Tired Iron

Hearken the buzzings of vintage engines commanded by vintage men, both from a time when things were simpler. This weekend is the Tired Iron, an Alaska (and therefore, world) famous snowmachine contest (don’t ever call them snow mobiles here unless you want to broadcast you’re an outsider), and the second of two famous snowmachine races in the immediate area (the other being the Iron Dog, a two-thousand mile grueling race across Alaska, and I promise this is the last time I’ll use parentheses in this post). The announcer’s trailer had been left near the center of the activities and old, old speakers played what I think was 80’s butt rock heavily accompanied by static and interference. I can’t tell if it was intentionally shitty, but it added to the genuinely vintage atmosphere. Any better system would have been worse here.

Watching from the sidelines, it did feel like a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas except that the Mojave had been replaced with the industrial south side of Fairbanks. The machines aged as well as I can hope for myself, and I was in awe at how fast they buzzed by, most of them on their own power.

I had never been to these races before, but I immediately loved these crusaders on iron horses, these beasts of men, refuges riding a tide outwards from the mainstream with no other place in the world where they could have this. In the electrified future perhaps spectators will gather to watch the last gas-powered machines of today, awed by the reverberations over snow from mechanical hummings of cylinders in engine banks. Perhaps some will feel uneasy in their presence, fearful that at any moment one could burst into flames and explode, unleashing another Tunguska event. A flash of light would blind all, and in the moment after their eyes adjust they’d see beautiful crimson chaos as a ring of fire travels outwards in all directions, consuming the city and valley beyond.

Solstice in the Long Dark

Oh, how my little black heart beats passionately for this day! The worst of my times in the foster care system were during the summer equinox, and until I get the frontal lobe lobotomy I’ve always wanted I’ll be stuck with memories of roaming the empty city streets in the midnight sun, homeless. So it makes sense that the opposite of that is my favorite holiday. And what an interesting holiday it is! It’s the only one I know of that is dependent on the sun, and only really appreciated at extreme latitudes.

I left the cabin just after noon and made the short walk down the road to the musher’s hall, where a young girl beamed at me outside as she said “happy solstice!” Hell yeah, sister. That just elevated me into elation as I scoped out the trails and sun-filled field along the musher’s hall.

Frozen humidity a little after noon.

Then a squadron of F-35s boomed overhead, reminding me of the present state of things. Well… that was predictable. With all the sabre-rattling with Russia, the military bases around here have become a series of hornet’s nests. I’ve never seen them so busy before, but if shit really hits the fan then I suppose Fairbanks immediately becomes a front-line city. Not that I’m intentionally being dramatic, but I get why there’s so much activity. Soon the squadron and the sun have traveled beyond the horizon though, and I’m back enjoying my darkness fetish in silence. A few dog teams came and zipped by under the vesper sky. Hmmm… given all my car troubles, it might be easier to just get a dog team and mush around town.

Sunset at 2:40pm.

Freezing Eclipse

Brrrrrrr… cold Alaskan winter is cold. It plummeted to -20F, and I realize now that I never checked the engine coolant in the Ford that I brought up from the Lower 48. Popping open the hood revealed the coolant had froze inside the reservoir, and that is NOT a good sign. If its frozen in the reservoir, then its very possible it froze inside the engine and the expanding ice cracked the block. I did a quick prayer to any gods that would listen and started it. Luckily, it seems to be running ok and it isn’t showing any signs of a crack. I’m going to set my alarm for a few hours from now so I can start it and warm up the engine. Then we’ll see how it holds up tomorrow when I get the system flushed…

The rest of the day was spent on off-planet matters. Astra scrubbed their LV0007 launch down at the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak that I was looking forward to, but the show continues tonight with the lunar eclipse. Another brisk night came as I waited patiently for the lunar eclipse to reach full-blossom after midnight. When it was near, I dashed outside into the damn cold and hastily set up the tripod and camera. Then I took an initial picture to get an idea of the beautiful pictures I’d be walking away with:

Ahh… fuck.

I’m not expecting to snap ultra-high resolution pictures that show hills on lunar plains; I’m a working-class hobbyist that has working-class lenses. But damn, I can do better than that. Luckily I had time to get my settings dialed in since this eclipse is a long one - the last time one lasted this long was 440 years ago. After dialing in my settings I grabbed the camera and ran back inside and huddled behind the glass window for a few more minutes, waiting for the eclipse to come full-hither. There are ice crystals in the air from the humidity freezing, and the Canon is definitely going in a sandwich bag as it re-acclimatizes to room temperature (the last thing any photographer wants is condensation forming inside their camera as it thaws).

