Shutter and Scrawl

Website up

2011-04-07T11:46:00.000-05:00

My website is up: http://www.ryan-rodgers.com. I will modify it in days to come, but it's up and running.

Open River, Birdy Backwater

2011-03-22T14:37:00.002-05:00

Here's a dreary photo on a dreary day--thirty five degrees, wind and rain. I shot this through my home office window while cozy and dry, or, rather, I misspoke, I mean I shot it in some lonely woods, huddled and shivering under the cold dripping sky. Yes, that sounds better.

The ice cleared from the main channel on this stretch of the Saint Croix on Sunday. I went paddling Monday, keeping an eye out for icebergs. Attracted by the brassy calls of numerous trumpeter swans, I kayaked into a backwater lake network north of Osceola and spotted up to thirty of the massive white birds. There were also fifty or so dapper black and white ducks, trim little fellows of a variety unknown to me, a few bald eagles and, of course, bellicose Canada geese.

I'm a big fan of that backwaters. In it is a lake filled with summer water lilies, accessible only through a narrow channel. There's another lake that, as far as I can tell from winter explorations, is linked to the river only through a swamp, impenetrable by boat. Another thing that sets this backwaters apart is that it's rimmed by small rocky hills, opposed to muck and mire. I don't have photos to do justice, but will try and remedy that in the summer.

Moonrise

2011-03-20T12:55:00.000-05:00

The full moon that rose yesterday was said to be the largest appearing in nearly twenty years. The rain that's falling today, however, was already setting in, so any sky view was clogged by clouds. I didn't mind so much. I was tired from my first rock climbing day this year and had been out the night before for the one day shy of full moonrise.

This little stream is a tributary of the Apple River and has a pleasing sinuous shape. I would liked to have tried shooting from higher to better see the creek turns. The state highway on which I was standing offers some topographical advantage that could be further added to by doing an Ansel Adams and standing on the roof of my vehicle, but the highway here is actually a short causeway over the swamp with scant inches of shoulder and regular traffic flow.

Breaking Up

2011-03-16T15:05:00.001-05:00

Excitement. The scene outdoors has started changing in a hurry. This morning sandhill cranes flew by and a robin visited the feeder. And the river is thawing--pools forming and channels widening. The stretch behind my house is still mostly frozen, but several miles upriver in the state park open water is taking over quickly. I would like do a time lapse photo animation of ice giving away, which would require picking an apropos spot, planting the camera there and letting it click every x minutes for a good long while.

Wake Up Begins

2011-03-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

I looked out the window a couple days ago at the first chipmunk I'd seen for months. He was sitting on a snow pile, looking around. Then he disappeared into a hole in the snow pile and tunneled back to the fern bed where he's been hibernating. Near where I took this photo, a pool of open water held several trumpeter swans, which along with Canada geese, have been flying over more frequently with every passing day. Raccoons are climbing trees and getting mushed on the roads. Yesterday in Interstate Park, I disturbed three great blue herons.

A Rallying for Ice

2011-03-07T14:57:00.001-06:00

I am shamed to admit a creeping fatigue with winter. I went camping in the snow a full week ago, but have not ventured outside since then. My snow pants are giving neglected stares. I wake at night to the sobbing of mukluks.

There is still time left to seek out one of more exotic features of this mild landscape, still time to find water in its hibernatory state, whether it be very temporarily attached to branches on a cold morning or consumed fully for five months along the side of a cliff, as are these bulges and spikes in a canyon of the Willow River.

Macro Perspective

2011-03-01T18:25:00.002-06:00

Here's another macro shot. There's something, frankly, a little weak about super closeup photos. Lots of marginally interesting things look pretty cool if you stick your nose in there, so to misrepresent the size, or at least prevalence in the wider tableau, is a tad disingenuous. Then again, this weird ice crystal and bubble scene does exist as it appears. There're no contrivances involved in showing the Fortress-of-Solitude-esque crystals and slightly cosmic bubbles, they really look that way. With that lengthy caveat out of the way, macro photos do offer a different perspective of the natural world, and as a photographer, another thing to look for in the wearying hunt for compositions.

The Snows Return

2011-02-24T16:27:00.000-06:00

That respite of snow happened. How nice. My pal Brendan was kind enough to find out that there is actually a term for the winter version of an Indian Summer. Favored by our friends below the Mason Dixon line, a Blackberry Winter is a late strike of cold. Though considering it's still February, I suppose we have a few of those ahead.

Bye Bye Snow

2011-02-18T14:21:00.002-06:00

We're getting into that ugliest season, the gap between winter melt and sprouting spring. Yuk. The lovely mounds of snow are now filthy crust piles. In the parks a season's worth of dog shits have sprouted as horrible mushrooms. Give me a, ah, what is the opposite of Indian Summer? There should be a term for a respite of cold and snow from the clammy fetid air and wan sad purgatory warmth of this time of year.

Headwaters, 2

2011-02-15T13:42:00.000-06:00

The young Saint Croix, from the flat Northwoods, from a swamp by a town whose name most people have never heard, a place of shuttered summer cabins, snowmobile trails, pine plantations and a grocery store with high priced shabby produce. Trains rumble by en route to the docks in Duluth, where their goods will be loaded into massive ships and sent away, oh so far away, from little Gordon and little Solon Springs and the little Saint Croix.

Headwaters

2011-02-14T19:02:00.000-06:00

The mounds in the photo come from buried reeds at the very beginning of the Saint Croix. Both St Croix and the Bois Brule rivers flow from the same swamp, one to the south and Mississippi, the other north to Lake Superior.

Empty Places

2011-02-09T16:04:00.000-06:00

These days, when I go on my walks along the trails in the parks people flock to in the summer, it's usually just me. The snow serves as indicator of what ground has seen feet since December and what ground has sat untouched, little pockets of seasonal wilderness, since the big freeze, since the wild fence fell.

Backwater Skiing

2011-01-18T23:30:00.000-06:00

In winter the smallest bit of color stands out. Although the lichen, or fungus, or whatever the stuff growing on this tree is more than a bit. I thought it was paint until I stuck my nose to it and saw the hue came from something growing. The tree stands in swampy lowlands that in highwater are part of the river. I've spent some of the last week cruising backwaters. Tortuous channels too shallow and murky for even a high-riding canoe are good times on a pair of wax-bottomed planks.

Awesome Winter

2010-12-27T18:26:00.000-06:00

Technically, this winter only started a few days ago, but we've already had a fantastic month of snow and ice. It is hard walking, though. Last week I went for what is usually an hour's preamble that took nearly three, thanks to the snow. The loop is a good one--into the woods at a seldom used chunk of public land, passing along cliffs looking through trees to the river, scrambling down a coulee with a spring coming from a tiny cave at its head, following a railroad grade to little Buttermilk Falls and finally returning a slightly different route. I'd wondered if the falls was frozen so that I could climb on it, but the spring water, that is bone-tinging cold all summer, shows no sign of freezing, so stubborn with its subterranean born temperature.

It's all about the Saint Croix, from here on out

2010-12-21T00:24:00.000-06:00

This is the redirect of Shutter and Scrawl. From now on, it will concentrate on the Saint Croix River watershed. For the next year or so, I hope to post fairly frequent images and written mentioning and experiences had along the river and its tributaries. Why? you ask. Because I’ve moved from Saint Paul to a house on a rotten sandstone cliff that falls to railroad tracks beyond which a seeping bank drops to a Saint Croix slough.

Glacier Peak

2010-08-29T15:44:00.005-05:00

Last month my friend Brian and I set out to climb Glacier Peak, in Washington state, which has the distinction of being the most remote of the major cascade mountains. A more direct route up used to exist, but a massive mudslide a few years back obliterated roads, bridges, trails and, sadly, Kennedy Hot Springs, where I had the pleasure of soaking in 2002 while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I’d reached the spring after a day of hiking through cold rain. Maybe someday it’ll find a new place from which to seep.

