More Neo-Topographics

Wyndham Hill Suburban Pumpjack, #2. Weld County, Colorado, 2015 (northeast view, just northwest of Wyndham Hill Parkway and Aggregate Blvd, or CR 7)

I am continuing to work my “Neo-Topographics” project and it is amazing the things you find when you tour the various suburban subdivisions under construction along the Front Range. In the image above, the pumpjack was actually pumping at the time–I waited for it to hit its apex before tripping the shutter.

At first, I was shocked to see petroleum pumping operations so close to single-family homes–what is the world coming to? But, upon rethinking it, maybe we really ought to be doing more of this. If we are going to continue to be dependent on petroleum, with all of its myriad environmental implications, then we should be willing to have an oil pump in our very own back yard so we can be more directly plugged in to those same implications.

If we like oil, we should be willing to embrace its production, hug it, drink the fracked groundwater, send our kids out to play around the pumpjacks, maybe even dress up the pumps with Christmas lights!