As I watched out the window at the frozen forest on the other side I got to spend some time alone with my thoughts. That’s almost always guaranteed to suck, but my mind was still off-planet. How does the temperature on the moon’s surface change during an earth eclipse, when our planet snakes the sun’s light? Without an atmosphere to hold temperatures, and with earth eclipses lasting longer on the moon than on earth due to spatial relativity (the earth is bigger and blocks more light), there is more time for the lunar surface to get cold. I Googled this while the celestial bodies continued to align outside and found that when the eclipse had started, the side of the moon that had been baking in sunlight could have reached 260F, but at the time of peak eclipse then it could be the same or even lower temperature than what I’m experiencing at the cabin here in Alaska, next to my potentially cracked engine block. Fuck, I hope that’s not cracked.

Oh, it’s time.

Ten years ago this would have been a decent picture, and given the rate at which photography technology is advancing, I’m sure we’ll soon have cameras that can capture details like the tracks of the moon rover. And I’m sure I could visit the other cabins and houses on my icy road and there would be a couple that would have pictures like this too. But I still love it, despite its blurriness and grain. Sometimes the best photos aren’t the crispest. Sometimes they’re just memory tokens that remind you that you were in the presence of something great, like I was on this night, standing on one freezing celestial body, looking at another.

Send the Ice Age

The good thing about insurance totaling your car is that it removes all inhibition from fully realizing the vehicle’s utility. You don't have to worry about wrecking it - it's already done! Gone are the days of coddling and pampering it. Empowered by this freedom from responsibility, the Escape and I went south to explore the mountains. After a couple hours’ drive I was in Healy, where I followed a road that led to the start of a gnarly trail system. Parking the compact vehicle just before the end of the paved road I got out and stood there, weighing my options. The sun was getting low in the sky and I didn’t have much time to figure out another place to shoot. But the sight of this trail made me take a deep breath and shift my weight uncomfortable from one leg to the other. Beyond the even-keeled slab of pavement I peered into the Ice Age - of permafrost-heaved trails and a graveyard of countless off-road vehicles. Excursions around Denali in anything less than Detroit’s most robust would fill the hearts of casual travelers with trepidation. But the sun was getting low, and I wasn’t about to waste the trip and have nothing to show for it. Would I cross over on to the trail?

Moments later the tires were crossing the liminal and onto the vanguard of glaciated rock. You’re damn right I’m gonna send it. The trail was straightforward at first, and I calmed into the back of my seat again. Dips and potholes, puddles and lakes passed harmlessly under the grocery-getting tires and life was good. But then… the trail narrowed. Feltleaf willow gently pawed at the Escape’s passing pillars and windows. Their shoots curved outwards against the windows as the tinted glass pushed into them. With the diminishing distance between the sun and the horizon a tide of voracity washed over me and propelled us up, up, upwards along the trail. And then the trail narrowed again. Hardened shrubs scraped and clawed and raked at the little car as it continued undeterred. The car was already ruined, and I figured that a couple more scrapes would only add additional character. And so we continued, and life was good. But then… mountains. While the trail widened, the incline had made the trail wretched with little streams that zigzagged across the trail. They trickled along and across the trail at different intervals, all along grades that changed from one dip to another. A clanking sound started. The muffler bracket a mechanic had fastened in Nevada months ago came loose, and now every time I passed over a pothole the muffler would dip low and then come shooting upwards. It was like the Ejection Seat ride at the fair, except as it bounded upwards towards the pinnacle of its undulating movements it would be stopped short by the undercarriage. And so it was that I would reach a pothole and a moment later there would be a ”thwack!” sound erupting from below. And at this point I thought of what I always think of during photography trips - that there must be better hobbies out there. And then I thought that perhaps one day they’d find my remains somewhere out here, accompanied by a rudimentary survival journal scrawled with charcoal onto birch bark that gives an accounting of my final days.

But we made it! After much uncomfortable shifting and nervous movements in my seat, the trail reached a clearing at a hill top where two other trucks had parked. This is the land of towering trucks and their robust cylinder banks that turn gnarly wheels. They both looked empty as I passed over a final crater of a pot hole. Thwack! A head popped up from the passenger seat of one of the trucks, and another figure stood up from behind the bed, both staring at us. Then the rear window of the extended cab rolled down, revealing another guy that watched slack-jawed as we rolled by. No doubt they were all impressed by the 3rd generation EcoBoost compact utility vehicle, and my superior driving skills for having navigated us there.

The Ford Escape EcoBoost probably wasn't engineered for this kind of thing.

We reached the hill top where lateral light felt onto the sides of autumn foliage as the sun neared the horizon. Creeping shadows stretched through chilled air. Though it was the hilltop, the surrounding trees and succeeding hills leading up to the bordering mountains obscured the view. We had reached the end of the Escape’s journey, but not the end of mine.