So Brian and I left the trailhead on a drizzly day carrying terrible heavy loads, including crampons, rope, harnesses and pickets. We weren’t in the best shape, so were slow in making nine miles to a fog-shrouded high pass. We set up camp, convinced the usual route started from yet another pass that we’d missed the turn for. After a marathon sleep, the weather still sucked. We went to scout the route without packs, finding steep snow traverses along the way on which we both fell and self arrested. When we reached camp a couple hours later, however, a group was descending through the fog directly above, informing us we were actually on the usual route. Alas, it was late afternoon and we were tired again, plus we’d told our womenfolk we’d be back by a time that’d be difficult to make at that point. Like softmen, we descended. The clouds started to break on the descent. By the time we reached the trailhead, blue skies reigned.

We went back a few days later. The weather was hot and sunny. Descending the summit pitch the snow was so soft I sunk in to my waist, necessitating a long butt slide down the upper mountain. Again, we lugged the rope and other climbing gear, this time nearly fifteen miles to the basecamp, where a few other climbers with featherlight packs mocked our freight. We succumbed to peer pressure and left most of the gear at camp on summit day. I hauled my crampons to the top without putting them on. That night we camped under massive cedars along a river raging with clear water from the rapid, hot weather caused snowmelt, or as Brian said, “there’s probably some of my piss from basecamp in my drinking water.”

Pig's Eye

2010-06-05T14:08:00.007-05:00

Willows and flotsam on one of the Pig's Eye Islands.

A couple weeks ago my buddy Aaron and I canoed into Pig’s Eye Lake, a backwater of the Mississippi River a little south of downtown Saint Paul.

It’s name comes from the one-eyed settler who set up a still in a riverside cave and sold booze to soldiers from Fort Snelling. As many know, Saint Paul was even called Pig’s Eye for a time, and his supposed likeness still graces the cans of a cheap and nasty eponymous beer. If such had become the city’s map-wearing name, something tells me the state capital would be elsewhere.

The lake hosts the mouth of Battle Creek, whose final banks once bisected the Saint Paul Landfill—a notorious and almost mythical place of local history, where tires and household trash smoldered next to industrial waste in an apocalyptic scene of discard. Toxic waste is still leaking into the creek and river. Some years ago, the governing municipality covered the site with heavy fill to curb the seepage, and now a strange field grows.

Aaron and I paddled across the lake and up the ten-foot wide Battle Creek channel until a beaver dam that we didn’t want to portage stopped us.

We got out to examine the shore and walked onto the field. It stretched vacant and odd because so much unbuilt upon open space surrounded by cities screams disease.

We made one more stop to the outlet of the Pig’s Eye sewer treatment plant, where much of the Twin Cities’ wastewater enters the water table anew. Now, less than 100 years ago communities dumped straight into the river, and when the river was low and the outflow high (I suppose during intermission of a great radio show) the waste to sewage ratio was six to one, so when newspaper articles say the water is better than it was they aren’t joking.

The outflow channel is not a seeper, as I’d expected, it’s the size of a midrange river, and flows for several hundred yards. Its clear outflow is a startling contrast to the chocolate milk Miss. Image from the fantastic Google Maps.

Urban Backpacking the Course of Saint Anthony Falls

2010-05-04T15:36:00.008-05:00

The Mississippi River between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling in Saint Paul flows through a gorge formed by the retreat of Saint Anthony Falls, a retreat that took the falls 10,000 years to reach its current position, where it’s been entombed in concrete since the nineteenth century after some long dead idiot built a tunnel underneath it that—surprise surprise—collapsed. Next week, unless the rain is really dumping, I’m going to cover the same ground in two days, which, of course, is very impressive, though I don’t think I’ll have time to do additional gorge building.

There are paved trails skirting both bluff tops that you can pedal in a couple hours, but I’m going stay on foot and inside the gorge’s maw, as close to the water’s edge as possible. The gorge is in places surprisingly inaccessible and rugged--considering the many thousands of people living nearby--with small cliffs and steep banks. It’s a post-industrial landscape administered to by the National Park Service. The two greatest hazards of the hike are such: 1) falling off a bank into the river 2) being accosted by cantankerous homeless or drug addled individuals, most likely while camping.

I’m not too concerned about either, though, even considering the plenitude of crumbling shores and people making the gorge their summer home or chemical intake zone. I’ve hiked most all of it in pieces, but never continuously and never camping within. There are a handful of very fine camping spots, including a shallow sandstone cave perched over the muddy miss.

Cave, I Like You

2010-04-15T16:13:00.003-05:00

I’ve been a wannabe caver for a few years, mainly because there are a number of caves and tunnels in the Twin Cities. There are also hardcore and possessive urban cavers that do a thorough job of documenting their subterranean conquests, but I’m not one of them. What drew me toward the underground was the notion of a lingering wild place amongst a metropolis and because an environment beneath the topsoil is as distinct as a forest or prairie. So I went into a cave and crawled around. It was a manmade cave, dugout to brew beer. The brewery building disappeared over a century ago, but the cave remains. There were small bats and fine sand. There were two seeps that had formed tiny stalactites and floors slick with orange slime. I explored all the tunnels except for one, a crawl space lined with fine-spun formations like spikes of silk thread. I didn’t want to smash them or breathe their powdered wreckage set loose by the crushings of my knees. Maybe I’ll go back with a dust mask, or maybe I'll leave that tunnel alone to whatever it is the air has stitched upon its walls.

Dreams of Flowing Rivers

2010-02-01T13:41:00.007-06:00

The last couple mornings I wanted to stay in bed because I was having pleasant dreams of floating a calm narrow river through a verdant meadow. There were fish in the water and curly trees on the bank. I was in my red canoe wearing a straw hat looking down through the water at tan stones.

Winter Hump

2010-01-16T13:25:00.002-06:00

My big decision last December was whether I would take my free J-term and throw the canoe on the car and drive southeast till the snow disappeared and the rivers were flowing and the temp was warm enough to give my pasty skin some air. But I didn’t, I sat home and pushed a few short stories toward completion, made a few bucks on a freelance gig, ice climbed and skied a little. Perhaps it was a prudent decision, as we are a slightly broke, anyway, and thanks to the frustration of not going when I could have been going, I have planning impetus for the summer to come. Here’s a potential trip list:

--100 miles down the Saint Croix River in spring
--a couple weeks climbing volcanoes in the PacNW with my old pal Brian in early summer
--meeting my wife in Seattle and going to Vancouver Island to hike the West Coast Trail in midsummer
--hiking the Border Route and Kekekabic Trails through the Boundary Waters in August

I did take one overnight trip this season, to the Tettegouche Camp for Christmas with Lily and my parents. The camp was a lumber barons club back in the day and is now in the state park. We hauled our gear in sleds to the pictured cabin, then spent a day tromping through the heavy new snow. It was great until I got a vicious case of food poisoning, the details of which I’ll leave untold.

Marufo Vega

2009-11-05T13:42:00.001-06:00

Cresting spiny ridge of Mexican limestone in full moon light
giant prickly pear silhouette,
pads flailing crazed and beautiful like a flaming god that
knows no weakness or pity.
A three tiered sphinx
with the Rio Grande ever polishing its shoes.
Short cliff, medium, long, to the green water,
cascade of darkness, towering pit of the earth.
Chihuahuan Desert stops hiding,
delicate as a cactus flower sticky with pollen.

How can the day shine so sure,
but the night be bright with its falsehood?

I am a wizard who knows no spells.
I want to move like an ocotillo in the wind,
Swaying barbed and dead until rain comes,
then springing leaves and blooms of buried life.

Leadville

2009-11-04T13:40:00.001-06:00

I liked the town
Except for the woman
Who looked older than she was
With her plastic cup of beer on main street after dark
A visage like the nearby sage flats

She laughed too much
talked too much
Because I was busy
Making a photograph she thought was funny

Actually
I didn’t mind her yet
She told me of a murder in the building across the street
How the richest woman in the world
Once froze to death nearby

But when she started talking conspiracies
She’d heard on the radio and thought were true
I wondered why neat towns have so many idiots

I should become a dictator
Then people would act a certain way

I gritted my teeth so I could bear her ugly face
And said I had to go.

