Kodiak - needs work

Back in the saddle again.

The best beach combing is after a good northeasternor storm.

There's only one tide on the day I flew out, since what would normally be the 2nd tide falls on 12:01am of the following day.

Downloaded a few Adobe updates and watched some videos on Photoshop and the generative AI features it offers now.  It can completely change a photo and make any garbage image look stellar with a few prompts.  It makes me wonder if there's still reason to go into the field for photography.

There are so many interesting things out there.  Life is like standing in a dry creek bed, but there's so many rocks to turn over and see what's come before us, what's happened, happening. 

I'll carve my name onto the blank slate of a tombstone and keep it with me, and stand it up in the shade of a stand of birch trees across the yard, and in my private moments as I look out the windows I'll see it and be reminded that my time is always inching closer to the end. 

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Cabin Fever - needs work

Every where on earth gets the same amount of daylight in an annual cycle.

Now it’s time for us to make up for the saturation of unending summer sun showers.

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Even on clear days it’s cloudy from the ice fog.

Heat spills out of the cabin.

I’ve gone to the thrift store and scooped up an armful of blankets to stick along the cabin seams.

Its constant maintenance on log homes.

Its like setting out to cross the ocean in a boat you've built.  Winter is the ocean.

Denali - needs work

They’re practicing flying circles around the field, and soon they’ll write their seasonal goodbyes in a medium of earth with footprints in mud.

That unending feeling like there's always a storm on the horizon. But its just the coming long dark. It's almost to that point where I can leave groceries in the trunk until May, and I’ll be in a small cabin surrounded by an abyssal ocean, reminiscing on the color green.

This is one of the last times I'll listen to leaves swaying in the wind.

I grew up here and the forest feels like a dream. White and yellow isn’t a color combination one thinks of when they think of forests. But it occurs twice here - birch leaves in autumn, and tamarack needles that yellow at the first snow.

Kk'eeyh noghe' - The horizontal lines on birch bark, literally "birch's eyes". These are checked before bark is taken. Those with short lines are usually good canoe birch. Then roll it along something, and if it cracks, then make baskets or something else out of it instead.

Denali.

It's out there waiting for me. I take solace in you. I've visited you last week too, though I did not leave the city. And I visited you the week before, and the week before that, and countless times since I last set the Chakos on you. You are always in my mind as a fantastical escape from ennui.

The cold spirit.

Home in your wintry bastion.

I see you, watching us from your mountainous home over the next hill.

You phantom waiting to come down to us.

You’ll grasp us all with your slick, tingling fingers.

How cocky must one be to post pictures of this place and think they’ve captured it all? One will never acclimate to the vast beauty of this place or sense of smallness. I merely play, with this toy of a camera and hands that will last only a few seasons, to glimpse you.

Conception of Nature

Trail of dust from a huge boulder. They’d occasionally break free and run down the slopes, and this one was about 30 feet ahead of me and would have made minced meat of myself.

I came to this glacier after watching a UAF summer lecture by a local painter, Klara Maisch, who was presenting her field painting process. Even in -30F this girl will go out and paint (but only with oils because acrylics will freeze), staying multiple days in a location to capture all the detail. Amazing. And shameful for me, as I so often huddle next to the car’s heater vents as I wait for the light to change before dashing outside to set up the tripod and camera.

While I found all her process fascinating, what stuck me most profoundly was how fast one of the magnificent glaciers she painted is receding. She said it will be gone soon, possibly even in the next decade. And she said that up to half of the world’s glaciers could disappear by the end of the century. One of my biggest takeaway from my travels is how the climate has destabilized everywhere, from temperature snaps in Texas, droughts in California, and frozen pipes in Atlanta.  I think it will be a windy and unpredictable world in the future, blowing ash and climate refugees around. This July is on track to be the hottest month on record in 120,000 years, and nowhere else on Earth is it warming faster than in the circumpolar arctic.

Energized by the end of the world again, I left work criminally earlier on this Friday afternoon and headed out to Gulkana Glacier. The little Civic tussled with the dirt road through the Alaska Range for a long while before I had made it to the trailhead. And for another long while after, I walked the glacier’s stony drainage channel where the forest gradually turned to shrub which turned to sparse glacial moraine. And after a long walk, I came across something close to the glacier that I hadn’t expected : a spruce sapling. And in that moment it became painfully clear that the end of this glacier isn’t conjecture. I can see it happening here, with the forest creeping upwards and constant sound of rushing melt-water draining from this place. The little sapling will probably become a mother tree, the harbinger of the forest. I wanted to tear it from the ground, but I know that we planted it with our indifference.

Across my travels from almost losing fingers in Texas, to the wind of Alaska, to freezing pipes in Atlanta, I’ve seen how we’ve destabilized the climate. I think collectively, we look at our cities and our neighborhoods and feel a sense of accomplishment in our creations. I’ve passed thousands of miles of development, the result of countless deals, contracts, schemes, plans. But we’ve destroyed far more along that journey than we’ve created. From the gifts of stardust and abiogenesis we’ve razed the natural order as we build commuter towns and offices, drive bland SUV’s, take cruises, and built an American Great Wall of manicured lawns and fences, all at an unsustainable rate. We’ve mass-cultivated palm oil where the Amazon rain forest used to be and grown endless rows of corn in the corn belt that stretches across the Midwest. There were 2 billion people in the world in the time of our great grandparents, and from Dickensian poverty into an era of growing abundance we’ve fucked our way to 8.

And I think this remarkable homogeneity will doom us.

Not only homogeneity of the land, but of ourselves. A contagion of cultural assimilation runs rampant, like in Indian boarding schools of the 19th and 20th centuries. This isn’t anything new; watch videos of 1930’s New York City and you’ll see that everyone wore identical hats. But these hats are troublesome in what they reveal about us. We’re complacent and complicit, dismissing the notion that we could change anything ourselves as we buy whatever is on sale online or what our neighbors have that we envy. I wouldn’t be so presumptions to think I'm the only one that can see the metaphorical sun set because everyone says they want to save the land.  But so often I think it's only a ruse and they all feign tolerance and altruism. I pass hundreds of cars every time I commute on my bicycle around town, picking up aluminum cans along the way in a bag in my backpack. So I think that we're all actors, all little imps and demons sticking gum on the underside of the pew at Sunday Mass while holding in a butt plug. We’re deviants in this reckless madness we’ve conjured, and this is all one giant cat orgy of decadence as we march inexorably forward towards the dark cloud on the horizon. I like to think whatever great catastrophe is coming our way will ultimately usher in a greater good, like the plague and the fall of Constantinople, thinning the population of Europe and concentrating its great minds together. That woeful combination resulted in the Italian renaissance. But my mind’s eye is blind to seeing a green and thus a great future. It requires faith in those that I truly believe never smelled a flower and possesses no conception of nature.

But then I look around at the draining glacier and the ending ice age and this great slab of ice inching into annihilation, and I think - do I possess a conception of nature? I’m ignorant too. And if I can forget how amazing this is, how can I expect anyone else to appreciate it? I should wear a hat, too.

The Masters

After an entire day flying and driving I arrive at a place that feels familiar to where I started.  There’s permafrost and plants here that are usually found above the Arctic Circle. A nearby pamphlet explains why: every 1,000 feet of elevation gain is the equivalent to traveling 600 miles north. And at the edge of this tree line in the Colorado Rockies stands another wonder, the vanguard of the forest below, the bristle-cone pine. Though this grove isn’t as old as the one in California that holds Methuselah, the tree that’s been living since 2833 BC, these ones are still ancient. Standing next to them I sense the presence of the extraordinary.

Trees age like us.

In our youth we’re short and bendy, and as we age we become tall and stiff. But your needles last as long as our entire youth. A single breath of yours lasts a generation for us, and you'll see many of us come and go.  As long as one season feels for us, our entire lives will feel like one season to you. We'll buzz around you for a time and be your insects.

And you’ll outlast even our language.

You’ll stand, twisted by the wind across eons, sometimes just one thin little strip of bark still holding life. Are you still alive under there?  Or are you sleeping?

I dare not even touch your bark skin rough from centuries of weather, for fear of crumbling away your armor you’ve crafted over one of our generations and held across centuries.

And in our entire lifetimes as we come and go, you can stand in death, preserved in the cold for centuries after your last strip of bark dies.

Losing Myself at Home

I’m back home now and here to stay for a bit. I love this place - the impossibly verdant summer greenery that lasts just a few breaths of awe, the shadow-casting moonlight of winter, the people that are so delightfully weird and make me feel like I’m in good company. But it leaves with me a soul-wrenching question - what do I do with this travel blog now? I do love keeping up with it, frustrating as it it as times. I love choosing the pictures, working the layout, writing a monologue to express what a picture can't capture, all to provide some concept of what the journey was like. I’d pick the experiences that would stick out the most from when I was staying in one place a month.