With the sun threatening to take my light away before finding some good pictures, I hastily left the Escape behind. The muffler was still swaying a bit when I slammed the door shut and started up a trail that led in the direction of a nearby hill top. Dense willows stood along the trail blocking out the surrounding landscape as I scurried upwards. After a few minutes of frenzied movement I made it to the top. Of a false summit. The hill top I had seen from where I parked was just one of a series of peaks leading up to the mountains. Snow blanketed the trail leading farther up it. In my haste to leave the car I had kept my sandals on, leaving the shoes in the back since I didn’t think I would need them. Looking farther up the trail of succeeding hilltops and beyond I saw gorgeous snow-crested mountain sides capturing the light while the bellies of clouds caught fire overhead. They were beautiful. If I didn’t photograph them, then it would be like it had never even happened. Fuck it, I’ve come this far and I wasn’t going to turn around just short of the amazing pictures that waited for me. So I continued. At first the snow was just a dusting , but then it got deeper. And deeper. And soon I was wading through ankle-deep and deeper snow in sandals.

So often the journey (and the vast majority of times) deviates from what was originally planned. In fact sometimes the plan only lasts as far as the end of the driveway. Everything can change along the way, and today followed that whimsical method. I didn’t think I would have freezing ice and snow sticking to me up to my shins as I entered into a wintry realm of true summits. Luckily it was only a quarter mile in the snow to the top of the hill at the mountain's base. Of course right before I made it to the top, clouds moved in on the horizon and the sun was blocked out from behind them. I snapped a few pictures and brushed my feet off in the howling wind at the summit. I was starting to lose feeling in them and knew the hike down would be harder than the one up because of it, so I didn’t linger at the top for too long. It was a struggle trying to wade back through snow down the slope with feet that didn't feel like part of my body. All sensation under my knees left me and it felt like I was walking on stilts. I made it back to the car though, and after a few minutes next to the heater vents I started to feel a painful sensation in my toes, which is great news because it means I'm keeping them. But worse then losing toes to frostbite would be the embarrassment of an Alaskan getting frost bite in mid-September.

So I emerged victorious, intact, and with more than what I had gone into the fray with. I had beaten common sense. And I’m happy with what I got. The light wasn’t dramatic, but I don’t want my photographs to be a homogenous catalog of sunsets. I want the moody, the graven, the tenuous. Surely scenes like this one would warrant a lost toe as the price of admission? Or maybe even a few?

And that is today’s story of just another day, from the world’s worst photographer, or at least adventurer.

Bones of the Machina

Thick morning mist hung suspended, greying the air between black spruce and white birch as I hopped on the motorcycle and joined the empty dirt roadways that led to a gas station a few miles away. When I reached the pavement I found another motorist: a fellow motorcyclist that sat a top an old cruiser that had been converted into a trike. He waved at me as he passed by in the same direction I was headed. I pulled in behind him and together we traveled down Farmer’s Loop through the morning mist. It was an ethereal experience, flowing through misted autumn air with another rider on deserted roads. He stopped at the gas station too, and when I emerged outside again after getting coffee I found a bunch more cruisers had arrived in the lot. Their club was going for a ride, and on my way out of the lot they all waved at me. I love motorcycle culture here - in the short riding season we all wave to each other, regardless of the type of bike one rides. In the Lower 48 there are tribes of crotch rockets and cruisers, and they don’t usually mingle.

Winter is coming and it’ll bring the riding season to an end soon though. Damn, Alaska winters are a real bitch too. The foliage is already aging as we do - becoming withered and scarred and stiff.

But I love Alaska. I spent today writing and researching the history here, and then made it out to Chatanika for sunset where I visited the skeleton of an old gold dredge overlooking an excavated lake. A few years back a visitor had pulled on one of the chains on the dredge, which caused a spark to jump off it and start a fire and incinerated its skin. Now its steel bones stand exposed in the subarctic air.

It’s amazing that such a machine would be here, even if only from the 1950’s. In an earlier time the Athabaskan would have been scared of the grand machines of their time - steamboats that breathed smoke and fire and were altogether different from anything that had come before them. They were the harbingers of industry, spiritual ancestors of machines like this one.

