In crossing the German Eifel reserve into the Belgian Hautes Fagnes park I exited a land of cultivated hillsides with furrows of rich coffee-colored soil and entered a wild and misty reserve of twisted and gnarled trees carpeted with ferns. Further still, on the other side of the reserve, industrial Belgium awaited me - a place that is now dear to my heart. Eastern Belgium has suffered economically and that is evident in the deserted soot-faced coal plants and crumbling textile factories, such as the one pictured above. It was not that I was celebrating the economic ruin; rather it was the subtle charm of the inhabitants of this financially broken canton that captured my attention. Unlike other areas of industrial death it was quiet, and it appeared that a new way of living had emerged from the rusting remnants of prior days of toil and oppression. As I cycled through one such town in the evening a young woman was sitting dangerously high in a windowsill with a book in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It was the perfect picture of counter-puritanism and an abandonment of the production/consumption work ethic. But my time here was brief and I may presume too much. (8/31/04)

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La Textile de Pepinster