Adventure: Out There, Everywhere

Hailstorms and cheese and crackers. A lost phone, washboard roads, and only one early twenty-something female barista with utter contempt for my existence. (Someone needs to do a study of this demographic, which makes Jared Kushner seem like Mother Teresa.) Small stones buried in the tread pattern. No cutting, no drones, no motorized vehicles, campground full and getting fuller. The idea is to be out, right? Out there, everywhere. Looking and doing and seeing and taking it all in with notes and frames and dirty toes. You put the work in, hoping that one day you can finally get out there, but there is no guarantee, and the “out there” places are rapidly disappearing. Right before our very eyes.

What we have now is the most we will ever have.

I’ve always been a people person. Well, not in real life. I mean behind the camera. Always people. Complicated, sticky, temperamental, and magical, all the same. Long-form, slow, trusting. But now I’ve become something else, someone else. I encourage two locals to keep climbing up. “It’s only a mile,” I say. A lie. “We only cursed you a little bit,” she said as they caught up at the top. My people duties secured, I retreat to my long lens and short lens, and notebook. “Oh, you have your big camera,” she says. “Yes,” I reply. “I’m here for the birds, so I’m stuck with it.” The new pack, now dusty and sporting pin stripes of pine sap, carries like a champ. Weight on hips, gap behind the back. Even with my distorted upper torso, I hit the ten-mile mark with no issues.

I found the nest by accident. A sound caught my eye. Two sounds, actually, nearly the same but on opposite sides of the dead aspen. A trick, a ploy, to get me away and down trail. The hole is nearly invisible, hidden in the deep dark of a natural knot. The Hairy Woodpecker. A nesting pair. Pulling yellow, gooey globs of grub from deadfall, mostly picked clean by Mr. or Mrs. Black Bear. I drop the pack and wait in the shadow of a young pine. Within minutes, they are used to my stick-like figure. Arms rising and falling. Click, click, click.

I’m still not used to the long lens. It’s been decades since carrying something of this focal length was a thing. I make pictures I’m not used to making. Deadfall across long stretches of valley. I make these pictures thinking they will be of use at some distant point. File them away. You just never know. Fire is now a constant companion in these parts. A drought disaster was officially declared by the governor. Burn areas will, most likely, burn again, and the paths I walk today will be closed by mid-summer. The forest no longer our common area. Yellow and blaze orange signs will appear. Flashing lights and threats of fines and more. A friend did a photobook on this place, when this fire was alive and raw and angry and out for souls. Beauty from the devil himself.

Fresh sign is everywhere. Elk, deer, bear, and coyote, even as my altimeter passes the 10,200ft mark. I stop and sit motionless. Peering across a vast landscape of burned former glory. I am alone. If you put in a five-minute push, you can go beyond the range of those who need a signal. My phone has read SOS for the past four hours. Yesterday’s hailstorms have filled small pools on the valley floor. Swifts skim the surface over and over again.

I am trying to learn how to be happy with this new direction. I’m greedy. Photographically greedy. I’ve had it so good for so long, but now I must adapt. Little victories, if you can even call it that. A few hours here and there. Not nearly enough for depth or worthiness, but I make prints, glue them into the book, and move on to other tasks and duties. Packing and unpacking. Shipping, planning, forecasting. All the things that show up in meeting notes and RSVP invitations. Dates on the calendar. Little boxes filling up, stacked on top of one another. A human weather forecast.

The assembly of the puzzle begins while I’m still in the field. What goes where and with what? Stacked, tiled, listed, or careening toward a jumble of thoughts and visual ideas. Who will see this? Only those few who see this post. Listen to Rick. “The audience comes last.” A story about Gen Z being unable to read to their children because “It’s so boring.” That’s okay, more books for me. The printer shakes and spits, and out they come. Next is the trimmer. Then the glue and then the pen when the mood strikes.

What you see is the daily minimum. If I don’t make something every single day, there is a feeling of loss akin to losing a loved one. Doesn’t have to look like this, but it has to look like something. A single line, a single frame, a single thought or idea put down on paper and filed away. It’s so easy to just watch. Our entire culture has become based around this concept. Watch instead of do. I see you. Exiting your car at the trailhead, looking nervous and unprepared. No water or rain gear. Hands in and out of your pocket, turning your little device on and off for no reason. Starting too late. Not paying attention to those thunderheads to the north, descending on us like an icy anvil.

This post was completed, start to finish, including the journal, in one hour. Less time than many people spend on their morning Instagram session. This wasn’t planned or pre-scripted. Remember, I’ve been doing this since 1993. Photography, heck, been doing that even longer, but making books and journals has been a huge part of my life since my first internship in 1993. I write as I go, throughout the day, regardless of where I am or what I’m doing. So, yes, the journal is in my backpack and is pulled out and added to when the ideas strike. This works because this isn’t for show or spectacle or professional gain. For those asking what I get from this, I’ll state once again. Nothing. The experience was the gain. To put it bluntly, this is fun.