Children’s Hands at Play

The structures usefulness has long outlived its purpose and been abandoned by the military and turned over to the National Park Services. These concrete structures of fortifications imbedded into the coastal hillside against an enemy that never arrived, are now left to the elements and to the many mischievous hands at play in the garden of forgotten childhood.

Sounds of the ocean are muffled; a sea gull’s shrill can be heard off in the distance, piercing the sky as it fills the void. My footsteps upon the lose gravel disrupt the surrounding rhythms measuring the intervals of time.

Gazing in through the window frame, as it is absent of glass or the iron bars, I behold a chamber adorned by the hands of many, they who have left behind a trace of their presence by any means possible.

As the right leg climbs over the ledge of the window, I slowly begin my descent, intruding into a realm of unknown. Here where ubiquitous voices have sanctified impenetrable walls, now harboring the transgressions of our silence are the cryptic, enigmatic symbols. They, which converse in a mix of language, colour and texture, ever changing as transient voices add or subtract to the layers when their dreams collide.

Though surrounded by the ghosts lingering between the overlapping layers of indifferent pigmentations of colour, I find myself alone in this space, losing track as the hours pass with the swiftness of a sparrow.

I leave this place the same as I had found it, though richer for having stayed.

Notes:

All digital photographs featured in this photographic essay were taken on April 17, July 8 and July 12, 2007, at the Battery Mendell, located at the Marin Headland in Northern California and under the supervision of National Park Services.