Melting Chimneys, Fort Union National Monument (click to enlarge)

Here is an image of the chimneys that remain from the buildings at Fort Union National Monument.  This image reminds me of the soft melting pocket watches in the Dali painting The Persistence of Memory.

As Dawn Adès wrote, “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”.  Pretty deep stuff.  But then again, the above image is a symbol of the slow erosion and collapse of Fort Union over time.  As you walk around the grounds, you will notice many braces holding up walls, and areas where workers are repairing the adobe remnants of the walls.  Abandoned in 1891, it is hard to imagine the remnants lasting another 126 years.

I guess this could also be one of those glass half full/glass half empty tests.  Are the chimneys melting into the blobs, or are the chimneys arising out of the blobs?

Fort Union Chimneys: N35 54 22.23 W105 00 50.67