But I feel a loss of identity in settling down. Moving into a cabin in Alaska feels somehow too conventional for me. I stayed here before, but I knew at the time it wouldn’t last and this time it’s permanent. So I guess I’m back to writing about day trips from the cabin. Looking back on my blog entries from the last time I stayed here, it doesn’t seem like my writing or photographs suffered too much from being in one place. Not to say they were exceptional or even great, but they’re still full of what interests me visually and my familiar angst and reflections that I do enjoy revisiting from time to time. But now that I’m back again, I think I’ll ease down from the once-a-month blog cadence. Even that has been stressful when combined with the ceaseless travel itinerary and pecuniary duties of life. I’ll take my time with excursions and my output will decrease, but I’ll try to be more thoughtful in the shots I do take. I’ll try to put more planning into my shots, instead of winging it and heading out on the bike into whatever is nearby.

So here we go. Today I made a short drive from the cabin to what I believe is a thermokarst pond, where melting permafrost made the ground sag and fill with water. Solstice is approaching and there is a day coming up that won’t have a sunset (it will happen at 12:01am the next day). It’s not a grand journey today, but I loved it as much as any national park. The Athabaskan translations below are from “Junior Dictionary of the Central Koyukon Athabaskan” by Eliza Jones.

Kk’eeyh, white birch.

Tiitlkkughuyh, mallard ducks.

A Life Different

Motorcycling.

It's like snowboarding: carving into turns, riding moguls in the slopes, watching mountains of unbroken green crest over you as you near towering over the incoming turn.  And as you near, the mountain disappears as a wave of green tree canopy overtakes it and washes over the closing sky.

This weekend a friend from Atlanta rode up to the B&B in North Carolina and we cruised over to Deal's Gap Motorcycle Resort at the Tennessee border to ride the Tail of the Dragon, a regionally famous public road winding through the Appalachians. There's a so-called Tree of Death in the parking lot where parts from wrecked bikes and sport cars have been strung up on its branches. The plastic fairings and body parts clank against each other in the wind like bone chimes before we set off. It’s an ominous sign, like seeing the statue of the Egyptian god of death Anubis through the glass at Denver International Airport before your flight.

Tree of Death at Deal’s Gap.

Soon the kickstands are up and I’m pushing the handlebars hard to the left, then the right as there's nary a straight stretch anywhere. None of the Vettes, Mustangs, Chargers, Porches, streetcars or other bikes, all with GoPros attached somewhere, come close to us. This little stretch of highway must generate thousands of gigabytes of data each day with all their gear, plus the 3-4 photographers along the road that photography everything that comes by. I didn’t know that was a thing, and this must be the only place in the country where they do that. The tires were a bit slippy without ABS (the cable for it got jacked up last weekend ) and the rear tire slipped on the very last corner. HOLY FUCK, it really put the fear into me. I’m thankful it happened on the very last corner though. When we made it to the end I pulled up to the gas pump and my buddy didn’t see me do that, so he thought I wrecked and went back to look for me. His concern wasn’t off base, since on average there’s an accident here every few weeks and at least one person dies every summer. Another tidbit I learn is that the motorcycle signal for “cop ahead” is to pat the top of your helmet.

Afterwards we continued west on a frigid ride into the wintry mountains at 5,000 feet, where we put the kickstands up at Hooper Bald. I had to sit on my buddy’s bike with the heated seat and handlebars to warm up before we did a short hike. All the trees were still sleeping and hadn't even started to green up yet. There weren't any good shots to take under the biting wind and overcast skies, so we parted ways and my my buddy headed back to Atlanta and I headed back East.

Texas plains.

Left alone again, I reflect on how I’ve been spending the time I’ve been giving. This had been almost favorite activity of mine since I heard on Canada Public Radio years ago that the average person has about 650,000 hours in their lifetime. I think that one broadcast sometimes drives me to do some of the things I do because I’m so fearful of wasting time. And as I think on this, I realize that I’ve seen so much of this country from the roads now. In this excursion alone I’ve traveled a thousand miles from the Rockies to Texas and along the coast, all outside. And this trip has changed me. If it wasn’t for this trip, I could see myself not being as engaged and passionate about the natural order if I spent more of my hours commuting in a car and in an office. I imagine my set of priorities would be different and probably lay more in the artificial. I'd aspire to a late model SUV in a muted tone and badges showing the engine size, with a toll pass to display my elite status to other commuters I'll never see in my life again. But now I feel more connected to this land than ever, and almost radicalized to protect it because I’ve seen how sprawling we are and how how we treat those remnants of nature. Che Guevara was radicalized by his own experience on a motorcycle trip, though I’ll probably not be leading guerillas in the South American forest. But we’ll see.

There are so many small things I love about this motorcycle life that can build up into into a sublime adventure. I love the sound of the exhaust reverberating through a tunnel. I love when raindrops smack into my visor, and when I turn my helmet to the side the wind blows them across it. I love when little kids point and wave and give me the hand signal to rev the engine.

But I’m also dog tired of this motorcycle life.

It's been grueling riding through thousands of miles of wind. And I don’t think anything has sucked as much as trying to find my way at night to new places in different states without a map or reception. Being an ultra minimalist on a motorcycle means I don't have any way to pull up directions on the go.  Sometimes I'll just head in a direction and use dead reckoning to try to figure out approximately where I'm at.  For example - I'll head east and after a while, the sun is on my back.  That must mean I’m in Alabama?   Sometimes I'll look for landmarks.  When I'm in the area I want to be in, then I'll stop and pull up a map and try to hone in on my final destination. This is all my own fault of course. After shunning everything and converting to minimalism, my struggles are condign.

Man in the Sea Museum, Florida.

But even on blue sky days when it’s warm out, there’s always something. Motorcycles take a lot more maintenance than cars. Every 500 miles one should be cleaning the chain and adjusting the chain slack. And gas, the fucking gas. My bike has about an hour and 45 minutes worth of riding time before I need to get more, and the more than a few times I’ve found myself in strange territory wondering where the nearest station is. One of my most terrifying rides has been in the plains of north Texas in 35F at night, unsure of where the nearest station or even highway was. Like with electric cars, range anxiety is a thing on this bike. So I’m constantly at a gas station to compensate for my insecurities.

Country road maintenance while waiting for golden hour.

And life feels itinerant. It’s tiring to always have to be on the move. My ass can’t take more than a couple hours on the saddle at a time, and these wretched hands stiffen into claws after gripping the handlebars in the cold for too long. Because of this, I realize that I'm a better photographer with a vehicle. Some of the best photographs are when weather is dramatic and misbehaving, and as I go through my latest albums I realize I’ve become a fair-weather photographer. And maybe the worst aspect of this life is when I see friends who I used to see after class and go to bars with share pictures of their families on social media. It makes me think that this is a young man’s game, and that my life is just an erectile dysfunction commercial with some aging guy trying to prove something to the world.

Colorado, a lifetime ago.

So I’ve made a decision.

I’m going home. I want to spend the summer photographing the Alaska range and finishing this goddamn book. And after so much time on the road, I think that ironically, staying in one place would be the radical thing to do for me. So I’m going to take my armor off and set it on the mantle like a decorative ornament. For posterity I’ll end this life chapter with a few anthropological pictures that I feel summarize it.

This lifestyle is for the extreme minimalist since the whole kit and caboodle fits on the bike.

There are a few standard places to store things on motorcycles: a small bag over the gas tank, saddle bags (aka panniers), and a dry bag on the back. Some also wear a backpack but at least for me it’s a pain in the ass to have the straps dig into my shoulders and have the weight wreck my posture on the long rides.

The dry bag (at left) goes on the back of the bike and offers the most space. There’s a lot of options available but I used an Osah 60L waterproof bag. One lesson I learned from living out of the Escape is to store things in clear bags so you can see what’s inside them. Even after becoming an extreme minimalist, it can be a pain to have to rummage through things to find something you want. But the upside is that the less you have, the less you desire. It has its own set of challenges too though and induces minutiae at times, like when you’re fretting over how much space a bottle of vitamins, etc. takes. It’s a continuing process to downsize and find ways to get by on less, and find multiple uses for things. It’s a constant balancing act though. In Texas I dropped off a shirt so I could make room for a 2nd pair of swim shorts on the muggy coast.

