Finding beauty in the mundane

One of the differences between my walking blog and other peoples' walking and running blogs is my landscape. Not a lot that's manmade out here, and what there is embodies pragmatism more than wealth or novelty or ideas. Power lines, barbed wire fences, cattleguards, a two lane highway with no shoulder, the barest minimum of what's needed. And culverts. You have to have culverts. Even where there doesn't appear to be any water you need culverts, because when a hard rain does come, the hard baked clay soil doesn't soak it all up. The excess water runs off, finding the path of least resistance, which is usually a road or driveway someone has painstakingly scraped out with a back hoe, and carves it into something beautiful, but impassable. So you need culverts, a way to direct water so it won't do so much damage, a sensible pragmatic solution to the problem of rainwater run-off. Ugly, but utilitarian and cheap. And sometimes beautiful, when they create a little waterfall.