Aspen Grove

2009-10-31T20:38:00.000-05:00

Our grove shares a common root
Above basalt, in the soot

In windy times branches shake
Rubbing twigs exfoliate

My falling limb cracks your branch
Your bark is torn, in come the ants

Your nonchalance, it humbles me
I recollect that swarm of bees
whose hive you dangled so happily

Old black bear, she knocked it down
The bees stung her, one per pound

That furry bulk in the air
That furry bulk caused me wear

Snapping through my woody arms
away from you, toward earthly charms

Living in proximity
need we do, amicability
So I trust our flexibility
for the inevitability
of broken twigs to come

Climbing Mount Hood

2009-09-15T14:18:00.004-05:00

The south side route up Mount Hood is considered by braggarts and able mountaineers to be easy, yet it is both strenuous and, at times, a little scary. An early struggle is the alpine start. The summit day eve, my friend Barn and I hiked partway up the mountain and camped so we could sleep to a luxurious 4am. The climb became good old, hard working fun once our adrenaline got pumping, the breakfast Excedrin started working and pink light coated distant peaks in cotton candy, which gave my eyes a merry roust.

The most frightening bit of the climb was on the descent, and it was not due to the mountain. On the narrowest section of the steepest part, an inversely-funneling snow chute that runs to the summit ridge, I became stuck during the descent behind a young guy with nylon gym pants and soft leather boots, sans-crampons. Now, Mount Hood is a very popular climb, probably the most heavily climbed glaciated peak in all of North America. We’d seen a couple dozen other people that morning, but all had been at least marginally competent and properly equipped. Not this guy. Every step he took was a nightmare. He’d plant his ice axe into the snow and flail his boots for purchase. Most steps he slipped, using his axe to stop a long fall that would end in a lucky snow runout, an unlucky boulder runout or a tumble into a crevasse. I gently advised him a fall could be fatal, and asked him to move over so I could get around. My next few feet down, until the chute widened, were a nervy dance to the view of his slipping rubbery soles.

The photo is of Barn making his way down to the Hog’s Back, that curving ridge. Mount Jefferson is visible on the horizon. The sky was a dark blue and dreamy up there.

Refinishing Redhorse

2009-09-04T13:36:00.006-05:00

This spring my uncle gave me his beautiful old canoe, well, technically he gave it to his sister, my mother, though I have properly usurped it from my landlubber parents, and taken it down 250 miles of rivers this warm season. The canoe is older than me, a cherry red, 1978 Mad River Explorer with a Kevlar body and wood trim. My uncle didn’t use it much, so it was in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, I’ve put a few dings in it. Pound for pound, Kevlar is super strong, but in canoes it's used more for making lightweight crafts than battering rams that glance off any rock. The Kevlar itself is only as thick as a sturdy layer of canvas. It’s actually a fabric weave, made rigid by an epoxy coat, and in the case of the Redhorse, an additional gelcoat (the red part). I managed to chip the gelcoat away in three places and otherwise score the bottom with countless minor scratches. I went to NorthWest Canoe, a sweet shop in a warehouse in Saint Paul, and bought an epoxy repair kit. After laying on a thick coat of the goo, from a short distance Redhorse looks as good as new. Though, if you get close, the many bugs from my front yard that adhered to the epoxy while I was applying it appear in their new vocation, part of the hull. The photo shows the half-treated Redhorse.

Namaste, Namekagon

2009-09-03T15:42:00.003-05:00

I paddled seventy miles down the Namekagon River in northwest Wisconsin last week, and aside from a dreary six mile stretch in back of a dam, it was, I dare say, a lovely journey. The Namekagon is small and clear, and a little dreamy. One afternoon I set my paddle down across the canoe gunwales and gave up counting miles and landmarks. The water oozed along like swelling melted glass. A leaf flowed three feet below the surface and six inches above the sandy bottom. Of what had been yellow, only a neat quarter leaf remained so, the rest was dark brown, the color of a leach. The leaf’s bonds were breaking from the relentless water that permeated its soft bonds; it would crumble at first impact, whether it against a round gray stone or slimy submerged branch.

Redhorse carp darted abundantly. I named my canoe for these fish, bottom feeders with the hated name, but, like game fish, this strain of carp is susceptible to pollution, and is disappearing in rivers lacking the protection the Namekagon has.

So often the northwoods seem almost sterile—the scoured stone lakes of the Boundary Waters, the deep tight forests empty of sound other than rustling breeze—but the fecundity of the Namekagon was striking. In the depths of a pool on an outer bend, a muskie the length of my paddle’s shaft sat ominously in the shadow of a bleached and beached log, a fishy T-Rex waiting for something to blunder by. In the thicket above, a beaver chewed into a tree. The lumberjack was out of sight, but the squeaky chomping of soft wood carried strangely from dense alders.

Segue into Stupid

2009-08-20T15:54:00.007-05:00

The photo isn’t particularly relevant to the following topic, but heck, photos are fun to look at. The strings of headlamp glow spanning a length of this lava tube cave, though, are somewhat metaphorical to the meaning of segue, a word that until a few nights ago I had a serious issue with. Yawn, whatever, but up until then I thought "segue" was spelled “segway,” and would be perplexed when I’d type the latter and see that condescending red spell check line pop up underneath. It’s just one of these trendy new buzzwords, I’d thought, the technology hasn’t caught up yet. Segue, or segway, is used almost endlessly in class discussions I’ve experienced. I thought maybe it came from the invention of those ridiculous wheeled pogo sticks that don't even bounce. It might take my intuitional confidence a while to recover after learning from the Merriam Dictionary that segue is spelled as such and dates back to 1740.

I was reading “The Amazing Buddha Boy,” by George Saunders. This is the first nonfiction thing I’d read by the funniest and wackiest short story writer out there today. The article is about the author’s journey to Nepal to witness a 15 year old boy who was reportedly surviving after spending seven months without eating or drinking, subsisting solely on meditation. Anyway, I read “segue” in the text, was nonplussed by the context (it can’t be, it musn’t, how can “way” come from “ue”?), so I looked it up. Now I just have to somehow retract any emails I’ve typed segway in…

But back to Segway, the two wheeled goof that failed to revolutionize personal transportation. I was amused and horrified to see there is actually a Segway Adventure model that “takes you off the beaten path and turns you on to the powerful thrill of nature.” It weighs 120 pounds, goes up to 12.5 miles an hour (like mountain biking without all that terrible exercise) and can go only 12 miles, off road, before needing a charge. If I am ever hiking and see an Adventure doubling the width of a lovely 12 inch trail with its preposterous existence, I’m going to, well, really I’d probably just smile and nod at the rider and then silently fantasize about stealing their Adventure and then running them over with it.

See for yourself (photo from the Segway website, as are the quote and specs above)...

Camping on da Hood

2009-08-12T12:29:00.007-05:00

I’ve been goofing around with making star blur images for years and finally came up with one that I’m as close to satisfied with as I’m probably going to get. This is from a camp on Mount Hood, actually, it’s only a few hundred yards up from the uppermost chairlift leaving out of Timberline Lodge. Looking down I could see the massive snow machines grooming the glacier for the next morning’s crop of brightly clad skiers, quite a contrast with the other direction, home to only rock, snow and sky. I’m often surprised at the flattening effect of a wide angle lens. I shot this image at twelve millimeters, and the vertical presence of the mountain is greatly diminished because of that. It as though the mountain was soft plastic and the ends of its ridges were pulled on until it became low and wide.

It was cold up there, well below freezing,

but aside from the fantastic view of old Hood, at sunset, eastern Portland and the Columbia River could be seen as a cozy cluster of lights (they really look that way while in the snow) and dark orange ribbon of water.

My Good Friend's Wedding

2009-08-09T07:11:00.000-05:00

Matt DeGuise and I have been hanging out since elementary school. Being a traitor, he left Minnesota for Denver a few years back, and I've only seen him a few times since. Matt may have left God's country for the thin-aired west, but he's still a taciturn Midwesterner by heart, or perhaps DNA. In fact, he'll go long stretches of time without speaking at all. Never enough will be said about the rounding capabilities of attraction, as Matt's new wife, Darcy, is one of the most gregarious souls I've ever met.