It’s impossible to anticipate everything you’ll need in this kind of life. I left CO with a ton of stuff I thought I’d never get rid of, but after reaching Texas I was ready to toss it to the curb and never see it again since it had been so heavy on the ride down. You’ll realize what’s important to you as you separate needs from desires and downsize along the way. And you’ll figure out ways to become efficient. For example, I got rid of my hoody, long sleeve shirts, light jackets, etc and just used a motorcycle jacket or fleece. And I ditched all my different shoes for just one pair and sandals. I only had one bottle I’d refill with tap water and stopped drinking coffee since it took up too much space. I switched to tiny energy mixers instead. I used empty bread bags as garbage bags and backpacked everything from the grocery stores. Electronics were downsized and used until they’re dead.  My phone cover has been taped up multiple times now. I used shaving cream for conditioner which took some getting used to, but now I appreciate how the blades glide along my skin.  And when I finished shaving, I’d clean and dry out the blade by blowing on it and wiping it with a towel/cloth.  It's not the act of shaving that reduces a blade's life, but having it sit with moisture.  If you dry them then they'll last forever!  For the last six months I've been using a dollar shave club blade that’s supposed to last two weeks.

Everything I own (except for some winter gear at friend’s houses in CO and AK I didn’t get rid of before leaving).

So I’ve spent 5,000 of my (maybe) 650,000 hours learning all this and being broken by it. But I’m glad to have lived this weird and wild chapter and to have been changed by it. And when life is mundane I’ll think back on these times and of faraway places and think, oh, the places we go.

Yours truly. Credit on this one goes to Xtreme Sports Photography.

Wild Appalachians

I've never been to these mountains before, but one of my first memories are of it.  I was in third grade and had proudly answered a question asking what mountain range spanned the east coast, but I didn't quite know the name of it and I called them the Application Mountains. The whole class erupted in laughter at me. Now, on about the 30th anniversary of that experience, I find myself in quaint little Bryson City which is nestled into one of the many valleys of this range.

One of the silos holding banjo music. The more I look at it, the more it offers: part agrarian artifact with metal textures, part alive with vine reticulum, part fabled castle.

This place is like Disney World for the two-wheel enthusiast. There’s hardly a stretch of flat, straight road anywhere, and every few minutes I hear cruisers and adventure bikes roll by the B&B. In every direction out of Bryson City lay twisting mountain roads that offer stellar technical riding full of grades and turns and can induce a cardiac event. These Appalachians are a remnant of a massive mountain range that spanned the continent of Pangaea, and other parts of the old range are now in Scotland and Africa. Wow! I’m amazed by this fact and what geology offers - through it, we expand our perception of time and the world we live in. I think it’s right up there with paleontology and astrophysics in that regard. After a short ride through history, I arrived at one of about a dozen trailheads not far out of town. In these long periods between states and B&B’s, it’s these moments that excite me the most. Seeing a strange forest, listening to its sounds, just walking along the earth and seeing what the soil is like from that geology. It didn’t take long to realize that the telephoto lens was dead weight though, since the brush is so dense I can’t peek through it and there are no vantage points above a tree line. But I’m happy to take the lens for a walk over the crisp leaves that litter the forest floor as I have this entire place to myself.

This valley beyond used to be full of people, but in the 1940’s it was flooded to provide hydroelectric power for aluminum plants in nearby Tennessee. The communities were moved out though the graveyards remain, and the federal government agreed to build a new road to view them. But the project was abandoned after encountering environmental risks, and now the far side of the tunnel ends with trails that head out into camp sites and graves.

I realized my dream of seeing the mountains when they’re smokey and snapped a ton of pics at each vantage point along the mountain road and around town, and repeated it the next day when the phenom continued. And then it continued the next day, and I realized that they’re ALWAYS hazy! Google says the haze is from the collective breaths of the millions of trees and plants that grow thick here. The haze makes for amazing evening atmospheres here as it catches and refracts the tangerine light, like sunset through wildfire smoke. But even at mid-day the atmosphere can delight, when clouds cast labyrinthine valleys and endless tunnels of green into shadows. What enchantment the weather brings here, these spellbinding clouds over the unforgettable Application Mountains.

French, Flowers, and Fuckery

I love Atlanta. The whole city is smiling and laughing today. A girl broke out into dance in the parking lot of a Kroger when an SUV with a bumping system passed by. It’s a black neighborhood I’m staying in, and it’s got it’s own distinct sense of culture from a few miles over where it’s white. I haven’t seen this type of racial segregation along the coast yet, and it reminds me of the Indian villages in Alaska or the reservations of the Lower 48. There are two competing theories on how our species will evolve (assuming we don’t blow up the planet first). One is that we’ll continue to be separate, the other is that we’ll all be one race. Maybe the outlying communities are evidence for the former, the melting pot of downtown evidence for the latter.

It was downtown at the art museum that I encountered one I hadn’t expect to see. A girl, entirely French, with brown eyes. I think she was following me. I’d seen her for hours, and she was memorable because I’d never seen another move so slowly through an art museum. I’m so obsessed with details (in photography as much as viewing paintings) that I’ve spent hours in a patch of mushrooms before, photographing them as the light changed and lit up different parts of their gills. And in this museum like others I’d spent five, ten, fifteen minutes looking at a single painting, studying the artist’s composition, thinking on the historical context, tracing their brush stokes and colors while others stream by. But she did the same, and after spending minutes on one wall of a room, we’d trade and switch positions in our cultural tango. We closed the museum down, and as we walked down the to the first floor I asked her what her favorite was, and that’s when I learned she was French from her voice. I asked if there’s any Americans in French museums, like how Monet and other French impressionists are here, she said only at the smaller, less popular ones. Hah, damn. I liked her. But she was quiet like me, and I sensed an awkward moment when we were outside. To dispatch the awkward moment I wished her luck on her travels and took my leave. She was too much like me.

But thoughts of her stayed with me for the rest of the night as the sun grew heavy in the sky and the earth turned shyly from the star, and her silhouette of sunset and sunrise flows across her curves. I’ll never hear the sound of her accent again, or see her reflective self stand in solitude as the mindless hoards pass by. I had sensed a kindred spirit in her, and let her go out into the world alone. Blink, and in that moment the light has changed, and your cards have changed. Like any experience out in the woods, this life is a constant allocation of resources amid changing circumstances. It is not a zero-sum experience. Everything has a cost, and nothing is immutable in this life. In a little pocket of civilization I found her, but now she’s gone forever.

But not all is lost!

As surely as the sun sets it will rise, and soon another hand is dealt. I’m behind the handlebars again and exploring a nearby state park, an experience which shocks my little heart out of its stupor/cardiac arrest and makes it beat once more. I find myself riding down Robert E Lee Boulevard and past Stonewall Jackson road as the road curves around Stone Mountain. Yeah, it’s the south, but I’m more interested in the terrain and the creatures of the forest that croak and chirp and sing than what the roads are named after.

Stone Mountain is an igneous rock formations called a pluton that extends high above the surrounding forest, where the soils were eroded away and exposed the formation. The landscape is dotted with these geologic anomalies that seem entirely out of place. After thousands of miles of photography this world continues to surprise as much as it has on that very first day in the field, which feels like a hundred centuries ago. Amid the forest the tulip poplar lives, one of the tallest trees the east produces and reaching over 100 feet tall. They’re more closely related to magnolias than to true poplars, and they’re named for the flowering tulips they produce. And there’s another interesting one here that I wish would show me itself - the elusive grey fox. It’s a cousin of the red fox and looks similar except it has a sooty coat. It’s the only member of the dog family that can climb a tree.

After sunset I rode to the north side of the park to peek at what I had missed along the river as I left. I had intentionally avoided this part of the park because there’s another stone carving here by the same guy that desecrated the Six Grandfathers in South Dakota, someone of which I hesitantly but grudgingly acknowledge the existence of, like when pulling up a map of sexual predators in your neighborhood. Stone Mountain is a spiritual predecessor to Mount fucking Rushmore in that it’s a Confederate memorial funded by the KKK with enormous carvings of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It’s suitable that their likenesses stay in the shade most of the day, like a dark stain on the land. But there’s a light show with lasers projecting something over the trees, so I pulled the bike over to take a look and found the most interesting absolute fuckery I’ve seen in a long time. It’s quite an achievement, really.

The light show is projected directly on to their portraits. In a show tailored to other millennials with short attention spans no doubt, the viewer is subjected to a barrage of 5-second sound bits of popular songs is accompanied by pop culture images until the show finally concludes with a recorded bit of the Star Spangled Banner and the US flag projected on the face of the Confederate general himself. Beautiful. I half-expected an audience of neo-Confederate white supremacists here, but they’ve outdone themselves here. They shit on everyone equally. I was actually astounded by its egalitarian insulting. I left after a few minutes, thoroughly confused by what I had just witnessed until my bike started to act up. Uh oh.

