Fine Art Photography Blog

“It’s god-awful country,” the officer said, recommending that I avoid US 287 across Wyoming from Rawlins to Moran Junction. He was right. I had flown to Connecticut, where I grew up, bought a used car, and was driving it home to California; a member of the local highway patrol wanted to make sure my [paper] temporary plate was legitimate. After our ad hoc meeting, I confirmed that the road to Grand Teton is indeed long, sun parched and wind swept high desert.

Yellowstone itself is an oasis, rising up on the back of the Rocky Mountains to pull moisture out of the air, and teeming with life because of it. Sitting on a now-protected crest of the continental divide, the park is known the world over for its wildlife, although the photo doesn’t show any endangered species. In the surrounding hills and meadows live bison, elk, bighorn sheep, black and grizzly bears, eagles, and more.

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It’s a 700 vertical-foot climb to the top of Multnomah Falls; about a mile and a quarter each way, mostly over switchbacks. Being a fairly easy hike and only 30 miles from Portland, the challenge isn’t getting to the top, it’s fighting the crowd. Even in the dead of winter, with snow lying next to the upper trail, there will invariably be thousands of people enjoying the great outdoors.

Much of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area has a straightforward history, the type you might hear about in a nature documentary. The Cascade Range of volcanoes - Mount Hood and Mount Adams, both dormant, both visible from the river, could erupt during the 21st century, geologists tell us - began to push upwards a million years ago, and the mighty river carved a deep gorge through them. Incredibly, this is the only passage through the mountains that stays near sea-level. A series of floods ensued; the present day Bridge of the Gods is build on the site of a landslide that dammed the river, creating a lake that may have stretched as far as Idaho.

But the waterfall has a far different history. Read the rest of this entry »

Aptly named, Paradise is an outpost of civilization in southwestern Mount Ranier National Park. More than a mile - 5,400 feet - above nearby sea level, our destination is every bit the sub-alpine wonderland its name implies. A valley of meadows teaming with wildflowers, lakes, and backing up to the foot of a glacier, the place is easy to fall in love with.

Unsurprisingly, Paradise is the most visited section of the Mount Rainier whose boundaries as a national park cover 1/3 the area of Rhode Island. During the summer - which can be short and unpredictable in the high country - Paradise is impossibly crowded. Much like Yosemite. Route 706 from the Nisqually entrance is kept open to the Paradise Lodge through the winter, but requires four wheel drive or chains - sometimes both. Difficult but accessible is a good combination.

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Becoming an old man of 30 forces a person to stop and reflect on the last burning embers of their youth.

Much like Stephen Dedalus who outgrew his Dubliner past, Connecticut proved too confining for your correspondent. Having driven coast to coast across the surface of a continent from one great ocean to the other … America’s own versions of Tierra del Fuego ( literally “Land of Fire,” with a much older meaning “The End of the Earth” ) call out to be seen. Having been born in Denver and straddled the Continental Divide a week into life, wanderlust has since consumed me.

Daedalus, in Greek mythology, was hired by Crete’s king to build a labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur. The story goes that an Athenian hero was able to slay the beast, angering Poseidon who trapped Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in a tower. The cunning artisan built wings from wax and the feathers of birds that flew by … we all know the rest.

James Joyce created his alter ego Stephen Hero, Phoenix-like, from this myth. The artist constructed such great work, he nearly lost himself in it. Creating the gift of flight with his bare hands, his son lost sight and plummeted into the sea. Perhaps the labyrinthine artifice of writing code also relates to this myth? Our hero survived his son not because of his genius, but out of simple balance.

Or, perhaps, could the allure of the open road, the timeless search for meaning, be more of a warning to the New York Times’ dystopian review: even the most frantic of Kerouac’s writings were really the sagas of a solitary seeker: poor, sad Jack, adrift in a world without mercy when he’d rather be ’safe in Heaven dead.’ On the Road detailed the gritty, not always pleasant reality of modern, “western” nomad life; still, life beckons onward.

Steven Bradley “tagged” me with a blog meme: What I Do When I’m Not Working; the answer is remarkably simple. The map above hasn’t changed significantly in the few years I’ve been living here in Seattle. The one on the left, quite obviously, has seen a remarkable transformation.

I decided to move here based on the spent few hours I’d spent in Seattle, and few weeks in the camping up and down the Cascades. This was in the midst of a two month road trip from San Francisco to New England.

So, how do I spend my free time? I’ll be celebrating the new era in Olympic National Park, woefully underrepresented in my travels. The Columbia River Gorge deserves another visit while the mountains are covered in snow, as does North Cascades Nat’l Park. It seems almost negligent to see that I have yet to see the San Juan islands or Victoria.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … and one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Like the Siberian Highway, travel through America’s trans-continental freeways is subject to approval from the weather. This weights heavy on our minds given the recent flooding along I-5 and the official state of emergency that ensued. Of course this has been a tragic, highly unusual storm; ordinarily the mountain roads can be treacherous, but far more predictable.

To Seattlites, Snoqualmie Pass and the Mountains to Sound Greenway can easily become old hat. Taking a step back, though, there are few similarly breathtaking freeway landscapes in the continental United States. Donner Pass is another example, crossing through the Sierra Nevada at more than 7,000 feet.

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Last week, for Thanksgiving, I went down to The Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, a roughly 75 mile stretch of water and land reaching up toward the heavens. The river begins in Montana’s Rockies, at Triple Divide Peak, along the Backbone of the World, or, in less poetic terms, the Continental Divide. The Snake River heads south, through Idaho, while the Columbia traverses Washington State, a desert river for most of its path, until it finally crosses the Cascade Mountain Range.

The mountains quite literally form islands in the sky, creating an oasis in the desert pulling moisture out of the clouds. Multnomah Falls is America’s second tallest year-round waterfall; half an hour to the east, The Dalles stands with one foot in the desert. Micro-climates are readily apparent here - driving west you’ll see sagebrush slowly give way to ferns and peat moss.

While superlatives like the second tallest sound impressive, The Gorge is known for the countless tributaries rushing down cliffs and the sides of mountains to join the Columbia on its way to the sea.

Benson Bridge, above and to the right, lets visitors see the plumage up close. Trails lead for miles in both directions, guiding hikers between parks, waterfalls, and camp grounds, forming a network much like Big Sur. Read the rest of this entry »

The mountains that hold up the sky above the Columbia River are beginning the long, sluggish process of donning their winter coats. Mount Hood, true to its image, looks like a gargantuan tepee covered in what could well be permafrost. Other peaks are dusted in white along the tops of their ridges, growing large snowfields for the season, but less stark than Hood’s glaciated peak.

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I thought I had lost the first image in this series many years ago. This was shot in December of 2000; I had spent the month living in Denver and left at sun up most days to explore the high country. Heading into Colorado’s “interior” along US Route 285 toward Buena Vista, this expansive landscape can’t help but catch the eye.

Without meaning to, I’ve pulled over to enjoy the scenery every time I’ve driven by this particular curve in the road. That hasn’t been very often; three years passed between the road trips that produced the two photos below.

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