You might think the white tracks of man-made snow at the top of Bromley Mountain are the fingerprints in this piece, but they’re not the only ones.
As I’ve been exploring abandoned places that still leave their marks and landscapes that are still undergoing change at the hands of humanity, a pattern has emerged in my mind. It’s a pattern of man asserting order over Mother Nature. Of straight lines being carved, sometimes permanently, over a body that is very curved.
Fields plowed by mechanized equipment leave rigid lines that can still be overgrown, but along the stone walls that created the borders of the ancient farms here in Vermont perfect lines of trees have grown up. Sometimes the fields have filled in with scraggly forest, but some fields are still use. The lines of trees, however, are, for me, the most fascinating fingerprints.