Category: Landscape

Missing, In Action

Business, Landscape, Mountain
Friday, November 4th, 2022

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted any updates, but I have a big backlog of photos to work my way through and website updates in the works. I’ve been guiding hikes and canoe trips for many months and haven’t had any time to focus on the delivery side of my photography. That is now changing (for the next bit anyway – there’s a good chance I’ll go missing from here again, but rest assured that I’ll always be in action). I’ll just post the one photo today, but I’m working on updating the store and galleries in the next bit.

A waterfall in the alpine valley above Lake of the Falls, Alberta.

Attention

Business, Forest, Landscape, Winter
Tuesday, January 4th, 2022

Attention is contagious. I am more likely to pay attention to things you pay attention to. And so we have the power to affect what other people pay attention to, whether they agree or disagree with us.

This simple truth has helped me figure out my love/hate relationship with social media. I love directing people’s attention to nature – mostly I focus on the visual beauty with photography. But I also love the sounds of wind in the leaves and the birds singing. The smells of walking through wet autumn leaves or of pushing through a fir thicket. I love the feeling of the wind, sun, and rain. Social media lets me share bits of this. But at the same time as it lets me share, it takes the attention for itself. It is mixed in with a long feed of thousands of other companies and people all trying to get your attention, and all decided by algorithms that are designed to keep you engaged (often by infuriating you). It becomes a tool of advertising. It becomes a business opportunity for a multi-billion dollar corporation. It changes a wholesome thing into a competition – a measuring stick of your value against the value of others. It becomes a tiny bit of data on how long it grabs your attention so that they can get more effective at keeping your attention in the future. It takes an honest communication between people and shortens it, cheapens it, twists it just a tiny bit. It changes the context of an interaction, and context matters.

And so what is my response? Do I disengage? Delete my accounts? I often disappear from social media for months at a time. That is definitely not good for business, but it is good for my soul. But I often find myself coming back, because I like being able to draw people’s attention to nature. And I like the people I have connected with on these platforms. But I hate the platforms. So this is not a goodbye to social media, and it is also not a promise to keep posting. It is just a promise to try to engage with people honestly and deeply, when I can and in ways I am able to. And this rarely happens online for me.

One response is to guide trips in the wilderness. Being physically in a place surrounded by nature requires sustained attention and rewards it.

As a photographer, a self-serving response is physical prints. I recently installed a set of prints in a house and I got the rare (for me) chance to see my work in the context it will be. A physical print stays there. You can’t scroll to the next image. The place and the light keeps you company in the morning when you have coffee, and is still with you in the evening at supper. It becomes familiar and comforting. You actually have time to develop a response to an image and have coherent thoughts about that response.

So I want to draw your attention to nature. But I also want to draw your attention to yourself and your relationship with it, and that takes more time and attention than social media is willing to give you.

I’ve been reading “How to do Nothing” by Jenny Odell, which is fantastic and is prompting many thoughts, including this post.

Bad Weather, Good Light

Landscape, Mountain
Wednesday, October 14th, 2020

The worst weather is the best weather if you’re prepared! This was taken while hiking up to the notch (photos provide much needed breaks on steep climbs) on the Skyline Trail in Jasper. Curator Lake is in the foreground with Big Shovel Pass in the back of the spotlight.

Tombstone Territorial Park

Camping, Landscape, Mountain, Travel, Tundra
Monday, February 17th, 2020

We have so many incredible places in Canada that it feels wrong to highlight a particular one – one that I don’t even know that well. It feels like giving the standard advice, when tourists are deciding where to go, of driving through Banff. There’s no denying it’s spectacular, but there’s an intimacy with the land that seems somehow less accessible in these in-your-face spectacular areas. It’s not the real Canada, it’s the instagram influencer of Canada. It’s hard to sell the smaller, flatter, swampy natural areas surrounded by agricultural land that dot the Alberta landscape. And maybe that’s for the best – if they got as much traffic as Banff, they would change significantly.

But the spectacular has the same appeal for me as it does for most people. I’ve wanted to visit Tombstone Territorial Park for years. It has all the in-your-face, mountainous beauty of Banff, plus the northern appeal of the tundra and a relatively low visitor count.