Last month the two of them put together the most fantastic wedding I've ever had the privilege of attending, and furthermore, photographing. They wrote their own vows for the pithy outdoor ceremony. The grub was highlighted with juicy bison tenderloin. The bar was open. There was even a touring bluegrass band, Hot Buttered Rum, playing the reception. Maybe best of all was the setting. Along a mountain river, at the foot of a 13,900 foot mountain, in the midst of fields of wildflowers, my good friends wed.

Mountain Biking

2009-08-07T12:35:00.002-05:00

I've been doing a fair amount of mountain biking over the last couple weeks. The raft in the photo is along the Minnesota River Bottoms trail, and was taken last fall. While riding the same trail last weekend I rode up onto a large pile of logs, and as I began rumbling down the other side veered too far askance and tumbled over me handlebars. For an instant I thought a good deal of pain was soon to be, but I landed softly on my back. The only damage was a bent brake lever.

There are some fun trails around, one in particular has a teeter-toter (Lebanon Hills). I'd never seen such a thing for a bike, but rode up the grounded end anyway, thinking, this is easy. At the top, a few feet off the ground, I paused, beginning to grow concerned until the toter teetered and I was back on the ground.

To the Rivers and Hills

2009-05-08T20:59:00.002-05:00

I dare say that May is going to be very fine. More important than being my birthday month, which has actually been traditionally full of bad luck for me—camera wrecked in a tipped canoe, face split open after a nasty bike crash—is that it’ll be spent of paddling and roaming. Tomorrow afternoon, after class, I’m heading south of the not-so-notorious Minnesota/Iowa border to the fledgling Upper Iowa River for a 140 mile float to the Mississippi. Then, after a night at home, it’s off to the Great Smoky Mountains. After that, a trail clearing trip to the Boundary Waters.

Back to broken cameras—I was recently enjoying the website of a photographer whom paddled much of the Mississippi River (http://www.theriverinside.com/). While he readied to enter one of the river’s many locks, he capsized. His gear sunk to the bottom. More interestingly horrible, at another point in his journey, his photographic equipment was destroyed when a barge mistakenly unloaded its sewage into the photographer’s canoe! The details were scarce on how such could happen; though I can only hope that the man was not in his canoe at the time of the deluge.

Captain Floyd--Salty Dog, River Rat

2009-04-24T19:12:00.013-05:00

Took my first canoe trip of the year on the St. Croix this week. It was a solo journey except for the company of my eight pound wiener dog, Floyd. He had never camped before and did surprisingly well. He spent most of the time in the boat either sprawled out on a big rubber dry bag, or, when the surface grew too hot, on the unoccupied front seat of the boat, on which I tied his fleece pad. Small dogs are strange creatures--one must watch them to make sure they do not wander off into the jaws of a coyote, but they do have certain benefits like being able to nest at the foot of one’s sleeping bag like a warm furry heating pad. The only scare was when Floyd, whose swimming abilities had never been tested, leapt from the boat as we neared shore. He came up paddling with a confident look on his face, but the current then swept him under the canoe. I had been keeping him on a string, so was able to pull and retrieve him as through he was a nice sized fish. Once on shore he repeatedly sprinted across the sand beach and rolled in the dirt with enviable pleasure.

The above photo is from the first night’s camp, between Rush City and Wild River State Park. Ominous clouds blew in before the sunset, but the following morning was clear.

!El Contrabando!

2009-04-01T18:14:00.014-05:00

An hour from the nearest gas station on the thorny shores of the Rio Grande is a crumbling adobe village. Out the front doors spread barren Mexico without a trace of society in sight. Behind are a red, mushroom-capped rock and then a towering hill with cliffs cut by a gaping canyon. A whitewashed house with vacant windows is there, so is a low, rectangular store with a surviving awning made from barbed ocotillo branches. But the edifice that screams of what should be seen in places like this is the derelict church with its round topped windows and roof—climbing skyward in rising undulations to where a lonely cross carves into the atmospheric blue. Though looking hard at the cracked adobes, what peeks from the veneer of mud looks strangely like plywood and chicken wire. It looks and it is. The village that is a visage of the ideal southwestern tableau is a creation of Hollywood and not history. It is El Contrabando and home to movies like The Journeyman, Streets of Laredo and Gambler V, not to forget the Brooks and Dunn music video for My Maria. Oh, and the name, that is based on history--after an old smuggling route through area canyons.

A Parasite to Behold

2009-03-17T18:08:00.001-05:00

Giardia is sort of a bogeyman of outdoor trips. Park rangers, vendors of water treatment paraphernalia and their countless minions are constantly threatening, “if you don’t boil or filter your water, the giardia will get you!” Potentially lurking invisible in even the purest of streams, giardia lamblia colonizes in the lower intestine and, among other things, limits absorption of food.

There is a general consensus that water from anything other than a bottle or faucet is dangerous. A greenhorn hiker I shared a camp with once called me an idiot to my face when I said I didn’t treat my water, which I don’t and haven’t for literally hundreds of streams, springs and ponds. Imagine my surprise when a week after returning home from the Big Bend I took ill. At first I thought my sickness stemmed from a dollop of questionable sour cream that I’d put on a burrito. But then two days later, swift and nasty, it settled into my gut like an eagle getting fried on a power line. I’ll leave out the specifics, but it was moving experience. Powerful. Wow. A healthy 130 pound organism waylaid by a microscopic one. I lived on the couch off of pudding and ginger ale for several days (time during which I watched every episode of The Office, 30 Rock and two seasons of Law and Order SUV on Netflix) though after two rounds and ten days of a drug called Metronidazole I was back to form.

I don’t know where the bogeyman caught me. It could have been a desert spring tainted by the shit of burros and mountain lion, or it could have been a cup of coffee I had in Mexico. When soon the spring time comes and I put on my backpack again, this time, perhaps, I’ll be carrying a pump or chemical treatment, but probably not.

Mark's Little Cabin

2009-03-04T02:45:00.005-06:00

For years my friend Mark has been telling me about a cabin he built on a plot of family woodland in northern Wisconsin. Call it a lack of faith, but I had pictured it a pile of plywood and sticks--building a cabin from scratch seemed too ambitious to do well in one’s free time. A couple weeks ago while he and I spoke over the phone, he answered my plans of doing a winter camp in the Apostle Islands by suggesting that instead of sleeping in a snow cave and shivering in a double bag for 12 hours a night, I visit his nearby cabin.
Last week I spent 3 nights in that 8 by 10 hut, a short walk from the road and sitting under a forest of birch, pine and maple. Inside is a small woodstove, the log walls behind it are protected by a layer of glazed, smooth stones. The floor is pieced from caramel boards and a bunk runs the room’s length.
I spent an afternoon on the Apostle lakeshore where there is a stretch of craggy shore pocketed with ice covered caves. The lake was frozen and I skied to the caves. The next day I drove along the Bois Brule River and walked among the ice mounds at its mouth, then strapped on skis and watched the sunset from Brule Point.

The last full day flakes began to fall and I didn’t leave the cabin. I cut logs, watched the snow pile up and wrote and read in front of a glowing stove. I woke at three to add wood; the wind howled icy from the north and eked through chinks that weren’t filled with moss or shims. I filled the stove high and went back to bed. But the wood didn’t catch and by first light my hard boiled eggs had exploded and my bananas were brown and hard as hammers. No matter, a new fire finally lit to warm those final hours.

Rio Grande Hot Springs

2009-03-02T16:21:00.003-06:00

It was about 100 years ago when J.O. Langford and his family arrived at the big hot springs on the Rio Grande. His first impression of them were from “a hole some six inches in diameter and almost perfectly round, [that] spurted the sparkling water with a force that lifted the column almost a foot above the ledge before it tumbled back in a wreath of white foam.” They built a health spa for folks to come and get healed. Langford himself was long ill, though in time regained the health he’d lost as a malaria-ridden child. A full healing course of baths, a prescription passed down from Indians, was 21 days. Supposedly it worked quite well. Langford wrote that he saw numerous complete cures of gonorrhea, eczema, malaria, stomach illnesses and kidney ailments. I asked my wife the doc if his claims have any medical credence. She said aside from sulfur helping eczema and the desert air killing bacteria, hot spring cures are a myth. I struggle to explain Langford’s eye witness curative accounts in ways not involving personal pride. Then again, 21 days relaxing in a river canyon oasis is a pretty good way to feel better. I spent about three weeks in Big Bend, and though I did not visit the springs every day, I managed half a dozen trips. The foundation of Langford’s bath house still stands (it was built by a German national who shot his family and then himself when the Kaiser called him back to the motherland to fight in World War I) and is a pocket of clear, 105 degree water jutting into the muddy green Rio Grande under the open desert sky. The river and Mexico are on one side and yellow limestone cliffs on the other. People from all over still come there to soak in the water that, even if it does little to combat disease, does wonders for the soul.