The Sable Peninsula

In the long periods between seeing natural wonders, the life-experience sometimes runs the risk of becoming boorish. Routine sets in. Deadlines are met. Chores performed. Too much time in the mundane world can be ruinous. This morning was the end of one such period, and I had just sent out a couple work emails and logged off for a 3-day weekend. I microwaved a bowl of oatmeal in the foyer and sat down in the communal area of the bargain inn. These kinds of places are the meeting grounds of life’s interesting characters. A big guy sat alone at the next table over, talking loudly on his phone as he called different people to tell them about his trip to Alaska. Normally I’d be annoyed, but his energy was contagious and I listened raptly. He works in a store in the Lower 48 and this was the trip of a lifetime for him. In his excited chatter his words would reach a staccato, and I’d look up from my oatmeal at him and see a man that looked like a little boy again, middle-aged yet eyes full of wonder. His appearance was ideal in my life. His excited chatter and contagious energy had me amped up as I finished the oatmeal and went to excitedly gather my things up and go meet this world he spoke of.

I left the inn and went south down to the peninsula. I didn’t have a destination in mind, but when I saw the sign for Exit Glacier I took it - I had been reading about it the prior night and my excitement was refreshed at the thought of seeing it outside of a magazine spread. When reaching the valley it slowly dawns on one that this place is different. It’s not a sudden epiphany of a “eureka!” moment, but a creeping realization. After parking and leaving the lot I stepped onto a trail of sable rock, making my way along it as it rained and and off. There wasn’t a single point of definition in the overcast sky. The light was what would normally be considered a photographer’s nightmare that at the very best, makes for a black-and-white-pictures kind of day. But here, the jet black ground can’t be muted by indifferent clouds. It looked like a recent cataclysm had scorched the land, yet everything was as vibrant as I had ever seen anything be. And then I saw the glacial mass creeping down from wintry summits into the valley of the living. This place is indeed worthy of the elite national park status.

And it feels like my home of the Tanana Valley, which lies hundreds of miles north in rolling hills. The two biomes look vastly different, save for one familiar element here: glaciers like these on the coast of British Columbia feed the Tanana River Valley. The path the meltwater takes from those glaciers is astonishing - they start from just a few miles from the ocean (which is the end-objective of any descending meltwater), but instead of heading that way, they travel thousands of miles north and then west though a continent. Along the journey countless tributaries of rivers/streams/creeks/sloughs feed it, and all along the way the pale ghostly hue still stains it - the result of just a few of these glaciers carrying glacial silt with them.

Sun-Speared Fields

I’m missing home fiercely today. Solstice will be here soon and no place on earth can compete with an Alaskan summer. Why am I in Washington State now?? Arghhhh. Alright, I need to fix this, stat.

I booked a BnB in Alaska for later this month.

I’m not sure how I’ll get up there since Canada border services might not let me pass with Covid protocols in effect. Maybe I’ll fly? Hmmm, I’d have to leave some of my stuff down here but I’m sure I could find a storage unit to stuff it in temporarily. We drove into Spokane to find a storage unit, but then I changed my mind on the way. I’m going to just fly up there and let my friend here use the Ford until she’s ready to bring it up, whenever that is. Maybe I’ll get a motorcycle or something to get me around until she arrives. I’m sure it’ll be fine - she’s pretty solid, and the only surprise I’ve had from her was when she took her dreads off when she came to bed. I didn’t realize they’re like a hat. Had an amazing pizza at the Flying Goat and used their WiFi to buy a ticket to Fairbanks for Monday.

For golden hour I found myself driving south of the city. I had been on the fence about heading to the Palouse again. The last trip out I had come upon a guy, Ken, that was stopped in the middle of the road. His black Volkswagen convertible had stalled when he was trying to pull it around and we couldn't push-start it, so I gave him a ride down the road and he explained how the German automobile had sat idle for 7 years after the chick that owned it didn't fix it and was asking too much for it. I dropped him off and he said to come by anytime for a beer. That had been a sunny day, but now the forecast predicted a system of heavy bullshit moving into the area and meanwhile I had been damn comfy in the armchair. Sometimes the hardest part about landscape photography is just finding the initiative to get out there. I’m constantly at war against that person within me that wants to live comfortably. After a healthy dose of internal debate I was able to marshal the gumption to hit the road. We made it back to Steptoe Butte , the anomaly of a mountain in the middle of the rolling hills of the Palouse.

The foretold clouds choked the sky as we made our way up the strange mountain that juts dramatically out of rolling hills. A sullen and morose landscape extended outwards under the clouds, the landscape a casket holding my now-dead aspirations of photography greatness. What a damn tease for sunlight to travel vast distances over solar fields, blocked by a thin layer of clouds in the final stride. There are about a dozen other photographers up here, and I’m sure they’re all thinking the same thing.

“Fuck.”

