My wife and I were driving along a state highway near Caribou, Maine, some years ago when I spotted an abandoned house by the side of the road. I grabbed my camera, jumped out of the car and began taking pictures as my long-suffering wife waited for us to be on our way. I don’t know how long the house had stood empty, but the siding was worn down to bare wood, and the glass was gone from the windows. The roof was bashed in, and the structure was almost entirely covered in vines. I shot through the windows and the doorway, which opened into a darkened front hall and stairway. An image of the doorway overgrown with vines remained on my hard drive for several years until I came across it again and realized I might have something.

This image, suitably matted and framed, was recently exhibited in a juried competition at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado. The theme of the show was listed as “Box Squared,” with the following explanation:
 

While life and nature are cyclical and cylindrical, we live in boxes, travel around in boxes and buy things in boxes. We talk about "out of the box," squaring up, and box stores. Explore the box and square within a cylindrical world.

While I might quibble with the notion that the natural world is primarily cylindrical, it is hard to dispute the show’s basic premise. In Conversations with Myself, the philosopher Alan Watts observed that the essential difference between humankind and nature is our penchant for putting things in boxes, not the least ourselves.  More