It turns out that I’ve been quite the naughty boy and neglected some routine maintenance that happens to be of the upmost importance. My front tire was at half the recommended pressure while the rear tire was… well… I should be ashamed for what it was at. But the great thing about this life is that even if you’re stupid or ignorant, there’s a chance you can still make it by being nice to smart people and people of means. I was lucky to have a good friend in this city that rides too and knows all about bikes. Despite being in his final month of law school, he took the time to meet me on the top floor of a parking garage where he essentially performed surgery on my iron horse. He tore apart the back end and put it back together by the time the sun set over the city. I was back in business.

The igneous rock plutons are probably one of the best bets in my area for a landscape photographer, so I ended my time here with an excursion to Arabia Mountain. It’s not as big as the Confederate memorial and I don’t feel like a fat sack of shit hiking to the top of it, but it’s still delightful with it’s wonderful color palette and mozaic patterns where nature crept in between cracks in the stone. Shallow rock pools are occupied with red-bodied little plants tipped with white flowers, green moss and sedge grows in the cracks, and isolated pastures of yellow grass stand where enough debris had collected that their roots could grab a hold of something. And all around, the rocks are streaked with brown, grey, and tan where the draining rain stained it. 

This place is amazing. After 8,000 generations of building knowledge, this is more enchanting than anything we could ever build. As the sun set, I chased its light around the summit, skittering up and down the rocks like a crazed grasshopper. It's amazing what can be accomplished if we only leave things alone.

Sheer Cascades

I’m watching people come and go in a constantly changing cast and cross-section of American life.  Some are happy and others sad, some are old and some are not, some are cowboys and others have gadgets, some have a smart look about them and others look like they watch a lot of TV. But all are farmers of emotion, each stirring in equal measure the heart and mind as I watch them leave and contemplate how life is like a house party, and one by one your friends leave until you're left sitting alone, waiting.  The incongruent loneliness that attaches to one (for I cannot be alone in this plight) in packed airports is like a parasite that feeds on your energy. It's a profoundly unexpected and demoralizing sadness, like coming across an accident and seeing a car full of dead high schoolers, or taking the elevator down from your flat and just as the doors close, an EMT wheels in your sweet old neighbor in a body bag and you share the ride down.  It’s undeniable and in-your-face, and the only way I think I could avoid it is to keep my head down the entire time and actively look at the floor. But then I wouldn’t know who’s on the flight with me, and I wouldn’t be able to follow them to where the correct baggage terminal is (sometimes even I follow the herd). So amid routine travel, one is ambushed by melancholia bordering on despair in a public forum.  It almost triggered an episode, and I had to concentrate on my breathing.  I envy others that have the fortitude (or indifference) to casually walk through this busy and treacherous intersection of life.  I do know that I’m a private person, and as neither a parent or lover, maybe I’ve not matured into a pillar of of emotional support.  Ultimately, we are the carpenters of our life's experiences, and some of us just don't know how to use a hammer. But it’s OK, because soon I’ve found a home in my destination. It’s so god damn good to be in a vertical state again.

It’s tangled, messy, chaotic as I plumb the heights and depths of this rugged place. Anything bigger than a twig wears a beard of moss, and tree stumps wider than the Escape I totaled are everywhere. As hale and heartily as I feel now, some of these stumps will still be standing long after I’m gone. A sign in the park said they’re the remnants of early 20th century logging and are analogous to natural savings banks, holding deposits of nutrients that will nurture the next generation. I can see the beginning of what I think is a fir growing directly from one haunting stump, bypassing the ground entirely. I wonder - has the old tree really died if the sapling is here now, reaching for the sky? And it’s not alone as everything is thriving, growing, reaching, breathing. One’s heartly pyre pounds fiercely with ardor in the presence and awe of such vibrancy , enthralled and mobilized like when that good chap Winston called upon a nation to rise and meet a grievous challenge, though in this case true allegiance be vowed not to any group of people nor country (and I’d hope not for I found the notion and concept of country ruinous), but to supreme, magnificent nature.

The only drawback is that I’m here for work, and I only have the weekend and a few days after-work to explore the nearby sylvan heavens, a task that requires no less than five and ninety lifetimes by my approximation, one for each peak visible and each mile of coastline, and a few dozen spares for the mileage between. To my knowledge I have just the one lifetime though, so I have to make these precious days count. Without further adieu, I shift the Altima into D and leave the SeaTac rental car facility (which is neat in itself for I’ve never seen a consolidated and streamlined structure house all the rental brands). A few moments later I remember how bulbous and clownish these steering wheels are though. Ugh. But it is neat how the wheel vibrates when I get close to the line, which is about once a minute since I’m used to being in the center of the lane. But outside of that, it’s rubbish. I’m so insulated from the scents of rain and pine inside the car, and having double the wheels makes me feel like I’m riding with training wheels holding me up. On a bike I lean into the road and feel her curves like a good lover, pushing, leaning, responding to her feedback as I ride her. I push into her in the critical moment of bliss, at other times living simply in the pleasure of following her journey as she winds up and down, though sharing an intimate connection throughout it all. But in a car, the love is gone and the technical marriage of camber and tilt is divorced.

And getting into the Cascades proper is a different story. There’s no way the Nissan would make it far into the mountains. Luckily, I have a college friend that lives nearby and owns a Wrangler that he’s decked out in a way that makes it look like it would be on the cover of one of those off-road magazines. As flat pastures of farmland give way to towering snow-capped mountains, he tells me about another highway tribe I've been passing by for years, oblivious to their kinship. Jeep Wranglers wave to each other. Did you know this? They wave to each other like how motorcycles do. He tells me of an intricate hierarchy where the driver of the cheaper and older rig waves at the other, who returns the gesture. Sometimes they even form convoys on the road when they’re going the same way. I was skeptical of it all until sure enough, a passing Wrangler waved at him. Then another. And another. Wild, I had no idea it was a thing! But I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised since that’s how it was back when I was rolling a Vette and we all did that. I asked if he'd wave at a Geo Tracker since they look similar and he said maybe. I shut up when we got into the mountains.

In patches between the healthy clouds of the Pacific Northwest the sun kissed the land, and I wish I could too for I believe I’ve fallen in love over this weekend. It’s an unrequited love that’s left me shuddering and neglected, and if I were still in elementary school eating snot then I’d have a full lunch. But instead of requited love, it’s that obsessive, unhealthy kind of love that made me endure and linger and literally left me in the cold. But the truth is that I could commit the remaining stock of my lifetime to writing poetry about these hours, though all my words would be impotent compared to seeing the vales and vertical in the flesh.

Spaghetti with a side of Freedom

The chap working in the self-checkout at the grocery store tells me that the first microwaves hit the market in ‘73, and the first brand of TV dinners was Banquet. Fascinating! I informed him that Banquet is shit. I’m more of a Marie Calendar Mac ‘n Cheese guy myself and proudly show him the box I got. He agrees with me and says his go-to is the Spaghetti by the same, and he accentuates it with slices of cheddar. I like him.

I’ve often thought of the how impactful that invention has been on my life. It’s life-changing in the way Eli Whitney’s cotton gin or Henry Ford’s production line has been, yet it’s neglected. Like women’s suffrage, it advanced the freedoms and rights of a sect of the population underrepresented and under appreciated - single guys. On that glorious day that Banquet hit market, we were freed from the prison of the kitchen and let out into the world. With Banquet freedom, I put the bike in first gear and promptly realized the throttle is stuck. The humidity seized up the mechanical action of the handle. Couldn't yank it free so I went back upstairs and got the WD-40 again. Sprayed copious amounts around the handle parts and squeezed it and pried it back again and again, and finally got it to work again. Apparently not riding it in almost a week is not a good idea this close to the water. Although I haven't had issues before, and the humidity in Gulf Shores was wild too. Hmmm. Whatever the case, I’m on my way to see what looks like pea soup garnished with dead trees.

Between bouts of field time I’ve been working on my book, and found an interesting mixed crowd at the Panama City Beach Library. Retirees look for books and get schooled on computers while homeless mill about between them. I finish my work and as I leave the library I overhear that one librarian is forty years younger than the other, so they switch up tasks and the younger one does all the help with the computers while the other tends the main desk. I get on the bike and head past the beach to Saint Andrews State Park.