I let out a long sigh past dry lips. After six months on the coast my lips are now chapped at the elevation of 2,000 feet. But then a ray of light appears! The clouds hadn’t fully saturated the sky, and as they traveled with the wind small gaps would sometimes form behind the trailing end of one cloud and in front of another. Spears of sunlight would pierce between the shifting clouds, fleecing verdant agrarian fields of their shaded moods and lighting up rolling green hills and tawny fields of wheat. As the sunlight shot through clouds as it set we’d follow the twisting road to the top, pausing alongside other photographers at the guardrails as we chased the light. It was like an old theater - the sun the spotlight, the photographers the audience, the Palouse the actors on stage. Watching these incremental changes in clouds and light was like breathing for me.

Not one of us landscape guys will ever be as famous as Charles O'rear, the fella that shot the Windows XP background of rolling green hills off California Highway 12 outside Sonoma. But I’m still happy with what I got, even if Microsoft doesn’t buy it.

Outside the spotlight, the shaded fields were shamrock and emerald and sea green, intermittently punctuated by sallow fields lying sere, saved for another season perhaps as part of a crop rotation scheme. But these areas were few, and the vast farmscape below us was full of lush crops of different characters.

Where shade stretched across hills it instilled a sense of neglect and longing in the hills - I imagined if they were people, were they uncouth castaways? How they paled in comparison to such verdant pastures kissed by light nearby! Did these favored parts judge the dark areas around them? As the hills curved, were they shrugging uncomfortably in the presence of the sunlight’s less-desirable? It’s hard to separate the thought from my mind’s eye, though this was such a place where one looks out onto the world and ponders the nature of… everything.

After spending hours on the butte the clouds started to depart from the horizon at sunset. Cloud-bursted colors stained the evening sky as cars left, while we savored the show to the last.

A Thousand Years of Night

I stopped by the barbershop next door and the old guy Ted there cleaned me up. It seems like ages ago that I had the last haircut. Makes sense though - the last one was months ago in the Mojave when that lady fixed me up like I had just enlisted and was at boot camp. I remember the hearty laugh I had when I saw myself in the mirror - I had looked like a kiwi fruit. That was then though, and today Ted told me about how he used to work for Northrup Grumman down in LA but he's been in Eureka for 20 years, and at the barbershop for 11. In him I sensed a kindred spirit - one who served corporate life but escaped. Went back to the AirBnB that was maybe a hundred steps away, showered off my old detritus, and then went to Redwoods State and National Park.

I started the walk ruminating about the nature of this life. As of yesterday I’ve completed 36 orbits around the sun, yet all I have to for what I’ve made in this life doesn’t seem like much. Artwork? The only evidence I could present to show I have even a passing affair with it is the portrait I finished last night of Stephanie. Granted, the pieces that the scandalous thieves made off with were neither recent nor masterpieces, they were still pieces that I loved. My rudimentary old scrawlings made me feel good about myself each time I looked at them. And they took that away from me.

I haven't got back to any of the text messages people sent wishing me happy birthday and I haven't logged into social media to see the well-wishes either. I just can't bring myself to do such a daunting task right now because then I'd have to reply to each of them, and I feel like whatever I say it would be a disappointment. The perfect reply must be composed for each of them, something I’m incapable of at the moment. Surely they can appreciate that? Sending anything mediocre would indicate indifference... which I suppose is what I’m indicating now with my long turnaround times on my replies. It’s hard to think of anything else though, especially when I have nothing else to take solace in. A motorcycle? A nice house? Basic material comforts? I sold all those. Now I’m someplace where I don’t know anyone within 500 miles of. Last night I really lost my composure and went off the deep end and now I’ll be walking away with scars from it. Fuck, I need to find solace in something else, something outside of the knowledge that I have an escape from all this if I get that low again. This has been a tough week. All I can do now is walk. One foot in front of the other.

One foot forward. Then, the other.

As I continued deeper into the forest my restless mind finally started to relax, and after a couple miles I finally reached that sublime point where introspection turns to extrospection. The trees here are other-worldly. They’re the largest on earth, with the sequoias growing shorter than the redwoods but to enormous girth. It's amazing these trees can live to be a couple thousand years old. A couple thousand years old! Touching one is amazing... not only because they're massive but are old souls. To connect with something alive for so long and so massive makes one self feel so minuscule. Some of these ancient spirits were around when Julius Caesar was crossing the Rubicon… and maybe even longer. Already by Caesar’s time, when that first hoof stepped into river and history, the Romans had their own concept of ancient history and myths - Greek Antiquity. And some of these trees were here for that, too. Its always twilight under the tree canopy, beyond the reach of sun’s light, where night lasts thousands of years in the shade of these ancients. I like it here. It’s soothing. Serene. I stopped on the trail to get water and there's a woodpecker working away on a tree up towards the stratosphere. It’s going to be alright.

Midnight, When I Became an Extreme Minimalist

FML.