Early morning near the north end of the park.

But it is quite the drive to get there. From the “gateway to the north” in Edmonton, you still have to drive 29 hours north. That sounds long, and it feels even longer. And the trouble with this drive is that there are hundreds of tempting spots to get sidetracked. There are mountains, waterfalls, parks, coffeeshops, rockhunting spots, vistas, wildlife, hotsprings, and more, all calling you to check them out, spend just a bit of time, do just one little hike. But no, you have to keep driving. And driving. And driving. And once you’ve spent the 3 or 4 long days driving you’re finally there. And it is spectacular.

Tombstone is full of interesting textures from erosion, lichen, and tundra growth.

My only advice, if you do have the time to get all the way up here and back, is to make sure you have time to spend in the backcountry. Plan to hike for a few days at least. I got to spend 3 days here, and it was not enough. If you’re staying on the highway it is not a big park – you’re through in an hour. But the land is massive, and deserves to be explored on foot.

Looking towards the grey Ogilvie Mountains from the north end of the park.

If you are planning to travel here and you want any specific advice, feel free to comment or email me. I enjoy talking about trips and places, although I’m often away and I might be slow to respond. The Dempster “Highway” is a rough gravel road that has been known to cause flats (we survived with no casualties – until later in our trip). The gas stations are few and far between. There is no cell access anywhere. You can not get extra supplies if you forget them. You should be prepared for any emergencies. Now that all those warnings are out of the way, it’s not that bad. Don’t be scared to do it. There are usually other travelers around, and most are friendly and helpful should you need it.

The streams are mostly surrounded by tall willows. There are lots of spruce trees near the south end of the park, but very few in the north – even the willows get a bit smaller.

The leathery colors of fall blending into the monochrome of the coming winter.

Bad weather is the best weather.

The Best is the Enemy of the Good

Landscape, Mountain, Photo of the Day
Thursday, January 9th, 2020

This has resulted in very few blog posts for a very long time. So I’m going to try to post something as opposed to nothing, which hopefully is an improvement.

Evening in Kluane National Park – clouds are sometimes hard to shake.

The title quote is attributed to Voltaire.

Wilberforce: Describing the Impossible

Canoeing, Landscape, Tundra
Thursday, July 11th, 2019

Eric enjoying the view of the lower falls at Wilberforce.

Wilberforce Falls, near the end of the Hood River in Nunavut, is an experience – impossible to capture with pixels or describe with words. But I’ll still try. The river splits into two, flowing around a massive promontory of rock, plunging over 60m (200 feet) in two stages on both sides. The roar is so loud you have to yell to talk. Gusts of mist rise from the canyons below. Nesting peregrine falcons dive bombed us as we peered over the edges of cliffs to the water below. As with every spectacular experience, the time I had there was way too short.

The spot of blue is Annika peering over the cliff at one of the upper falls.

Posting pictures of this place (and many places) seems almost disrespectful. They are such a pale reflection of an actual experience. You see a pretty picture of water and rock and tundra. You don’t feel the bone-weary exhaustion of two weeks of canoe tripping. You don’t feel the anxiety of knowing the next day you will start to move all your canoes and gear across 12km of unknown tundra. You don’t feel the bittersweet feeling of leaving a river and the excitement of heading towards the arctic ocean. You don’t feel the frustration of never having enough time to appreciate the incredible places you’re breezing past.

The smaller side of the upper falls.

What am I trying to accomplish by taking photos of these places? Spreading the knowledge that there are incredible places shaped by incredible forces? Trying to get people to value and preserve wilderness? Encouraging others to have similar experiences? Bragging about my experiences? Trying to add something beautiful and wholesome to the fight for the soul of the internet?

I think understanding the value of wilderness is essential to the well-being and survival of humans. The value is in the beauty, in the feeding of the soul, in the ecosystem services it provides us, in the reminder that we are small, the knowledge that it was here long before us and will be here long after us, even in its own right to exist. Knowledge and understanding are so much deeper when they’re gained through experience instead of seeing photos or reading text online. This is why I also lead trips in the wilderness, despite the difficulty, risk, and expense. The difficulty, risk, and wilderness create a learning environment that teaches while it amazes. These experiences change lives.