Two Hearts

2009-02-14T11:51:00.001-06:00

Pink pterodactyl morning wisp
Salmon finless shark,
Gaping jaws attack

Mauve bonefish,
Bonefish, what’s a bonefish?
I don’t know, yet there it is,
Cutting blue with a razorback spine.

A spirit hawk made from reeds
Two disintegrating hearts,
Overlapped, but spreading
Dissolving.
Wait, no, they’re merging, and will be two no more.

Superior Whale

2009-02-13T20:51:00.001-06:00

I like the slurping sound that sometimes happens when waves lap against a large rock. When it does it sounds like a surfacing manatee or miniature whale. I heard such a sound once while walking a shore crest of Lake Superior. I turned to the lake and for an instant thought a gray rock ten yards from shore was some sort of non-existent Superior whale. If only.

My New Logo

2009-02-03T15:16:00.001-06:00

In Boquillas Canyon where ocotillo plants grow like dancing octopi and ochre rock slabs pile stacked like God’s dominos, I found my new Ryan Rodgers’ Photography logo. I got a webpage coming up see, and there should be some little image to stick in the corner. I spied my man from a trail that looks down on the Rio Grande, my cantankerous, stubborn, resilient son of a biscuit mascot. My Wilson. My bulldog. My Viking.

Why? Because, this stone face embodies the qualities it’ll take to successfully do, what I’m trying to do. First of all, Mr. Rock Face is around to stay. Granted, in geologic time he won’t be around forever, but it’s a pretty safe bet some human generations will quietly pass before weathering erodes this surly countenance. What better insignia for outdoor photography than a shape taken directly from the outdoors?

I could even derive a more interesting company name—Rock Face Photography, Stone Face Photography, but that’s probably stretching things. Rock Face implies climbing and Stone Face a sort of weird toughness. Besides, I’m a believer in, at least in a few things, waiting for the solution to present itself.

Back when I was starting the Appalachian Trail (people who know me are saying, oh no, not that again) I had to wait a while to get a trail name. Some less romantically inhibited hikers, chose their own. Some good and funny, others quite self-complementary—Lone Wolf, Iron Man… I wanted mine to be given, but six weeks into the hike I was still waiting. Finally I got it one day at a swimming hole in Virginia. Three other hikers and I were drying off on little sand beach when a local woman showed up with her daughter from a nearby road. She turned around and drove to a store to bring us Coke’s and cantaloupes. The daughter asked our names, and after the others rattled off their colorful monikers (Midnight Moon, Happy Feet, Appalachian Yankee), I spit out my regular name. “You should be Cantaloupe,” the little girl said, and for the next three years, I was.

So after brainstorming for months on a logo, I walked right by one, and ain’t he a beaut, straight from the land. How perfect for photography composed of just that.

“Under yucca, the little beasts burrow”—Francisco Feather Cloud, Apache shaman (1811-1963)

2009-01-29T13:39:00.001-06:00

There was one major disappointment on my recent trip to the Big Bend region of Texas--finding that the Chihuahuan Desert contains no wild Chihuahuas. I had naturally assumed the second largest North American desert was home to packs of small canines that lived in prairie dog-like colonies, and, centuries ago, some brave soul began capturing them for domestication.

After arriving in the national park, I hastily struck camp near a spring and set my chair in a cluster of thorny brush. I spent the next several days quietly observing, but saw only javelinas. I decided on a more aggressive course and spent three days trekking through ocotillo and prickly pear, but still, no luck. Frustrated to the verge of tears, I walked into a ranger station and inquired as to where was the best place to see wild Chihuahua, and imagine my surprise when the ranger asked me to repeat my query and carefully wrote something on a pad of paper. He gently explained that there were no wild Chihuahuas, but by the time I had reached the door, peals of raucous laughter were escaping from the back room.

Horribly embarrassed, I wandered until finding a cave in the base of a cliff. I hid there for nearly a week. Just before leaving, I overturned a stone and found beneath it a small skeleton with canine incisors. Could it be? I showed it to that haughty ranger and he was perplexed. I have sent the bones to the Smithsonian and am breathlessly awaiting results. Shutter and Scrawl readers will be the first to learn about, what will likely be, validation of my Chihuahuan dreams.

Blessed Insanity in Big Bend?

2008-12-12T14:57:00.000-06:00

The photo is actually in Canyonlands, but it’s probably as close as anything I have that looks like Big Bend National Park. I’m heading down there for three weeks in January and am eagerly awaiting roaming the Chihuahuan Desert and Chisos Mountains. It’s one of the least visited national parks because it’s hundreds of miles from any metropolis. It’ll be a lonely trip, but now with the snow at home I can ski and get fit and be able to hike all day if the solitude becomes oppressive.

As Ed Abbey said, “Someday I shall…become an ancient baldheaded troglodyte with a dirty white beard tucked in my belt, be a shaman, a wizard, a witch doctor crazy with solitude...of course a man would go mad from the beauty and the loneliness, both equally mysterious. But perhaps it would be—who can say?—a kind of blessed insanity, like the bliss of a snake in the winter sun, a buzzard on the summer air.” (Slickrock)

Of Mice and Canoers and Rain

2008-11-25T19:19:00.000-06:00

It was going to be an awesome trip--four nights in the Boundary Waters with my wife and dad. First week of October--the colors would rub our jaded city eyes like a rainbow massage. Dad was a lifelong Minnesotan, yet this would be his first trip--had to mean things would go well. The saying goes something like Mother Nature is a sweet seductress to newcomers, though once you commit she regularly pummels you. But this was the old feller’s first trip so surely we'd be fine.

It rained for four days--a cold sopping deluge--when it wasn’t fog or drizzle it was coming down at a rate to worry Noah.

Another thing we saw much of was mice. At our final camp I left a food bag out while cooking dinner, then stashed it my wife’s and my tent. We ate, lied about how the weather would be the next day and turned in when the rain recommenced.

Tucked in our bags we heard sounds of unseen nocturnal scamperings. Every time I turned on my light there was nothing. Burrowing back toward sleep came a noise very near. I raised my head and saw a mouse on my chest. I sat with a start and shrieked as it ran onto my shoulder, across my neck and down my other arm. My wife shot up and we managed to chase it out and settle in finally for some sleep. But as soon as our headlamps were off, the rustling was back and louder. Lights back on, there at our feet were two sets of bright glistening eyes. As we then surmised, three mice had crawled into the foodbag in its brief minutes of accessibility.

Sometime in the wee hours I tested my hand for dryness against the nylon floor. I did it again to make sure, because what I was feeling was a waterbed--three to four inches had accumulated in a pond under the tent. I woke my wife and we piled our gear into the highest corner. It was a well used campsite and all the tent pads were worn depressions in the thin soil. I donned my rain coat and began digging a trench to drain the new lake.

The rain stopped for a while in the morning, but started by the time we were on the water. Reaching the final stretch, a few mile paddle across large Brule Lake, raindrops were shooting straight into our faces. By now our gear was wet, so the prospect of hanging out for the wind to die was infinitely inferior to the hot tub and sauna waiting in Grand Marais. The headwind made the paddling a crawl and the cold rain sapped strength and soaked clothes. By the time we reached the end of a bay the waves were smashing over the bow. My wife was huddled and praying (something I’d never seen her do) in the center of the boat. Dad shouted through the blow that we should turn around and retreat to a small island recently passed. We lay hard into our paddles and spun the canoe in the trough between two waves and shot into the calm water behind the island.