After work I went to the local Safeway and as I was walking to the door I glanced back at the Escape and noticed something looked off. I gawked at it until the realization hit me like a truck. The hitch cargo carrier was empty. Some scoundrel had made off with the black cargo bag (a black bag that looks like a body bag) in the night. Damn, I didn't even make it a single night here before something happened. I had just read that Eureka has the highest property crime rate in California, and it seems that I’m getting the authentic experience here. I've decided I'm going to be positive about this though. I’ve only been going in there occasionally and lately I’ve been thinking of ways I could further downsize. Plus, I was always nervous about someone taking my things out of there. So my fear had finally been realized and dealt with. And to top it off, it was annoying to listen to that infernal beeping sound that indicated something was behind the Ford every time I tried to back up. Now all these problems have been solved! And there might be an additional benefit to all of this: focus. In life one can be good at n things to the first degree, or one thing to the nth degree. Before I left Colorado I knew I had to de-clutter my life but I didn’t possess the resolve at the time to get rid of everything. I knew that I ultimately wanted to focus on three things though: photography, drawing, and writing. There are so few distractions in my life now that perhaps this will leave me with a laser-like focus.

Ah, damn! I just realized that all of my art was in that body bag though: paintings, pencil drawings, watercolors, and pastels. It’s all gone. Arghhhhh… now this stings a little. Well, I still have my camera and pencils. Life goes on.

Update - This post was decidedly naked without an accompanying picture so I made one. At the end of the week this is the sole piece of artwork I have now: the old boss’s daughter. The one that has half the letters of the alphabet after her name in post-nominal initials because she’s a smart cookie. The one that drinks whiskey on the rocks. I wonder if the old boss knows I have her number…

Temple of Tidepools

This is my third time down this road, through this forest, and to this beach. This beach holds so many treasures that I could hunt them for an entire year, which to me is an eternity to spend in one place. The treasure I found this trip lay at the end of one of the parking lots, where I found a trail up to some coastal bluffs owned by Pacific Gas and Electric. I checked in with the guard at the gate and hiked the Point Buchon trail. It was great fun in a short trail that encircled a wide open field. As I was leaving and heading back to the tidepools farther up the beach I saw the guy that had the VW with the license plate that read "P❤ZZA" again! I remember seeing him at Salt Creek in Death Valley, hundreds of miles from here. And I remember that someone had commented how much they loved his license plate which made me look up from my laptop and see it, and immediately thought how there could never be a truer plate. Today I wish I had stopped to say hello to him, but by the time I registered what I had seen I was past the parking lot and had a line of cars in tow. So cool to see another fellow traveler though. Our tribe of long nights and headlights. Of dashing yellow strips. Of the highway.

What do anemone eat? I pondered this with great interest as I walked along the beach at Montana de Oro. There are so many around here and they have to compete with each other, but some of them are also in tidepools where there aren't any fish.

This tantalizing question wracked my brain until I dropped a snail on to the still tendrils of one as it sat motionless in a tidepool. Once the two made contact, the tendrils immediately extended outwards and felt the snail, wrapping more and more appendages around it. I imagine the anemone was trying to sense what it had. Slowly these slithery tentacles pulled the snail in, and the last I saw of it was the hardened calcium of it’s shell disappearing under the grasp of more and more tentacles gripping it, passing it into it’s mouth/pit of death. Once the snail disappeared into the abyss I felt a pang of guilt at what I had done. But, I also felt like a little boy again, fascinated by yucky creatures. And I am become Anubis, god of death, master of fates, and this beach is my temple. Or perhaps I’m more like a Valkyrie, selecting those that may live while ushering the others into the life beyond. Either way I hold sway over these tidepools. Just as ocean current hold sway over what anemone feed on out there, these congregations of the tidepools have me.

Last SoCal

There they are - yellow panties, sitting a top a load of laundry. They’re bright and lay in contrast to the pile of muted grays and blues of shirts and jeans they rest on, like a sun rising over a wintry New England landscape. Maybe I think too much about landscapes.

This is the last weekend in SoCal and of fun and sex before heading up the coast. It turns out the walls of the BnB are paper thin, and we could hear our neighbor quietly suppress a cough in the next room that sounded like he was on the bed with us. Shit. I watched Arabian Nights (which I absolutely love) and got rested up before heading out to meet the day. For the first time since leaving Vegas on Friday I feel like I’m at 100%. It feels good to be like myself again, and not the wretched decaying husk of what I used to be. A day and a half is a long time to not feel like yourself.

