East Louie Road
This is an absolutely iconic image for me, but I doubt it has much power over anyone else — it probably looks pretty ordinary. But it’s a part of the world that few Californians (let alone outsiders) ever get to see, and I revisit is as much as I can. It just doesn’t look very much like the California of the broader social imagination — it looks more like something Back East — but it’s very definitely part of my mental California (and Oregon, which it very nearly is — think “State Of Jefferson” and all that…). I came across it accidentally decades ago while trying to find a short-cut to Mt Shasta, and I’ve been taking variants of this photo ever since; my first version is on 35mm film, my latest one’s on my iPhone (this one was done with a DSLR). The scene hasn’t changed much in all that time, which is one of the attractions.
This is probably my fave version of the photo, with a nicely flat moody light that suits the high country north of Mt Shasta, and the overall yellowy-brown tone sets a slightly sombre and subdue mood as well. The framing is probably the best of the lot, too — the house, the hill, the bridge, the sign, the fence, the trees, all in-frame (for once) and balanced; and for once I think I got the approach to the bridge right (I often angle it, which doesn’t work as well). And all that geometry and texture — natural curves, straight lines, the fences, wood, tin roofs, high-country hillsides, dry grass, scrappy trees….
All this on a wonderful (too short) two-lane country dirt road between I-5 and Big Springs Road; West Louie Road in the other direction from I-5 is also one of my fave drives as well.
The bridge is something I try to visit pretty much every time I’m up that way, a classic bit of back country construction that I hesitated to cross the first time I came up to it in my old Honda Accord (the surface looked so rough, the structure wonky, but it feels pretty sturdy when you’re actually on it). The house in the middle distance was still occupied back then, I think, but it’s slowly going to ruin nowadays. It makes me wonder how long it’ll be before the gentrification — the big new ranches — will spread west along East Louie Road and engulf it.
