A Beginning

I stop, drop my pack, and take out a wooden pinhole camera. Its simplicity belies its depth of character. Photography’s tools can be simple or complex; this is a bit of both, simple in operation but complex in the experience needed. Even with my years of knowledge I’m not entirely sure what the exposures will look like. This is partly due to the nature of the pinhole’s uncertainty and partly due to the degradation of some of my expired film stock, which I purposely took to enhance creative unease. On top of the camera are sightlines etched into the wood to judge the angle of view, for there is no viewfinder. But what I thought was going to be creative discomfort turns into poetic simplicity. Uncertainty either seeds doubt or it emancipates the mind, the choice is mine to make. An hour after I leave this spot, I’ll get lost at the top of a thousand foot cliff, but I’ll leave my map and compass in my pack. I want freedom from the need of such things. I want the real, visceral, ‘don’t screw up’ kind of freedom. And so I wander to find my way through to the next valley, the next place to sleep, and life becomes just a bit more beautiful for it.

The rush of the world is below me. The aggravation caused by too much concrete and too many clocks is not part of being up here. I have no need for either. My clock runs with irregular beats. Its measure is not in the passage of time, its measure is in the experience of making art, of walking, and in the icy reset of a creek bath. It is not judged against the world without, it is marked by the world within. What more do I need, what more does anyone need. A simplicity derived from the removal of manufactured burdens. “The world offers me its busyness...”, so says Mary Oliver, “It does not see I don’t want it”.

The echoed caw of a raven bounces off the walls of this secluded valley. A light breeze carries the sound with such clarity I can’t pinpoint where the bird is. A small stone dislodges from high up a cliff and pings against the rock face as it falls a thousand feet. And then silence again. My breathing is the only sound, I hold it, and now there is nothing, or perhaps everything.

The air tingles with an approaching storm. I watch it with anticipation; to a landscape photographer a storm means good clouds and good clouds means compositional balance. At this elevation the air is thin and rocks are dominant. Weather builds with abandon and can release torrents of wind and rain, or nothing at all. I’ve tasted the electric ozone that permeates the air just before lightning strikes only to have it freeze in a kind of atmospheric stasis, not releasing a single strike. Weather can be unpredictable and I accept both wetness and warmth with equal grace, a kind of dance with life as the morning mist and sunshine swirl around me.

Pitch dark now under the canopy. My hand sewn blanket is starting to separate along its clumsy seams. The woodland is mostly quiet tonight, the air on my face is cool. The time is irrelevant, even if I had a way of checking it. My muscles are tired from walking, but my mind is awake. Sleeping in the open air, beneath the trees, all the world is someplace else. I have the stars for company, the closeness of the murmuring stream, the soft crackle of unseen animals moving in the dark, the wood ant I remove from my beard, companions all, confidants.

I’ve posted the first set of images from my Wander on my website. They are presented in the sequence I photographed them, although my story is less linear and more spatial. It is struggle, euphoria, pain and release. These images are anything but easy. They took an enormous amount of time and sacrifice to make. Before you click the link below, I ask that you quiet the world around you and take a moment to sit with them. Read the captions, if you like. If you can view these photographs on a larger screen, all the better.