We left the BnB and got a plastic snake at a Goodwill store in Ventura for $2.99. A little girl swinging around a streetlight stopped me on the corner and asked what it was and then said I should scare people with it. Bless her. Put the reptile on the roof of the Ford and it is exactly the flavor it needed! Afterwards we went down to the beach and saw a Kia Sol police car. That’s how you know it’s a good town when the their cars are so delicate. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cop cars in my hometown are bullet proof. Drove west to Santa Barbara and got some zip ties at a hardware store to hold down the new snake before heading down to the marina at sunset.

It's great to visit familiar places with people that have a vastly different perspective from yourself and can add flavor to things we see every day. My dinner date was a fishing boat captain from Alaska and she told me all about the boats in the marina, what they were good for, and how they handled. I’m quite pleased with myself too, for reciprocity is the key to every relationship and I was able to school her on camera settings. She only had a cell phone, but when I started in photography years ago it was on a cell phone too, and the settings on a camera phone’s pro mode are the same used in a DSLR or mirrorless camera. This is the second time I’ve gone out shooting with her, and I’ve seen her post many landscapes and subject studies on social media since we were on that island in Alaska.

We had dinner at a pricey place on the water and as we were walking along the beach she pointed out an amazing moon rise over the docks. We stopped and I got a ton of pics at the water's edge. I wish I had brought the tripod but I wasn’t thinking we’d be shooting after dark. Damn. The moon was absolutely huge too - if it had been just a bit closer I could have made out the craters. It must have been a super moon and in my ignorance I lost track of their schedule. I turned the Canon’s image stabilizer on and snagged a couple alright ones though.

Zion, Alone in the Crowd

Chilly, chilly, CHILLY night. I slept with the snow pants on and after many shivers in the dark, I finally pulled the winter jacket over me like it were another blanket. Then I was well enough off. In the morning I bought a ticket to the park by registering for some recreational account, but the earliest ticket I could get was for noon so I ended up hiking the Watchmen Trail. Right at the start I got some great shots of a pack of fearless deer that browsed just a few feet away, some of them almost within arm's reach. As the elevation increased I started to sweat on the hike up like on any good Colorado trail, and when I reached the top I confronted the greatness of this place. I had glimpsed hints of the earth’s restlessness - massive rock fronts gave way to shear verticals, and now at the top I fully understood the geologic chaos that had happened here. It was a primordial landscape, prehistoric yet telling of a story in the sudden drops where you could walk a path with your eyes closed, and not know if the ground below your next step were mere inches, or thousands of feet below.

I hopped on the shuttle just past noon and got a good seat at the front of the trailer (one motorized shuttle pulled an unmotorized one behind it). I got off at the next stop and hiked up to the Emerald Pools. As the day wore on I realized I was the odd man out: an introvert among extroverts. Everyone is here with their families or friends and throughout the whole day I only saw a handful of loners, of heroes, among thousands. I love that I got to experience this place though. Zion is really just a canyon that ends in the narrows, and at the end of the day you just come back out the way you came with the shuttle.

The whole day I didn’t see a single other soul with sandals on, despite the thousands and thousands. I thought I saw a budding tree from the shuttle and made me think that maybe I had drove through winter to spring. After leaving the park I cruised around the towns of La Verkin and Hurricane and picked up some Taco Bell before heading out to an overlook above the neighboring towns and parking for the night on a dirt road. I took 237 pictures today. Holy fuck, I knew it was a lot but I didn't think it was that many. Zion had tested and then obliterated the shutter discipline I thought I had achieved.

Welcoming Purgatory

I lowered the window and felt the familiar desert air circulate into the CUV. I first came here 9 years ago, arriving on an August evening just past sundown. At the time I was more lost than I had ever been - L.A. had swallowed me up and spit me out. I remember the drive out of the city as I contemplated my life’s direction. Not only could I not find a job, but a few days earlier I had been on the other side of the country for a funeral. And now here I was in this agonizing turmoil but couldn’t give the love lost the attention or reflection they deserved because of the damned pecuniary needs. I was poorer than I had ever been since leaving the system when I was coming of age - both the fridge and the bank account were empty. On the flight back the TSA had confiscated a brand new tube of toothpaste someone had bought for me the day before: Crest with Scope mouthwash blended in. It was a luxury, a lottery win, a love contained in that over-3-ounces tube that reminded me that I wasn’t alone in this journey. But rules and regulations determined that that agent take this token of solace from me. I was devastated . Now I was aimlessly driving the highways into the night, lost in life, thinking I would find something to brake for on the lonely roads and it would be all right.

Looking at the map I saw this place. North. The same direction I thought I would go, though this was maybe a few hundred miles off what I had originally imagined. I had heard of it out in the desert, and though I could barely afford to drive across town I determined that I‘d stop here. Descending into the cooling air of the valley I left behind behind my troubles. It was quiet. Serene. My eyelids grew heavy, so I found a campsite and laid my sleeping bag on the sand next to where I parked and slept under the stars.

