back at the earth to see it globular, hanging in a void and by traversing the untrodden, barren landscape of another planet. The infinite solitariness, unfathomable vastness, and life-threatening distance from the known are godly fascinations that remind me of my humanity.
Since the likelihood of my space voyage continues to be nonexistent, however, I seek out experiences that mimic the high. Hence why this unpopulated, unvegetated lava field in the middle of an active volcano sucked me in. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to the sensation of moonwalking. Also moonrunning, moonlaughing, and mooncontemplating.
I took these photos in black and white, but I didn’t need to. The landscape is naturally, freakishly monochromatic. As if you’re on a faraway planet that has all the properties of earthly physical things like form and matter…except for color.
In the middle of trekking this lonely rock surface (so far from crowds, cities, cars, and the rest of man’s byproducts), my mother turned and whispered urgently to me, “Shhh, if we’re completely still, we won’t hear any humans.” We froze, and stood bug-eyed on the vast volcanic crater, listening. No humans. I loved us for that.
