The air is crisp and cool. A frost coats the rocks and grasses as I walk past in the early morning. At ten thousand feet my lungs feel the effort already and the sun hasn’t risen yet. The deep blue light reveals little: the edge of the high ridgeline above me with its blanket of stars sparkling above, the dark yellow of aspen along the trail, the long still lake off to my right. It’s autumn in the High Sierra, October 17, 2023.
Read MoreSolitude is not the same as loneliness. One is a state of being, the other a reaction to circumstance. That humans are social animals is not refuted, but what social animal doesn’t need, at times, to disappear with themselves, to go out into the wilderness, to find the good, healthy air.
Read MoreAfter five days of Sierra wilderness I exited with a bout of stomach and fatigue issues I’ve not felt in the 23 years I’ve been tramping these mountains, most likely stemming from bad water I drank early in the hike. Humility in the face of unforeseen circumstances, unattachment indeed, but not uncaring. I should also mention that I will be filtering water from now on.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreIn his second book, This Game of Ghosts, mountaineer and climber Joe Simpson describes a theory called deep play, where the potential failure of an event far outweighs the benefit. What's the benefit of climbing mountains or sailing an ocean? The failure of such things can most certainly mean serious trouble or even death, yet people regularly pursue such activities.
Read MoreLandscape photography is often not about finding the hidden spot, it’s about your vision of whatever is in front of you and how you execute it. Recently I was back in the Yosemite, which always feels like coming home to me. When a place touches you like this it will always have that warm enveloping feeling like coming home to a Thanksgiving dinner or seeing an old friend and picking up the conversation where it was left years before.
Read MoreThese are the intimate times of being a nature artist, when being human fades to the background and what is left is a raw conversation with the landscape…
Read MoreAlong the eastern plains of Mono Lake lies a sandy plain sparsely dotted with long dead shrubs.
Read MoreEighteen miles on foot, backpack laden with gear, surrounded by granite and Jeffery pine, I walked on the rooftop of California.
There are times that define us, that seek us out and ask the deep questions of self that only you can answer. Along a small creek, deep in the heart of the John Muir Wilderness was such a time.
Read More...to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.
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