Saltzman Road

Artists

• Andy Stout

Statement

Upon entering Saltzman Road on foot, you smell the temperature drop 10 -15 degrees. Wet dirt airless bark evaporates into your olfactory senses. I exhale with a sigh, feeling relief or flinches of a recollection of where have I been; most likely both, simultaneously. A creek follows me a quarter of the way. There is a burst of shower seaming into streaming boiling water pushing around shallow pockets of various shaped and sized rocks . The creek fades in and out, as if a radio receiver was drifting while driving through mountains. The road is crackly paved and slowly inclines at the 5 mph hairpin point turning into Ciabatta bread with potholes and increases 60%, then "S" curves steeper to a tip point of 75%. It is a man made road in Forest Park for homes to be settled in.

As you wander through the road there are many transporting elements within the atmosphere. Helpless moss, contorted branches claw clumped together throughout the road are reaching out with individual characteristics morphed into laden limbs underpinning new growth. The dead branches are holding up the live ones. It is an ironic example of nature verses nurture. Sword fern intertwines with ivy and underneath a wall of stone. Part of the ivy has been cut and the stone wall climbs about 10 feet tall and 20 yards in length, with mineral colored mapped stress marks. On the other side of the road there are wild flowers of the Northwest interspersed with uncut grass, dead leaves and moss broken branches. Another element can be heard; the inconsistent repetitive patient chirps, whistles and feedback from the invisible birds. Most people drive to get to the trailhead, but I walk.

Please Do Not Litter -Andy Stout