Cargo

Recently Gabriella wrote this lovely piece on her blog, whose complete title is “surviving the suburban life.” I pass along her eloquence about growing or buying local here.

 

 

Notice the five white reefer containers near the top; they have compressor machinery at one end. They might contain imported blueberries, tomatoes, flowers; maybe imported apples for the big apple.

 

Stuff imported and more. I’m not preaching, and…

 

 

I’ll buy and use some of the stuff, but

 

 

what is the future? While driving in rural Alberta last week, I saw a dozen or so containers at the end of a hay field. As an old farm hand I checked what agricultural stuff would travel in the containers: outbound alfalfa hay.

The mosaic of primer color containers has become like a bar code imprinted everywhere in our environment, the contemporary ever-shifting logo on the waterways, rails, and highway; around factories and behind shopping emporiums; even in the hayfields near the continental divide.

I suppose this has roots in the 19th century when Hudson River ice packed in sawdust went to the tropics and coastal guano and of course many other raw tropical commodities–some of the same as the ones today–travel up to our latitudes.

Photos by Will Van Dorp.