We spent four hours shivering in a tiny clearing amongst dripping cedar and pine boughs. Looking toward the lake, trying to gauge whether the water was flattening, I mistrusted my eyes because I had urged us to go the first time. Finally we couldn’t wait any longer and launched. We rounded the island were cautiously excited then giddy at the much calmer water. We still paddled manically, afraid at any moment a giant sweep of water would arise to quash our hesitant relief.

My wife and dad both had to work early the next morning and I figured they’d want to begin the long drive home immediately. But (like mine) their dreams of warmth in the wet cold outdoors had vented from visions of hot sauna steam, so in town we dined on burgers and slipped into the local sweathouse for a restorative cook before the dark return.

Where the Deer and Photographers Play

2008-11-20T16:38:00.000-06:00

Antelope Canyon is photographed so much that a Google image search turns up almost 58,000 hits. Look at most any of those photos (or this one) and you’ll see an empty metaphysical kind of place where odds seem reasonable for spotting a benevolent fairy or levitating monk--when I was there last spring I talked to an old-timer who spoke of visiting in the seventies when aside from his guide, he saw only one other person, a woman sitting cross legged in the sand playing a flute.

No longer. The day I visited there were probably 150 other gawkers, all of us drooling at the eyes over the fluted red sandstone walls. The photos look as they do thanks to the coordinating efforts of the Navajo guides who must accompany every visitor. Study an image of an empty chamber cut by a white shaft of light and it’s as asparagus is to an oak tree that there’s a group of twelve tourists gnashing their teeth around the bend being forcibly restrained by a harried guide.

My guide, the affable Gabriel, who joked and smiled most of the two hour tour, kept his cool even when a shooter in our group refused to yield her turn (“One moe, one moe, I still shooting”). The order of photographing was like an 18th century rifle brigade in combat—first, several people in front steady their tripods and make an exposure or two and then get the heck out of the way so those behind can take a turn. She refused to move, even when Gabe gently pulled her by the elbow she wrestled free and cursed him for blurring her shot. It looked like a fight might break out when the faces on the people in back missing their turns starting twisting, sputtering saliva and protest. A disturbing anti-Chinese sentiment settled in mutters over rest of the excursion.

The most interesting thing I learned is that the trademark beams of light are another thing coordinated by the guides. I guess I never bothered to think how they formed (the sun funneling through some canyon lips vortex perhaps). What happens is the guide starts tossing the fine sand, dust really, from the floor on up. He does this until enough particles are suspended in the air to catch the afternoon sun.

There’s a lower canyon as well. It has no beams, but for $20 (compared to $40 plus $6 park fee at the upper), if you have a tripod you can spend several hours roaming untethered along the longer, narrower and shallower lower reaches. It was here in 1997 that 11 tourists drowned in a flash flood when they refused to listen to their guide’s orders to leave.

Bring on the Frosty

2008-11-12T23:24:00.000-06:00

Nothing like early season snow to arouse thoughts of skiing up crusty slick hills or stumbling on showshoes through delightfully cumbersome drifts, an unanticipated notion while poking around the Whitewater River valley last week. Came across some interesting new territory while fruitlessly hunting a cave I've heard is in one of the limestone abutments over the South Fork, and parked alongside the gravel road to climb a stony perch, from whose vantage the photo was made. I've been seeking the cave a couple years, and thought perhaps I'd spy it from the blufftop, but a couple more may be required for results! There are small caverns below the crag (all too constricted to be the sought-after one) and they appear to be an active den. Wet animal smell emanates from the openings and piles of largish dung attest to what must be a bobcat. Near the caves, at the rocky tip of the cliff base is a sheltered alcove where one such pile collects aside a dizzy ledge. Hard to imagine a finer scene than a bobcat on lookout at sunrise, adroitly perched with eyes toward the valley, searching for breakfast.

Beaver

2008-11-10T23:08:00.000-06:00

Leathery flat splash

Thwwapp!

Swift wet noisy

air pocket gurgle.

Quiet now, but,

you’ll be back,

Swimming

Chewing

Slapping in the moonlight

Past last glow

I walk ‘long your river’s banks.

Your tail meets water

enough to rival the rustling leaves.

By my flames

I hear you chewing.

Do you think I cannot?

Rodent fangs to alders,

soft wood squeaks.

Dry dawn,

eyes shut five more, then,

hours of rain.

Bone under nylon,

listening for you.

Where have you gone?

I know you’re not afraid to get wet.

You and I might be alike—

dreaming away the morning,

then rushing, like the river you dam,

through rest of the day.

Not a Bad Traffic Jam

2008-10-23T21:19:00.000-05:00

Not too long back my dad and I were in Glacier Park clipping along a trail double time trying to catch a shuttle that would take us back to camp. The last bus of the day was just twenty minutes coming, and though we could see the road snaking through a yonder pass, it seemed as though it should be bigger than model set size so we begrudgingly started jogging. The hill traversed grew steep; around a bend appeared two mountain goats ambling along in the same direction as us. It was a cute baby goat and a shaggy parent, exciting indeed, but we had a ride to catch and they were walking at about the speed honey slides down a window pane. The trail sides were too precipitous to scramble around and the closer we got to them the slower they went until the adult stopped, turned around and stared. I had a vision of being butted off the mountain side so fell back. By then Dad was looking pursed lipped at the pass and nearly hopping. He reached down and picked up a rock.

“We might have to resort to this,” he said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

But suddenly the goats were stepping off the trail! He unleashed the rock and it landed on the ground near the adult’s hind legs, but instead of hastening their departure, they indignantly retook the trail and waddled on slower than ever.
Eventually they did move aside and we barreled ahead toward the pass. Beat red, breathing like locomotives and slippery in sweat we reached the bus stop with two minutes to spare!
The bus arrived and then waited forty minutes for someone who was suppose to be coming, but never did.

Havasu Morning

2008-10-21T00:21:00.000-05:00

Some dreamscapes exist,

earthly Edens

God forgot to hide.

One tucked in a canyon,

terraced and streaming.

Red walls from sunked away hell above.

Water color of salvation

blue peace without drowsiness

green thrill without headache.

Terraced and streaming,

please,

forever terraced and streaming.

As long as such places exist,

So can I.

Yellow Feast

2008-10-20T23:44:00.000-05:00

Do you like the taste of Brittlebrush?

Are the petals tender or sweet?

Must take many flowers

to climb canyon slopes,

ford the tumbling Colorado.

I followed you here

while you crossed the creek,

back and forth

back and forth,

finally stopping neck deep amongst 10,000 suns.

Yes, I would eat you,

though know you would not me.

What do you know?

Dream River

2008-10-13T23:38:00.000-05:00

I wish someone would have told me

you’d been here,

because I didn’t know you are.

I could have laughed down your banks

and rolled into your slow

root beer flow.

Could have dove to your clouds, and,

come out overhead.

I wish someone would have told me

because now it’s fall, and,

too cold to go in.

Western Shore

2008-10-13T10:00:00.000-05:00

When rain breaks and
clouds part
Sun.
Sink.
Sight.
But before,
thin molten lava across my face,
better
across the basalt
and the waves that wash over,
as though it was melting.

Don't feel the spray
or the illusion is gone.

A Few Days a Year

2008-10-13T01:26:00.000-05:00

Trees burn,
orange, yellow, rust, red,
then leaves fall
light and slow
drifting whispers
of secrets
we pretend to know.

Cross River

2008-10-07T03:05:00.000-05:00

Black rock, white water
Camp on the banks

Cedar, birch, balsam
Red and yellow maples above the falls

The day was cool,
night already cold.

Day sky blue as only in autumn--
haunting clear sea
echoes of shapes
that vanish any deeper.

Slipping light condensed,
long darkness ahead,
deep blue, then,
deep cold.

Peter Mattiessen's Shadow Country

2008-09-02T21:29:00.000-05:00

Peter Mattiessen’s trilogy about the notorious Edgar Watson has been condensed into a single volume—good news for anyone who would rather not wrestle with three separate good sized books and experience the amazing story and colorful perspectives between two covers instead of six. Watson was a cane farmer in the Florida Everglades wilderness at the turn of 20^th century. He’s blamed for several murders ranging from despicable outlaws to disgruntled employees to one’s pregnant wife. Eventually the townsfolk grew so scared of him they emptied their guns into him one stormy night in the tiny island town of Chokoloskee.

