A hulking, picked-over corpse of twisted metal, languishing on a beach so black and flat it feels as though the light of the universe itself is being slowly tamped out against the surface. Long before I walked this desolate stretch, I had seen it — long before I brushed my fingers across these bullet holes to confirm reality, I was sure of their existence.
In 1973, a weary pilot flipped over to a reserve fuel tank with nothing in it, and a plane slowly spiraled out of the sky to smash here into featureless, onyx desolation and an overwhelming emptiness. The story of the crash has shades of the emotion I felt the day I went looking for it, and how I feel again today writing about it.
I'm not entirely certain how I've gotten here, but I know this vacuous feeling in the pit of my stomach well. Sometimes it is yearning (for what, I'm not certain,) or exhaustion; worry, or sometimes the sucking void left behind when the thrill of adventure and danger drains away from my heart and releases outwards in a tingle from the tips of my fingers. And then, I am like this beach. I am like this wreck. Tentatively empty. Potentially ready to collapse. Possibly ready to fly.
I live for moments like this: to step from shelter into the wind, and begin walking towards something unknown. Behind me, anchoring the empty highway, crowned by sapphire sky and ermine drifts, a ring of burnished mountains is split by the jagged, gleaming tears in the earth marking waterfalls. In front of me, the curve of the world itself in a wide, absolutely perfect black arc. Grey, low hanging clouds and the smooth visual of the shape of our planet. The fringe of my hair whipping around my face and snapping against my cheeks is the only colour; red floating in the air, red stinging pains in my exposed skin. I am red, and the ground is black.
Walking forwards, I imagine I will see the plane immediately. Instead, I travel for twenty minutes, and there is nothing. I am walking the curve, tracing the horizon with sure steps, but my viewpoint never changes. I am a haze of crimson, with a supernova at my centre. If this obsidian beach crunching imperceptibly below the soles of my feet wasn't already draining this place of light and sound, I would pull both into myself naturally, without even trying. This is how I see the world. And when I look up, this is how I see the plane. It looks exactly like every magazine clipping, every album cover, every haunting image I've unconsciously absorbed. It feels completely familiar.
I'm standing on the wing of an airplane.
The black and grey billows out in all directions and where I expected instagram poses and surreptitious graffiti scribblers or other photographers and disrespectful tourists, there's just me. A single, brilliant red button below the window catches my eye, as though it is a sign from a kindred spirit. I push it, and nothing happens because of course it fucking doesn't. I keep my fingers wrapped around the knob and peer into the shadowed interior. (I'm half expecting a skeleton with an ammo crate or a glowing axe: I play too many Bethesda games.)
Still no one on the horizon, but I'm feeling... fuller. The more of this place that I see — the more of the images I didn't know that I knew that I can match up against the incredulity of being here — the more right this whole thing feels. I was meant to explore, to record, and to stand inside this plane for a moment, so that for a moment it isn't empty any more.
I've been having a strange and sort of rough week this week. Too much work, not enough sleep, worried about some personal stuff, excited to be on the road again. I don't know why I came back to these pictures, but today I was drawn to them.
These photos and words are my own work, inspired by travels all over this pretty blue marble of ours. I hope you like them. 🌶️