My timing sucked these last few months.  All along this fucking coast I've missed the prime-time events, from leaving a few weeks before Dias de los Muertes near the Mexican border, Mardi Gras in Orleans, and now catching the retirement crowd before the lively ones start to come. Now I'm in a retirement city where the useless wear t-shirts that say where they're from as a sort of uniform, a way of sorting themselves out and finding even more commonality in the vast sea of golf carts and fanny packs.  I wonder if they accomplished their dreams of youth, or are they anguished by their failure of it, lamenting in their most private moments the one that got away, the chance not taken, the unknown thrills sacrificed for known comfort.  That one there - the one sipping their limoncello and relaxing in his Michigan t-shirt - is he in retrospective hell now?  Does a retrospective hell over vodka crans await me?  Does a similiar fate await you?

One measuring stick I've heard for the human life are Saturn Returns, which occur when the planet Saturn returns to the position in its orbit that it was at the time of one’s birth.  Thus, the first return occurs when one is 29 or 30 years old, repeating in even increments afterwards.  The first return is often a time of transition when one realizes that youth is not forever and that they must look to the future, while the second return is often a time when one is considered to have arrived at maturity and their stock of achievements can be evaluated.

Saint Andrews, where a windstorm swept through and shaped the beach. On the day prior, the gulf was whipped white by the wind and I hadn’t seen it pushed around so furiously like that before. There's a stellar section of the beach that’s been eroded away into cliff, and layers and layers of accumulated sand and shells that go up over my head are packed into it’s face. I found some really cool shells here, the best I've seen along the gulf so far.

I believe I’ve had the classic Florida nature experience here. I started by snapping off a few shots of some ducks swimming in a swamp and then left the trail behind and found a gorgeous pool with green algae coating the entire surface. I glimpsed a heron trying to snap a twig off a branch and almost fall off when the tension finally gave way until it flapped its wings and stabilized itself. It took off and flew to a nearby tree, and when it flew back to grab another branch I realized it was building a nest. Neat. Just beyond it’s burgeoning nest lay a lake where an an alligator swam lazily in the distance. At sunset I found a stellar display of light reflecting off the water, and I shot it until the dark came out the frogs started to croak in the water. It was sublime at every interval.

Later in the week I returned to Saint Andrews and found crystal clear shallows full of grass that would sway as the water swelled in and out. I was enthralled by it and I must have spent a good half hour in there with my hood on to block the wind. When I looked up there were four people standing atop a nearby dune, all watching me. I sheepishly waved and we all laughed. Hah shit, my hobby is embarrassing at times. But the upside to living like this is that I don’t have to worry about it because I’ll never see them again.

This guy was fluffing his wings and washing himself.

I’m amazed at how alive this place is, especially at a time when entire valleys are still in the dead of winter back home. One of my favorite local resident here are red-winged blackbirds, and their song instantly reminded me of summers in Colorado where their song would roll out over the grassy plains from their shrubby perches. I ended up shooting a ton of birds and ran through the battery a good hour before sunset. Oops. All good though because I left after sunset feeling rejuvenated and disconnected from responsibility. I spent the night going through the 330 pics and getting it down took just a few.

Roll Tide

The South.

Land of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band, corn bread and sweet tea, Mark Twain and William Faulkner, the American Civil War. The Civil War was a foreign war as Alaska had been claimed as part of a European country, Russia, for decades by the time the first shells fell on Fort Sumter. It was still tucked away from the world stage, and first contact between the people of the interior valleys and outside traders was still happening.

The most I ever saw of Civil War history in my hometown was in the historical graveyard downtown, and I was surprised to see a civil war veteran had ended up in it when I was reading all the tombstone engravings. He had moved to Fairbanks in its earliest days after the gold rush of the 20th century, decades after the war ended. He fell in love with the place and clearly never left.

But one thing I haven’t associated the south with is rain. The coast from Mississippi to Florida to the Carolinas is one of wettest parts of the country. But it doesn’t make me hesitate because bad weather makes good pictures., and before long I’m headed to Fort Morgan, an old Confederate fort at the mouth of Mobile Bay. During the Union’s Anaconda plan, the fort covered their blockade runners with protective fire as they tried to escape the tightening grasp of the Union’s Anaconda plan.

Little droplets of rain fall like confection from an ocean of unbroken grey lacking texture. Almost all the cars are heading north and leaving the peninsula I’m headed down. It’s looking like I’ll have the entire park around the fort to myself… my luck is never this good! A few rain drops start to smack into the windshield of the F-150 and I relax in the dry cab. You’re not getting to me yet, storm. It’s my last day with the truck since I’m delivering it tomorrow, and I will admit that part of me is thinking I could just disappear with it…

Soon more drops start to fall and I turn on the window wipers. Hmmm… a storm seems to be blowing in? Five miles outside my destination a severe weather alert came on the radio warning of 60 mph gusts and torrential thunderstorms, and advising people to take shelter in an interior room in their home and stay away from windows. Ohhhh, that explains why everyone was leaving. I knew, a priori from geography and season, that it would be bad out, although I’ve underestimated the brewing drama. I made it to the park’s gate where a guy emerged from a hut and made no attempt to hide how annoyed he was that he had to come into the rain to meet me. He said the old civil war fort is an outdoor walking experience and I’ll get drenched. I paid the 8 bucks and headed in, content to wait it out in the cab. The wind and rain picked up and I realized the weather warning wasn’t bullshit. A huge branch was ripped from it’s tree and fell sideways to the ground. And then I saw something new - an upwards waterfall; a waterlift. The rain was so thick and the wind so strong that rain was pushed up the walls of the old fort and was carried horizontally away over the roof in a steady stream. The truck started to rock from side to side and I turned it into the wind. Holy shit, this is intense!

I had never seen a storm like this where the heavens broke and an ocean fell.

For hours I waited in the truck for a break in the rain that never came. Under darkening skies and minutes before the park closed I accepted my fate that I’d get wet and made a mad dash to the inside of the fort, eager to see it before I leave. Forts have always held a fascination with me, and I can vividly recall visiting Castillo Del Morro on Puerto Rico when I was twelve. I rush through the outer wall tunnel, through the inner section between walls, and into the open core. The rain, just as heavy on either side of the inner wall, fades away when I’m in the heart of it and standing where the fate of a nation was decided. Wow. To be inside a piece of tumultuous history where defenders stood in a box behind their guns and waited in it to be attacked, essentially living under a sword of Damocles until the enemy mustered their forces and made it all real. But Damocles had it easy, for he lived under his sword for only a short while before begging to be released from his position, while fort defenders sustain themselves for years.

At night I glanced out the window and saw everything looked hazy. Was there a fire? I opened the window and was met with a wave of watery air that I can feel on my face. What is this madness?? I check the weather online and the agency is reporting 97% humidity. 97%!! I’ve never experienced this before, so of course I grabbed the camera and headed into the night air that I could almost drink. The roofs are dripping and it sounds like it's raining out, but it's just condensate dripping off. Everything is covered in a glistening patina, and I had to constantly wipe moisture from the lens. Letting it go for jut a few seconds would allow droplets to form on the lens, which I’ll admit make for some neat effects with light flares. So at times I do that and see what happens, like shaking the kaleidoscope and seeing what new images appear.

Some of them are Blade Runner-esque, and Phillip K. Dick must surely have seen something like this to create that futuristic atmosphere.

So from neo-industrial conflict of the past to future impressionism the one constant is water. I think when it rains now there’s a chance that I’ll recall my time in the South, this place where the ocean and sky are sometimes one and the same.

Southern Gothic Horror

Carrier has arrived.

I dodged a bullet on this trip. The original plan was to ride the Yamaha from Texas to the Alabama coast, but a frigid cold front descended all the way from my home and found me here. The cold spirit misses me. The temperature plummeted to a fatal 20F where any patch of ice could be the end for a motorcyclist. But as it happens a friend had a truck in Texas that they needed to bring to the exact same little coastal Bama town I booked a BnB in for next month. I can’t believe the coincidental destination that serves us both. We loaded the bike into the back of the truck outside Houston and I thanked my lucky stars that I had a warm cozy cab to hang out in on the road. Even the colors of the two rides match each other perfectly.

Making my way down the road I realized that driving can be great fun! Pulling on the bulbous steering wheel and mashing peddles reminds me of when I was 7 and driving a toy go-kart on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I love listening to radio and there’s buttons on the bulbous steering wheel for cruise control. When I hit the accelerate button, I can feel the truck gallop forward suddenly as it settles into a faster pace. There’s an 18-wheeler that just cleared out of the lane ahead of me, so I mash buttons like it’s Mario Kart and this is Rainbow Road. Since I’ve had lasik there’s even massive sparkling lights everywhere too after the sun goes down.

