The photograph is a part of a series entitled Oxford Gothic. My father spent the afternoons of his childhood walking the train tracks of Oxford, Alabama with his grandfather. Now he's a grandfather himself, and the role has helped him rediscover his youth, even as his thoughts turn to mortality more often than they used to. He's looking forward, and he's looking back, trying to make sense of it all. In the photograph, sunlight illuminates a treehouse that hangs over the tracks, speaking to Oxford Gothic's mediation on the tension between youth and age. The child who plays there looks out at the empty tunnel through the trees and sees endless possibilities for the future. But in time, that tunnel will come to represent the inevitable journey into adulthood that will take him away from this place of freedom and imagination. Someday, he will find himself recalling images from his past, hoping to discover a balance between the light and shadows.