In Robert Adams' book, "Why People Photograph," (Aperture, 1994) he mentions a certain gravestone located in Keota, Colorado. Of note was the direct simplicity of the inscription, "Keota, my home of 63 years."

"However terse that is with the honesty of a last thing, it is compelling in its passion. He must have thought about the words for a long time to conclude so unequivocally what mattered most... The place ��� that was who he was, by his love for it."

The essay, "In the 20th Century West," written in 1986, spends a good bit of time describing Adams' lament for the destruction of the natural areas we know and love. Nearly 30 years have passed since the essay was written and I decided to find this gravestone.
It didn't take much. Keota is an hour away, and what's left of the town takes no more than 10 seconds to drive through slowly on a washboarded, dirt road. The cemetery lay just beyond the edge of town, flanked by what used to be open grasslands - and now serves as the home for oil and gas well pads. Lots of them.

My initial temptation was to sidestep the bemoaning of land development and simply seek other, new places. But the Pawnee Buttes, right down the road, are a special place to me, and seeing the extensive oil surface activity struck a sad chord. "We feel worse," he said, "about losing the specifics of home." In this image you can see, on the horizon, heavy machinery poised to devour all land immediately adjacent to the tiny, fragile cemetery on the high plains. A cruel exclamation point on Adams' foretelling of 30 years prior.