Between point A and point B lies New Orleans, a place I’ve wanted to visit since watching Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour where he ate Cajun cuisine and explained how some bars are open 24/7 and even have washers and dryers, no doubt for the high-achieving alcoholic.

But first though, I stop at Lake Martin outside the working town of Lafayette. The little body of still water is classic Louisiana bayou with moss hanging from cypress trees growing out of the water. The lake is full of nesting herons, hungry alligators, and something else that makes a curious sound.

Ploop-ploop.

What was that?? My eyes darted over to the water’s surface where the sound emerged.

Ploop-ploop.

I realize the sound is coming from the quick succession of two things falling into the water. I looked up to find a gorgeous crimson cardinal munching on berries. Apparently it’s dropping the split pieces into water when it’s done with them. The flyers are hard to see up in the tree crowns where the berries grow, but now I know how to find them. I listen into the swamp for the curious sound and break out the camera when it happens again. After spending some time with the little flyers the sun is starting to kiss the horizon and the swamp is enthusiastic to make itself creepy with all its hanging moss and gnarled branches.

Next, New Orleans. Kicking off the experience with a trip to the Museum of Death seems like a natural start, where all things macabre await the visitor. And next, three hours in the Metairie Cemetery sounds appropriate. #justsinyeetthings

The dead aren’t buried here but laid to rest in stone coffins above ground. I think it’s because the ground absorbs so much water that when it storms the place would be full of corpse tea if they were buried underground. Metairie is a southern who’s-who of lore and history. The sprawling necropolis counts as residents a prominent brothel madame of the French colonial period, Louisiana governors and senators, and Confederate generals. In the corner is a memorial to the Louisiana Division of the Confederate Tennessee Army that contains the remains of the very man that initiated the Civil War, P.G.T. Beauregard who led the attack on Fort Sumter.

I’ve never been in a place where things have been repurposed and reborn to the degree that they are here. Flowing down the Mississippi River are the remains of the alpine Rockies, dusty new Mexican desert, wild Appalachians, sacred black hills of the Lakotas, plains of Nebraska, and other vast realms, now reconstituted into marshes of the bayou. Most of the places I’ve been to in the last decade will end up here.

A week in Louisiana is a fast week indeed, and before I can catch my breath it’s time to go. I’m sad to give my valediction to this place but I’ll be back. Right past the border there was something to lift me up though, and I stopped at the visitor center outside NASA’s Stennis facility. Stennis is the agency’s location geared for engine testing and I never had any interaction with it during my time working on Orion, but there is a littany of information that will reward the visitor. It’s a family friendly museum so don’t expect the relationship between Nazis and NASA to be fully explored (some juicy information awaits you if you Google it tough), but I did spend a good couple hours here.

When I left Mississippi I almost had my own horror story that I didn’t realize until I reached Alabama. I had left the $650 telephoto lens in the truck bed, tailgate down the entire way across Misssissippi. I cannot think of a more horrifying experience than to have lost it. But after getting groceries in and checking the bike’s straps I found it present and accounted for. Despite my ignorance we all arrived on the Bama coast.

Birthplace of the Texas Flag

Montgomery, Texas. The b&b is a delightful and quaint little shack in a tiny neighborhood nestled in the forest. The elderly host is one of the fastest texters I know and communicates in emojis, but this knack for technology hasn’t stopped her from leaving a delightful binder on the desk of printed MapQuest directions to local attractions. I go to museums to see old things, but sometimes I have to remind myself to just look around too. And all the furniture is miniature, sized to her sub-5ft stature and leaves me feeling like Gandolf in a hobbit house. Illustrating on the small desk, I realize that the Faber Castel .5mm pens last twice as long down here. They’d live short lives in the thin air of the Rockies, but here they breathe in the humid coastal air and live forever. And in that lovely late autumn air is a constant wood fire scent wafting forth from wood stoves and bonfires, endearing one to this place along with the glow of orange house lights under the dense tree canopy that bestows it with Halloween vibes.

And in the forest proper, I’ve never seen such a heterogeneous mix of pines and deciduous. A step this direction and two new species of trees appear, a step this way and three more. There must be a dozen within the first stand of old growth I encountered, which prompted me to do some Googling and read that there are over 73,000 species of tree species in the world.

But it’s not enough to have a couple dozen different kinds in the mix, because even individual stands are in different seasons. Some trees are dressed in summer greens, others mottled with autumn.

And the leaves fall differently here. Back home, a rustling wind shakes down the birch leaves in groups. But here the air is still under the tree canopy high overhead, and desiccated leaves fall alone, clacking against branches on the way down. “Clack, clack, clack” says a crinkled leaf as it falls. Silence. Another. “Clack, clack”

The peaceful forest lulls me, laying me down on a bed of bark. And looking skyward I see its become a shade darker, and I encounter the first chirps of a cricket. It’s an unexpected brilliance, like listening to Keep the Streets Empty for Me for the first time and the pan flutes start. As the sun sets I lay on the log it hearkens memories of laying in a redwood stump in NorCal, taking it all in. Both moments were the most blissfully peaceful ones of their respective years, watching the tree canopy hundreds of feet overhead in the north, listening to bugs chirp at different altitudes of branches of leaves all around in the south.

But at night the beasty creatures come out, and as I was hiking in the dark back to the Yamaha something huge descended from its roost towards me, pulling back when it was just beyond arm’s reach. I must have just exhaled when it surprised me, because the yell that came out of me emerged as a strange, guttural yip of which I had no idea I was capable of making such a sound. I don’t know if I was more scared from the huge swooping bat, or myself.

But it’s alright, in another moment the scary monster is gone and I’m happy to report I didn’t piss myself. Not this time!

Another day comes and the beetles are out with me. I haven’t seen this kind before, which are congruent with the patch of old foliage they scramble over. Fascinating, and well worth the time I spent with them! Another hiker happened upon me and asked if I was OK when they saw me on the ground not moving. I hadn’t even realized they were there since I had been focusing on this little guy. Cute on this scale, creepy any bigger. I think their inherent creepiness stems from the fact they’re so unrelateable.  With curling antennae and thumping wings and chitinous armor for skin they are alien to us and the subject of horror flicks because of it.  Maybe the disconcerting aspect is the emotional dissonance.  The absence of emotions.  They're purely instinctual creatures, unburdened by feelings.  There's a primordial gap between us.

Shooting forest landscapes is usually a real bitch in terms of composition. A photographer’s job is often to be a guide for the viewer as they explore the subject matter we’re presenting to them. Sometimes photographs are like a game where the viewer plays connect-the-dots between picture elements. It can be a rewarding experience to follow a journey in a photograph, just as it can be frustrating if one’s eyes go from one thing to another, then back again, in the pursuit of trying to figure out what I’m trying to show them. As a viewer it’s tiresome to be jerked around like that, and if one must ask the question “what am I supposed to be looking at?” then I’ve probably failed as a photographer in delivering a good image. So for this reason I try to not confuse the viewer and lead them astray. But there’s always so damn much going on with vines, branches, etc in a forest scene that it turns into chaos and it’s hard to know where to look.

At least, that’s what the rules of photography say. But really there are no solid rules. For as long as rules have been studied and researched and applied and a formula developed for what makes the perfect picture, there are always exceptions and contradictions. Sometimes a photograph that breaks all the rules is amazing, and sometimes it’s fun to just get lost in an image. So here, now, let’s get lost in the forest.

Island Time

I haven’t been dry since October.

For weeks I’ve been moist and oily on Padre Island, the longest barrier island of hundreds from Mexico to Maine. It’s only a mile wide in most parts, yet 113 miles long. And it’s always damn humid and I’m having to constantly clean rust from the bike chain which has become a real chore. Since everything is always damp I bought a second pair of swim shorts and I’ve been alternating wearing them each day. At night I’ll dip into the hot tub and then shower with the trunks on so they’re clean. I haven’t grown gills yet and I’m still passably human though, so I still do human things like talk to other humans and share human jokes, consume human nourishment, and photograph golden hour.

Another human has come to this pier and is performing fishing.

Across the channel on the mainland sits the peculiar city of Corpus Christi. With the proximity to Mexico the culture of Día de los Muertos is prevalent here, and streets were blocked off on First Friday so local artists could display their work. The WW2 aircraft carrier USS Lexington sits at pier as a museum ship, and I love sitting in the captain’s chair imagining what I could do with just one carrier. Tug boats wrangle massive oil tankers past it and into port, and it’s neat Googling the ships to see where they’ve come from in the world. Nearby is Texas’ biggest aquarium, full of exhibits on the gulf coast. My favorite exhibits are the ducks, who bob about merrily on artificial waves as they listen to speakers that emit the sound of them crashing on the beach.

