Photos are powerful, especially black and whites. Four of my favorite pictures from traveling this year stunningly capture the power of the convergence of sky, water, and people in open spaces.

As William Least Heat-Moon says in Blue Highways, “Maybe the road could provide a therapy through observation of the ordinary and obvious, a means whereby the outer eye opens an inner one. STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, the old railroad crossing signs warned.”

If the road can do this, expanses of sky and water can even more. Opens Spaces.

Ross Lake, Washington

Highway 101, California

Cecil Rhodes, Alaska

Kenai River, Alaska