The first book is written from a patchwork of townsfolk perspectives, most of whom were involved in his death. The second is from that of Watson’s son, Luscious, a historian trying to know his father and his father’s killer. The final being of course from the main man himself, and Mattiessen’s Watson persona is the most compelling of the three excellent stories.

On an Everglades canoe trip in January of this year I spent a night at the site of the old Watson plantation. Mostly covered in mangrove, it’s hard to imagine large fields of sugar cane, a large house and other support buildings ever existing there. Remaining is a rusting cauldron presumably used for boiling cane syrup, a cistern filled with green rainwater and pieces of implement beyond recognition decaying in the bush.

The displayed photo was made on the beach of Mormon Key, an island on the Gulf of Mexico two miles downstream from the plantation site near the mouth of the Chatham River.

West Wind's Boy

2008-08-14T01:19:00.000-05:00

Nanabosho, son of West Wind and Winona

Nanabosho, raised by grandmother Nokomis

Nanabosho, little white rabbit, protector of his people

Legend links the mischievous guardian of the Ojibwa to at least two landforms that bear his name on the Ontario shore of Lake Superior. Sleeping Giant in the eponymously named Provincial Park is said to be Nanabosho, turned to stone by the Great Spirit for creating a storm that killed two mining harbingers who had been tipped off about a silver deposit Nanabosho had hidden in the area. The giant is a towering plateau on the Sibley Peninsula in the northeastern corner of the lake. In places the cliffs soar to 700 feet above the water.

Across the lake is dark jagged island in the surf of Superior that is said to be where Nanabosho rested (photo) after jumping from one shore to another. There are two holes in the solid rock.

My first night out hiking the Coastal Trail in Lake Superior Provincial Park was spent camped in a tiny cove that gave view of the island. For a better view I crawled along the slabby littoral, swinging on cedars and leaping rock to rock, passed a point and walked easily into an even smaller harbor. My trip was young, but already sticky thoughts were snaking like spider’s webs across the trail. I asked Nanabosho to cure me from this anxious desolation.

Then I saw several cedar waxwings flitting from driftwood to shrub to stone. In between jumps they were glancing with small bird eyes at the sun as if it were a movie screen. Our star dropped behind the island and the water rippled blue splashing yellow; the sky ached pink. When the sun passed behind the second hole in the rock an orange star flashed and I made a before returning to camp.

On trail in the morning, instead of seeing a thimbleberry leaf and worrying about soreness in my ankle I saw its verdancy and thin straight veins. When two ravens cawed back and forth from fir perches, I thought not of uncertain future, but the oily black of their feathers and the great density of boreal forest. “CAAWwww,” I sounded throatily. One of them replied. I did it again and the same one responded. Unaware of the meaning, I kept going.

Literary Landmarks in the Michigan Upper Peninsula

2008-08-12T13:41:00.000-05:00

The remote pine forested northeastern corner of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has provided settings for at least a couple of well known stories. The most famous is Hemingway’s The Big Two Hearted River, detailing young Nick Adams back from World War I on a solo camping and trout fishing trip. In the story Adams takes the train to Seney, originally a rough and tumble logging town in the middle of the UP. He hops off the train to find the town completely burned. Seney had been burned, the country was burned over and changed. This never happened, but fictionally provides a metaphor for Adams, back from heavy battle, mental breakdown and a severe leg injury—burned over and changed.

He hikes into the sand hills, past the burn line, and strikes camp near the stream. He has a lovely time reacquainting himself to fishing and life without war. I hadn’t read this story before, picked up The Nick Adams Stories in a camp store at the end of a long sand road near the mouth of the Two Hearted River, just before it flows into Lake Superior. The river that Adams fishes out of Seney is actually the Fox River. The Fox is longer and runs south into Lake Michigan, but as Hemingway said, because Big Two Hearted River is poetry. It is named thus because of the similarly sized two branches by which it is formed. It’s undoubtedly a fantastic name, though there are some other good ones in the area: Tahquamenon, Yellow Dog, Manistique, Laughing Whitefish Falls, and oh yeah, Dead Sucker.

Hemingway maybe only visited the UP once, but another author who writes about the area and lived there for some time is Jim Harrison, who wrote Legends of the Fall and Revenge. I’m not a big Harrison fan, and Legends of the Fall is the only movie I can think of that is better than the book. Harrison’s characters are people with whom I rarely sympathize and have problems like having had an affair with their good friend’s, a Mexican Cartel boss’, wife (Revenge—in which the woman is tortured and killed by the cartel leader, but then two men become friends again) or being sheltered and having to get rid of too much money (The Man Who Gave up His Name). They are like bad Hemingway stories with self-serving fatalism that is not really fatalism but just the protagonist justifying himself. They are like Danielle Steel stories for men. But I still like parts of them. Harrison writes fantastically at times and his settings are awesome: By first light the wind blew hard against the yellowed aspens, the leaves skittering across the high pasture and burying themselves in a draw. When they forded their first river the leaves of the cottonwoods stripped by the wind caught in the eddies, pasting themselves against the rocks (Legends of the Fall). I’m going to read more of him. He’s still at it, over 70, just having published Returning to the Earth in 2007 (about man dying in middle age and his loved ones dealing with it, and sort of a map of the UP).

He’s settled some in old age—he doesn’t kill off any women in this book and the prevailing horniness has lessened a little. Plus it’s almost exclusively set in the UP. So when I pulled into Grand Marais, Michigan with a day to kill before four days hiking the Pictured Rocks and saw the Dunes Saloon (…with a new and peculiar itch in my brain that I figured could be dispelled only by the sight of the harbor of Lake Superior or, more likely, a cheeseburger and beer at the Dunes Saloon) of course I went in for a beer that they brew on the premises and wound up staying a few hours talking with a man getting a beer while his kids slept and a 70 year old who was hiking the North Country Trail through the UP. It is a very fine place, so fine that when I finished hiking a few days later in Munising I went looking for a similar pub at which to refuel, but found no such thing. The bartender at the Dunes said his mom used to clean house for Harrison. Shortly before reaching town while driving a maze of sand roads I passed a Harrison Trail. Although his jacket back biography says now he lives in Arizona and Montana. I guess those northern winters are probably pretty tough on an old timer from the Lower Peninsula.

Adam G. at Large Up North

2008-08-11T00:19:00.000-05:00

It was great seeing my old pal Adam again. Together we grew up, moved to the same town after high school and hiked a few hundred miles of the Appalachian Trail, since which I haven’t seen much of him. Him being a de-facto Luddite, I don’t have to worry about praising him online and having him ever see it. That would be strangely unbecoming in our friendship. After I decided to stay another day he said he was glad and then things were strange. He righted this with, “Rog you’re such an asshole, why won’t you leave?”

We had a fine time contemplating the bliss of a world completely under concrete and complaining about the arrogance of the wildflowers surrounding the camper to grow in such abundance, brightness and variety and as the night wore on, cursing the loons on Gitchi Gummi for their spine tingling elegies. Such grotesque liberties must only be possible with those known since before knowing one’s own self.

In the summer Mr. G. does Masonry. In winter he makes snow and runs the gondola at the local ski hill. His dad, older brother and uncle all transplanted from the Twin Cities to the North Shore as well. Papa G. mushes dogs, his bro is a carpenter and uncle manages a hotel. They are a wild bunch in pretty wild place.

Lotsa Harrassment by Law Enforcement

2008-07-21T14:02:00.000-05:00

The trip is off to an infuriating start because for the third in as many months I’ve been in a situation where law enforcement officers make defamatory accusations of no merit.
The one Saturday night was the worst, and could have lasting repercussions. First night of the trip, camped in a state forest campground on my way north, sleeping, after midnight, suddenly somebody tells me to come out of my tent. If they said they were cops it was the first thing out and I slept through it and don’t remember. I ask what for, and one of them repeats the command except adds, “lemme see your hands.”