Part of the canyon below the falls.

Bill Mason, the skilled canoeist, artist, and environmentalist, tried to paddle the canyon below the falls in the 1990s. He writes the incredible story in the book “First Descents: In Search of Wild Rivers”. Hopefully this google book link works for people – the story starts on page 81.

Adventure Sizing

Landscape, Marshes, Photo of the Day, Prairie, Travel
Wednesday, June 12th, 2019

Time in nature is important for everyone. It doesn’t require a long trip. It doesn’t require a canoe. It doesn’t require fancy camping gear. It doesn’t even require much knowledge, although all these things help.

When I’ve had time to post lately I’ve been posting photos from multi-week expeditions in remote locations that not a lot of people get to experience. These adventures have been really exciting for me and have helped me develop my outdoor skills. This spring, I’ve been leading week-long canoe trips for high school students, enabling them to see places and have experiences that they wouldn’t get to normally. And I’m convinced these are all good things.

But for most of us, taking a week off work is tough. And figuring out how to acquire camping gear, a canoe, and the knowledge to safely paddle a river is often unrealistic. To experience the outdoors, you don’t need these things. My hope for the high school students I’m leading on trips is that they will gain an appreciation for spending time outside, not just on trips.

I live in Edmonton, and though I rarely post pictures from here, I run through the forest in the river valley close to my home every week. This is an essential dose of nature for me that anyone can experience. Our trails in the river valley in Edmonton are great and everyone here has access to them!

If you have a car, Elk Island National Park is an easy place to get to for an evening walk or picnic (or try Cooking Lake Recreation Area if you don’t want to pay the National Park fees). All these photos are from a two hour walk in Elk Island. This time and nature is no less valuable than weeks in the wilderness. It does the same thing for me – it renews my sense of wonder and joy.

I hope everyone reading this takes the time to enjoy nature in the next week, even if it’s just a short walk in your local park. This still counts as an adventure!

Kingaunmiut Falls

Canoeing, Landscape, Photo of the Day, Tundra, Water
Thursday, April 4th, 2019

After Skull Rapids, we had a couple uneventful days of paddling and portaging. Then we got to a slightly longer portage, which would be just a small warm-up for our real portage (more on that later). But at the end of this long sweaty ordeal, we got a beautiful, flat campsite at the bottom of Kingaunmiut Falls, with a Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) scolding us for a bit before it accepted our presence as inevitable. Or maybe it realized we couldn’t scale the cliffs to get to its nest. This is also where we saw a distant herd of muskox for the first time.

Notes:
1. All of these photos were taken near midnight.
2. I was saying it “King – gun – mute”. If any speakers of an Inuit language are reading, I’d love to be corrected!

Skull Rapid

Camping, Canoeing, Landscape, Tundra, Water
Friday, March 1st, 2019

Having lunch above Skull Rapids on the Hood River

Skull Rapid – it’s an ominous name for a long and violent rapid, crashing over and through large boulders. This was our first portage of many, right at the outlet of Esker Lake. We figured out how to organize our gear, how to tie loose gear on to packframes, and how much we could all carry. It was a short portage at only a few hundred meters, and we completed it fairly quickly and had lunch on the bluff overlooking the rapid. The rapid is named for an old muskox skull, slowly decaying in the mats of flowering labrador tea (Ledum sp.).

 

Sunlight

Camping, Canoeing, Landscape, Photo of the Day, Travel, Tundra
Saturday, December 15th, 2018

Camped for the evening on the south shore of Cave Lake on the Hood River, Nunavut. If you look closely you can see tents on the bottom right.

Sitting at home writing this in the evening, I’m wondering about this place now. I wonder if there would be a glow of lights on the horizon from a distant mine or if it would be the complete darkness I imagine. Although complete darkness isn’t accurate – there would be stars and reflected light from the moon – all reflected off a sea of endless snow.

When I was there in late June it was light all the time. The night was one long sunset/sunrise. People ask me if I had trouble sleeping – not at all. It was a tiring trip and I usually fell asleep quickly, but I really wished I had energy to explore the area at night. Sometimes we would go on hikes until around midnight and the sun was still up. But mornings came early, and with them the constant work of camp life and paddling.