CVNRA #154, from the Federal Lands series

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In 1986, the Akron Art Museum commissioned Robert Glenn Ketchum to document the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area as a follow-up to Lee Friedlander's "Factory Valleys" series. Ketchum photographed the CVNRA over several years and in every season, capturing both the area's natural beauty and the evidence it provides of the complex, sometimes troubled relationship between humans and nature. This image conveys a sense of movement and time passing as nature transitions through fall towards winter. In the foreground, the trees are in in stages of change, losing leaves, preparing for the quiet of winter. Animal life would also be preparing for change. Birds and insects would be flying south for winter. Amphibians would be settling in for a period of dormancy. Squirrels and deer would be taking advantage of this final period of plenty before the cold snow comes. All of these are ordinary, annual patterns. Meanwhile, the highway bridge, updated since this picture was taken, conveys residents and visitors across the valley as they go about their daily lives.