Initially, I thought I was being robbed, but even without contacts and with Mag-lites pointed in my face, was able to identify them as police, Lake County Sheriff’s deputies. One of them said their bloodhound (it appeared to be a goofy little Cocker Spaniel, but I can’t see much without contacts though still enough to see it was no hound) had tracked directly to my tent from a car that had been entered and rifled through.

They kept their flashlights in my eyes and disbelieved most everything I said. Then I sat at the picnic table shivering in long underwear while the deputy ran my license and the dog handler trained his light on me. Later I moved into the squad SUV and talked with the deputy, telling him repeatedly what I’d been doing before going to bed. He still believed that stupid dog over me.

“I’ve seen him work before,” he said, and added how the dog used signals to show he was smelling me. That was the most frustrating, because there I was telling him in plain English that he was blaming the wrong dude, but to no avail. He would file the report with the county prosecutor, who may decide to summon me to court, all the way up in Two Harbors.

The first of the three happened in Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. My friend Barn, his girlfriend Jessica and I reached the park entrance at about 6:30 for a quick peek, the park was to close at 7. The ranger at the entrance booth said in an it’s-all-good sort of tone that we could stay past dark (sunset was around 7), just to be careful of antelope on the road while leaving. About a half hour after close I was making a photo and heard shouting. A ranger was yelling at us to get up where he was and don’t discard the rocks we were supposedly stealing.
A second ranger showed. She called me a liar when I told her what the first ranger had said about staying past dark. They searched our pockets and Barn’s car. Jessica had a bottle cap she’d picked off the ground that the fresh ranger actually confiscated. They let us go with a warning.

The second run-in was a couple of weeks ago. I went to pick up my wife Lily’s friend, Gugu, at the airport. Gugu was flying in from India to take an exam and visit. I waited while customs interrogated her for four hours. She had a proper visa and paperwork, but they accused her of planning to work illegally, of intending to marry an American for citizenship “like her friend” (we later joked the security man was proposing to her). They demanded her computer passwords and read her email and chat room transcripts. They called Lily, who was seeing a patient at the hospital, and threatened that unless she talked to them at that very moment they would send Gugu back to India and ban her from the U.S. for five years. They called me and her uncle in Virginia. At three and a half hours in I called them and a man denied she was still in custody. A half hour later she was finally out bedraggled and hurt.

As for now, I’m in Grand Marais at least through the night. I’m staying with my old friend Adam Gallagher who is living on the beach in a camper. The spot is okay with its abundant wildflowers surrounding much of the camper, the expanse of polished cobblestones leading to the lake and the morning sun burning like a red ball over an unseen Michigan every clear morning.

A Nonlinear Frame

2008-07-16T16:37:00.000-05:00

For the last few years I’ve been brainstorming for a good way to write about hiking the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails (plus 2,000 miles of the Continental Divide Trail). I want to avoid a linear recollection of the trips, and may now have a way to do that.

This spring I spent a month in the Southwest desert and was blown away that within the week I was, for the first time ever, completely homesick. In a few days I’ll be leaving for another trip, about three weeks long. This one will be a shot at recapturing some of the mind-bending introspection and quiet fun that attracted me to wilderness travel in the first place. Perhaps such things were only possible while younger, more care-free and single, but I don’t think so. Maybe it was the constricting canyon walls and blowing dust of the SW that dried my spirits, or possibly just inadequate physical conditioning. Missing my wife was a big part of it, but two loves must be able to coexist, even though they often require separation from the other. If there’s anyplace to do it, it’s the familiar rocky forests surrounding Lake Superior. Cool lake water and mossy chunks of basalt under pine, birch and cedar form the backdrop of my outdoor memory.

So, through the surprise of the desert trip, and the as-of-yet unknown outcome of the Northland, connections and comparisons can be made with the long trails, and around this frame, the story unfolds.

Tent and a Trail

2008-07-15T18:35:00.000-05:00

The driver’s seat of our old Grand Cherokee was a good vantage point to spot the delivery box on my doorstep holding a tent to test for Backpacker Magazine. It’ll likely only amount to a line or two of copy, at best, but, hey, it’s still exciting to receive a positive reply to one of my queries.

My original major destination of this trip was The Coastal Trail in Ontario’s Pukaskwa National Park. It looks like a real beaut on the map—hugging the Lake Superior coast for 60 kilometers in a roadless craggy boreal wonderland until it dead ends on the lonely banks of the Swallow River. From here I was going to simply turn around and walk back, in lieu of dropping money I don’t have on a boat pick-up, but after calling the park learned a footbridge has been deemed “structurally unsound,” and that they were waiting on an engineer that very day. The Canuck sounding fellow told me to call back Monday, which I did, but they are still waiting for the engineer and the trail may be closed for some time.

Here’s a link to a photo of the bridge. It’s a gnarly looking thin thing, but where else other than Canada would a whole hiking trail be shut down to keep people from treading onto a bridge that may perhaps be unsafe? I would rather have the liberty to personally assay the span myself and risk a tragic plunge into the Willow River than be told the entire walking coastline has been closed to prevent the possibility of its failure.

Oh well, Lake Superior Provincial Park has another trail by the same name and similar distance, albeit unfortunately lacking the rare remoteness of Pukaskwa.

Twin Cities photos posted

2008-07-08T12:35:00.000-05:00

About four miles and into the narrows of Paria Canyon early this April I ran into another hiker. It was at a time I was beginning to realize then that 1) it had been years since I’d gone backpacking alone 2) my fitness level was lacking, and I was already tired—amounting to a sort of low grade hysteria that I was going to have for the next four days--so I was glad to see another face. We ran into each other later that day and then again the next, but the interesting thing was that this fellow, Kevin Venator from St. Louis, is the creator of a website, http://www.americaswonderlands.com, that I’d used in planning that trip. He’s also working on a stock library of city images (http://www.gigastock.com), so after returning home, I contacted him and submitted a mass of Twin Cities photos, which are now posted:

Thanks, Kevin!

http://www.americaswonderlands.com/Minneapolis_pictures.htm

http://www.americaswonderlands.com/Saint_Paul_pictures_st_paul_mn.htm

Why Filters are Nice

2008-06-09T13:43:00.000-05:00

A few evenings ago I was running, wearing my camera backpack, to a Mississippi River bridge from which I hoped to find a sweet angle of a rainbow and some storm clouds. About halfway there I heard the sound of an opening zipper followed by the normally cool sound of shattering glass.

I’d probably left my camera pack partially unzipped, or perhaps the weight of the second body in the little outside pocket wrenched the panel open, but either way, there was my 70-200mm lying in a pile of broken glass and mud along with my D300 in a rainwater puddle.

Luckily the puddle was shallow and the camera fine and although the lens looked gruesome, the damage was limited to the filter that took the brunt of a fall like an optical hero.

A similar thing happened a couple years ago right after I bought the lens—running (to a bus that time), interrupted by CRASH! I’d cut the broken filter ring out, but the lens threads were bent so fitting a new filter on was very difficult. Actually, until the drop, for the last couple of months I’d been trying to unscrew it to clean off some smudges, but had been unable to budge the sucker.

Lo and behold after this latest disaster (after the shattered filter was cut away) I nervously picked up a new one and it fit right in—the threads were straightened by the latest fall. A case of ironic fortune I hope never to test again.

Introduction

2008-06-09T13:30:00.000-05:00

This little blog will, I hope, document my de-piping of a dream to do nature photography and writing for a living. I guess if the aforementioned hope bottoms out until the chassis rips off, it might be interesting all the same.

While reading about those who are doing or have done what I aspire toward, there are generally two types: 1) the ones who say the gist of, “I just started showing my work around and never had to look back,” and 2) the ones like Galen Rowell who said something to the effect that he found himself with boundless energy to send stories and photos and receive piles of rejection letters, or Tom Till who said in an interview he could have wallpapered his living room with rejections.

I like the latter for the drive and persistence it took those guys to get from doing what they wanted, to doing what they wanted for pay.

The first step was I quit my newspaper job (a chain of little weeklies) in March and hit the road. Spent a month in Arizona and Utah. Overall, 5,000 miles by car, 200 by foot, and 10,000 photos.

Here are a three of my favorites.