Usually, storm drains are built into the ground, but due to the landscape—at the wall (on the other side of which is the road that runs by my office) the slope goes sharply down—this one was left exposed to the elements. The picture was taken from a walking trail, and every time I walk by I think about how even this mundane thing is not unlovely. The grey concrete is drab, but set beside the red of the bricks it seems less like a fact and almost more something chosen for contrast. The green ivy creeping up sets it firmly in the experiential, and even historical, world. If you said to me this were a relic of some older civilization, I might not blink at it.

I know there are good reasons we don’t, but I wish we had more infrastructure out in the open like this.