But as I continue through the aquarium and other places, I’ve slowly realized there’s a casual negligence here. People leave their cars turned on everywhere. An aquarium exhibit sponsored by Exxon shows how good oil rigs are for the environment with the artificial reefs that grow on their pillars. A car commercial shows an environmentally conscious young man driving his big block V-8 on the beach, dragging a claw from the tow assembly and doing spins in the sand as he collects plastic containers.

Fucking amazing.

It’s full on culture shock upon realizing the breadth of their disregard for the environment. But it’s not their fault, not individually. They aren’t intentionally sinister, they’ve just been gaslit like the ducks in the aquarium, lulled into an artificial reality created by industrial propaganda. Oil built their economy, and now there’s a conspicuous disconnect in the average citizen between what they do and the environmental repercussions of it. This mindset is systemic and deeply embedded, and deviance from this behavior is met with suspicion. People looked at me like I had 8 legs when I grabbed a free bag from a kiosk on the beach and gathered garbage.

It must be frustrating to be an environmental conversationalist and spend each day fighting the complacency of the majority. A hard task, given the intelligence of the average American of the 21st century (and I’m a fucking idiot too, don’t get me wrong). It’s no wonder that some become militant like Earth Liberation Front. We’ve never held such dominion over the earth as we do now, and so many depend on us.

High tide isn't as big in the gulf since the mouth is narrow and further blockaded by the Caribbean islands. I wonder if there's a current that rushes back and forth along the islands at the mouth though, where the moon pulls to and from alongside it.

Most people don’t realize that we’re in the middle of an extinction event, this one of our own doing. The awful truth of it all is that we’re on the precipice now. For want of a big block V8, neatly manicured lawn to show our friends and neighbors, Amazon delivery of toothpaste when we don’t want to go to the store, and endless other trivialities, we unleash an apocalypse.

But it’s not too late. We can and we must be custodians of the wilds. If we can only evolve and hold the line we can make it, I’m sure. We can usher in a new renaissance with technology, and free from pecuniary upkeep we can become painters and poets and do what we want, writing and drawing and creating and experiencing and photographing and fucking. I hope we don’t completely screw it up.

The Road

What a fucking day.

The weather forecast for tomorrow put the fear into me with talk about the last thing a biker wants to hear when traveling cross country: severe thunderstorms. Yeah, not doing that. I’m leaving Colorado tonight.

I wrapped up the final financial review for work just as the sun was getting low in the sky. I hastily packed up the dry bag and cargo pods on the Yamaha, eager to hit the road and catch the last of the light. Just as I was about to put the kickstand up the security guard neighbor came and said hello for the first time all summer. He chose this moment, that magnificent bastard. Despite warily watching each other all summer (which is probably due to his security guard instincts and my anti-social instincts, going so far as to time my walks so I don’t have to talk to others), he turns out to be a friendly guy, and easy to talk to. He has an iron steed too and told me all about his favorite rides around the area. Damn, missed a chance to make a friend there. When was the last time I made a friend?

We eventually offered our valedictions and I left Columbine a little after 5pm, which guarantees a brisk-as-fuck night ride through the vast North Texas plains. It felt damn good to get the kickstand up and throttle out of the lot though. After contending with the chaos of packing up my life ahead of schedule, it feels good to see all the small parts come together and emerge with a simpler life, like pulling the framing tape from a finished painting and seeing the chaos give way to those clean lines. Almost everything I own fits on the motorcycle now, save for a few Magic cards I left with a friend. Yeah, I’m a nerd. But I'm also like a Bedouin biker, and all that's missing is a falcon to ride on my shoulder. So I’m still cool, right?

With Columbine in the handlebar mirrors I made my way down to Colorado Springs under sunset pink-purple skies and continued south east.  Stopped for gas in Pueblo, then made La Junta at 8:20pm and got gas again. Range anxiety is a thing on bikes, and mine has a range of just under 200 miles. It sounds sufficient but is scary as all hell when you’re in the frigid boonies at midnight and not sure when you’ll see another open gas station. Stopped at Taco Bell to warm up with some spicy potato soft tacos, which didn’t prepare me at all for the grueling ride through the empty plains that had been waiting to suck. The most intense chills were waiting for me in low-lying areas, and fearful of breathing in the chilling air and getting cold from both sides I decided to try to hold on to my precious heat. As I saw a descent ahead I’d take a deep breath and hold it as I went down, like how manatees do. Mile after wretched mile I used the manatee method on the empty highway, passing barely-alive towns where only a lone bar or restaurant stood amid dark buildings.

Range anxiety started to creep into me and I felt awful anxiety about not finding a gas station.  It was a constant tension, like driving a car with one headlight through a midnight storm in a strange country, hanging all my hopes on that one little light that it would hold out and bring me home. I finally found a gas station in Springfield, CO, a little podunk town on an intersection of crossroads. As I fueled up the bike I jumped up and down to warm myself before riding on to Oklahoma and beyond. It wasn’t long before I crossed the thin Oklahoma panhandle, a geographic anomaly born of slavery, and met the Texas sign that stood ominously in the dark over the highway with the lone star and tricolors hardly discernible through the bug-riddled visor. Finally rolled into the Amarillo hotel and had the kickstand down at 2:27am. Fuck, what a day.

The next morning I cleaned and waxed the chain in the hotel parking lot, reattached the cargo pods, and packed the dry bag onto the back. There is no happy medium on this trip - now it’s damn hot and muggy out, and by the time I finished loading the bike I had undone all the work of the morning’s shower. I set out on the highway a dirty boy again, heading south to Abilene in the beating hot sun. I hope I'm not killing the bike by riding it so long in such a short time and with so much weight on it... I gotta be cookin’ the block with all this nonsense.

Arrived at the Abilene AirBnB and put the kickstand down at 6:28pm after 351 miles. I’m convinced the bones in my pelvis have shifted after so many hours on the saddle and I feel like I just gave birth. Picked up some groceries and 60-proof medicine to set me straight and licked my wounds in the BnB.

The vicious slut of a microwave is too small for the popcorn bag to rotate and only a section of the bag is getting heat, so maybe a quarter of the kernels are actually popping. Fucking hell. But this is the life I’ve chosen for myself, one that dispatches creature comforts but guarantees a life different. T.H Huxley said that a man's worst difficulties begin when he is free to do as he likes, and I have no one to blame for my predicaments but myself. I’ll have to pay the popcorn price for this life.

Edit - after doing some online research I came across a YT vid of a guy folding the ends of the bag inwards so the bag can rotate. This substantially increases the popcorn yield and I’m pleased with my life again.

Left Abilene and continued south on back country roads that I’ve decided to take on this stretch. I haven't seen terrain like the sandy loess and grass fields here that have little swamps mixed in. It must be a holdover from the inland ocean that used to be here in prehistoric times. Cool. Stopped at Gorman Falls and hiked to the waterfalls in the muggy air. This place is suitably creepy for the Halloween holiday.

Left the falls and made it to Padre Island on the Gulf Coast. I’ll celebrate in the next day though… I need some 100-proof medicine now.

Gold Rush

Rain drops smacked into the Jeep's windshield as Savage Garden blasted from the speakers and we made our way to the valley of old mining equipment. Torrents of pouring rain fell onto the abandoned buildings and cascaded down rusted valleys of corrugated metal into the remnants of gutters. After a short hike the rain had poured itself out and clouds started to give way to blue sky. I made my companion laugh when I put the camera timer on 10 seconds and then ran up to some shrubs in the foreground and laid on them to get them out of the picture. I almost always work alone in the field, so I forget what loon I look like when I’m laying in mud or standing in water or huddled over the camera to shelter it from wind.

After spending a bit of time in the valley we made it into the town of Cripple Creek, a previously rustic, rugged, authentic little town nestled behind Pikes Peak that has since lost its charm to an enormous casino going up smack dab in the middle of it all, obscuring the views of… well, everything.. For a few coins they sold their authenticity and joined the hive. The people have definitely changed since the casinos have come to town too. On the way through a casino to the Jeep we walked behind two massively overweight ladies that slowly waddled widely from side to side, in the way the Mondoshawans from Fifth Element move.

Mountain Bluebird seeing what’s up.

