Taken at the Dells Boat Docks, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, May 2011. Part of my Strange Landscapes series.
Excerpt from my thesis:
"I can’t get over the fact that every time I return to this life, it’s exactly the same. Exactly. I anticipate a difference and I am always disappointed. I walk out of his back door above the candy shop on the strip to see roller coasters looming out of that cold Sunday morning. Driving home hungover amid the early Masses, I am surprised by the number of people awake when I haven’t yet slept. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I’m going to tell this story later when I’m startled by the colors on the trees. With a long-time preference for staying up until the early morning and sleeping until mid-afternoon, I have a hard time differentiating between seasons – it’s always cold at night and pretty much everything looks the same in the moonlight. It’s fall, and finally, it’s cold. Roller coasters have stopped running, water ceases from the slides and wavepools, and the ferris wheel on the parkway stands with its cars removed. Every Tuesday after Labor Day weekend, the Dells becomes a ghost town. It is now possible to get: a parking spot, a table in a restaurant, a seat at the movies, and anywhere on time. It’s depressing, in a way, but we need this – we need this so that in seven more months, we can welcome tourists, invite them again with open arms. This city is not a machine that hums and buzzes because it too has a culling song that softly lulls us all into a cold and eventual sleep."
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