We made our way to a local bar and grabbed some medicinally hot bar food after being in the cold rain. The bartender directed us to an old hotel not far away when we asked about things to see. I imagine there isn’t a person left on this planet that is older than the Cripple Creek Hospitality House & Travel Park hotel. These old boards and brick have outlasted billions. The proprietor came and talked with us and shared his story of being married for 20 years and now he has 3 daughters. But now he's married to another man and excessively expressive and flamboyantly gay. He’d casually utter "grrrr" through conversations, which I think was a verbal tic because he'd say it in the middle of anything. His madness kept me guessing and I loved it. After spending some drinks in the bar we explored the empty upper floors which felt like the setting for a ghost story. The haunting floors were quiet, empty, dead, lovely. I realize there are refuges of authenticity still tucked away, off the beaten path, still true to their heritage. These old things that haven’t fallen to time yet stand straight and stiff with weathered trees, groaning as they sway like old men. But leaves and men alike fallen to the final destination of earth.

And empty harbors of wood, of branches and old buildings, most return for another season but some are gone.

And in a moment before the gold rush is over, you can see that heaven exists on earth, before it all comes to pass.

The City Different

I’ve always been a fan of this place. Years ago when I was on Instagram my handle was “a_life_different”, an alteration of the city’s sobriquet, “The City Different”. La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís, commonly known as Santa Fe, was founded in the time of the Spanish conquistadors and is the 3rd-oldest city in the US. This province of New Spain is another one of those few gems that among the sprawling American empire of apartment buildings and McDonald’s and Chevron stations, feels stuck in time. On empty streets where most bars close at 11pm, one can see the starry sky over quaint pueblo architecture of downtown where lights are sparse. It all looks so quiet, but she rewards you if you look closely.

Petroglyphs etched into the wall around the time of first contact. Perhaps it was recorded after first contact, and the death face in the top-right is a depiction of the metal-clad conquistadors, casting a pall over their life of lizards and star-watching.

White-lined Sphinx moth at feeding time among the flowers, just outside the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi . These curious moths match the hummingbird in size and flight pattern, and hover over flowers and slide their tongue down into their pistols to lap up nectar. One really, really strange thought kept occurring to me as I jumped around trying to photograph them - they look juicy. It’s been a very long time since I’ve felt the urge to eat a bug, but these are absolutely giant and I’m sure they’re full of sweet nectar. I wouldn’t expect Ben & Jerry’s exactly, but they’ve gotta be gushing with sugar. I’m sure birds think the same thing, which is why these moths only emerge from their roosts around dusk and hence the high ISO setting to compensate for the low light, which creates extra grain in the image. I can compensate with post processing software, but dialing it up too far creates a waxy effect.

I don’t know what the high-water mark of this trip has been because there are so many contenders. The Burning of Zozobra comes to mind, which is the marquee event where an enormous marionette effigy who represents gloom is burned. Or, perhaps it was the cabaret where flamenco performers danced passionately to the staccato of Spanish guitar, stomping the wooden floor when the songs climaxed and the other clapped in rhythm with the singer. Or perhaps it was walking the halls of the Institute of American Indian Arts and peeking into the classrooms, where many of the best and brightest students from all nations - Athabaskan, Tlingit, Crow and others, were sitting in front of easels or listening to lectures or sculpting. For years I’ve wanted to study here… do you think they’d say anything if I just took a seat next to them? But what is most striking to me is how each and every one without fail says hello as we pass by. And they weren’t friendly just at IAIA, but the whole town was like that and no place more so than the grungy Matador, where one swinger found me in the red room and had me feel her tits and gave me her tongue. Wearing a suit in that basement I got to be somebody. It didn’t bother me that her husband was sitting across the room from us and she waved at him after we made out, but what was bad etiquette was letting my date sit alone, so we made our way to the dance floor. The 6ft blonde gringo girl stood out like a llama in a dachshund rodeo, but no one paid us any attention. It was inconspicuous bliss amid the Latino dance music, and that is the nature of this place. For a moment your life is aligned and you walk alongside pure enchantment, then it returns to what is normal as it builds up to the next climax, like 60,000 people watching Zozobra burn before dispersing into the vast dark and the adobe city becomes quiet again, building up to the next climax.

Half-Life

It’s the last day of July already. Where has the season gone? Summer lasts a short breath, pleasurable like a woman's moan, winter stretching like a groan. I think the state of things has warped my perception of time… lacking pain and suffering, its flown by in this paradisaical, halcyon existence. The FT remote gig gives me flexibility to do what I want to do, and now I spend my days writing and drawing and riding and shooting. BUT, at this rate I’ll be in my 70’s come tomorrow and dead by Friday. Of course it would be a Friday.

Closed down the Boulder library and had 3 hours till sunset, so I hung out by the creek and warmed my frigid body in the sun like how lizards do.  Sitting in the A/C for so long makes it feel like winter, and damn if this body just doesn’t hold heat. Once I felt human again, I rode over to to Rocky Flats Wildlife Reserve to shoot the abandoned ranch for sunset. I remember bringing a friend here once and we had turned around just outside the parking lot when we were stopped by a MASSIVE sign with the international radiation warning plastered across it. Before becoming a reserve, the area was used by the Atomic Energy Commission to refine plutonium for Trident warheads. The program was cancelled in the 80’s under the Bush administration though, and the area became part of a federal Superfund effort to decontaminate it. But that was two years ago that we were here and now the gate was open and the sign was gone, so good enough for me. I'm sure it's fine for visitors.  Just drink a lot of water if you go. Like a lot of water.

After a good hour of hurriedly walking the plains and worrying I wouldn’t find the ranch before dark, I found it just as the sun was getting ready to set. The ranch was not the placid place I saw online when Googling local places to shoot. If the place had a soundtrack, it would be a lone cello with the bow scraping the G string. It was a sullen place as I’ve ever seen, alone in a sea of grass. Although maybe it’s not all empty… I was in Dearfield, a ghost town left of the great depression east of here when I came across a snake inside an abandoned house like the one here. So I felt tension for what was around, or what I imaged was around. And as the vesper sky emerged and the coming dark bolstered my imagination, I thought of what lingered around me.

It was profoundly disconcerting at evening, waiting for the haunts to come, waiting for what's in store, waiting for withered fingers to reach out and grab you from the dark. Wind begins to rustle through the grass and ominous clouds hunch overhead, watching me. And the sun nears the horizon, and that dreadful moment comes where it goes under and you're left alone in the dark with the fresh monster. And then the sun sets and the inherent creepiness grows exponentially with each following moment. Old wooden boards creek and moan as the buildings come alive.  "Sscreeeeeech"  the barn exclaims suddenly, and I look back to see where the wind lifted a loose panel on the roof and slammed it down against the rafters.  Another gust blows through and the barn reaches into the air with its loose panel.  The gust swirls past me and in dreadful anticipation i watch helplessly as the winds lets go of the panel and it begins to swing back to its body.  Crack!  The lifeless sound puts the fear into me.

It’s a Good Life

Tonight was the first time in the field with the Yamaha, and the first outing of summer. I realize now that being in 90F in the field in black pants is not optimal. I'm going to have to get re-acclimated to this. I also realize that my boxers are on backwards, and they apparently sew them tighter in the back than in the front. I knew something was off on the ride out here… part of me is tempted to take them off and put them on right, but there’s a popular trail not far from here and there’s nothing to duck behind. It’s alright though - golden hour has come to Northern Colorado, and I’ll let the pants take a back (front?) seat to exigent circumstance.

I’m in the Lower 48 again, called back to the office by the Orion program director, who is a holdover from the STS days back when NASA was launching shuttles. He’s old school and he’s wrangling us back in, despite two years of working remotely and meeting every deadline along the way. I asked to remain remote and took my case all the way up to program management and the vice president level but got shot down, so I begrudgingly came back. I wasn’t expecting to have such a tough time with it, but after hundreds of days across thousands of miles I’ve emerged a changed man. Now the thought of lording over a cube, being hell’s caretaker, performing work theater, having to hear other people shit in the bathroom, is all just too much. It’s amazing to me that we take these amazing gifts - bits of stardust we manipulate with our genius and dreaming but turn it into something as mundane as the office.

So fuck that.

I submitted my notice the day after I got back stateside before even stepping into the office. No job lined up, but it was a three-and-a-half week notice to give them time to find a back-fill (and give myself some time to figure out what the hell I'm gonna do). I won’t have a front seat to watching mankind advance into that final frontier, which saddens me greatly. But however brash this is, I see myself as a modern crusader, fighting against the encroachment of the mundane world. I promise I’ll not capitulate to a daily commute and let myself grow old in cars. If only I had come to my senses sooner then I could have experiences the Alaskan summer, of which little in the world compares. But I'm here now and have an apartment through October, so I stopped by the local dealership and grabbed something I liked in their inventory: a Yamaha FJ-09. Now I have two motorcycles and no cars. I wonder if the bikes willl ever be within a couple thousand miles of each other? My territory is vast. Its a good life.