In the next day I woke up and I was still alone. Not a person in the camp, a car on the road, or even a plane in the sky could be seen. 70F at sunrise. Perfect. I made a pb&j breakfast and took in the desert scenery around me. Not far down the road were some charcoal kilns, holdovers from the 19th century when the mining industry was active here. My voice echoed off the walls as I spoke to myself in them like a loon. 80F now. I found a trailhead leading towards a mountain and started walking. As the sun rose the shadows withdrew and I was left exposed. The grade and heat were starting to get to me, and I couldn’t imagine why a trail was here and why anyone would want to hike it. As I gained altitude the temperature seemed to level out though, and finally a gentle breeze carried me upwards. As I collected myself it dawned on me - no one comes here in summer. I had the entire park to myself! I had traveled to a place where I would be king, to do what I pleased as I saw fit. I had reign. And the shorts came off. I hiked the rest of the trail naked, and to this day it is perhaps the greatest hike I’ve ever had.

I made it back to the empty campsite in late afternoon. 115F. During this burning heat I thirsted for the purgatory of sunset, when the air would burn less intense and I’d be left in an empty sprawling plane of salt. In the campsite I found an active water spout, and I crouched under it to shower and fill my water bottles. I’ve never been so happy to find water. I ended up staying here a couple days before leaving, though the park never left me.

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Now I’m here again, but not only has the park been changed by winter’s touch but my perspective of things has changed too. I see it differently now. I feel like the Ford is Bucephalus, and I’m a conquering hero of antiquity. I want to see it all, and I want to do it my way. It’s still a hell during the day, and the place names are not subtle hints at their nature: Funeral Mountains. Dante’s View. Coffin Peak. Devil’s Golf Course. But we grow through adversity, and in the years since I’ve done my share of growing. In this journey of self-discover I’ve realized that it’s ok to do things in my own non-conventional way, even if that means downsizing my worldly possessions to fit in the back seat, roaming alone on these highways, stopping in strange cities to check the cables. One thing I see differently are the stars. There’s no light pollution out here and the sky is bursting with them. Each flicker of light in the night sky holding so many possibilities from the creator. If life can sustain itself in this box of fire then perhaps this night sky is a garden, these celestial bodies cultivating where life dares.

And so I had found such a thing to brake for on that day 9 years ago that would make everything alright. My kingdom of hellfire. Death Valley.

Poseidon’s Wrath

Woe is me! It was an arduous day, though I don’t know if the Canon or myself had the rougher go of it. I left the party at the Cypress house at 6AM and tried to make it back to the BnB in Oxnard but I could barely keep my eyes open, so I pulled over at a park and conked out in the back. It turns out I had chose what had to be the most popular park in Southern California because when I woke up at 10AM there was a steady stream of people walking past the Escape. No doubt a sizeable number (couple hundred at least?) had peered through the window to see my nappy hair as I lay there passed out. Doh!

After sheepishly collecting myself I got back on the road and finally made it back home, taking some on-and-off naps until I felt well enough to head out again. There would be no grand adventures today since I had just enough stamina to visit someplace nearby, so I just made it over to Point Mugu and found an amazing outcropping of rocks stretching into the ocean. As the tide and waves came in the water exploded vertically over the rocks in spectacular fashion. The water would jet so high into the air that I’m sure the rocks were cloud-makers, ejecting vapor directly into the atmosphere.

I captured some amazing shots of this, but as I was camping out on a rock waiting for a big wave to come in a tide snuck up on me as I was looking through the viewfinder. It exploded over the rock I was perched on, shooting a watery plume into the air that came crashing down on me. I was instantly drenched in the cold ocean. Luckily, I had time to tuck my camera into the nook of my body to shield it from the rain. I spent the rest of the hour wringing my shirt and and clothes of water and drying off in the sun before making it up the trailhead that led up to the top of the mountain. My timing was impeccable - as I clamored up the last of the rocks I looked up and found the sun sitting on the ocean’s surface with it’s rays filtering through the Channel Islands on the horizon . It was a picture-perfect moment and my hands instinctively retrieved the Canon from my bag. I set up my gear and just as I was getting ready to take my shot I realized the lens wouldn’t focus. The camera had gotten wet after all.

Shoot, I’ll have to try that out like how I did with my clothes. I still have the 600mm telephoto lens though, so I snagged some zoomed-in shots of the nearby Channel Islands, a site that wrote the books of human development. 13,000 years ago a man now known as the Arlington Springs Man lived here, and his presence on the island demonstrates that the earliest people here had watercraft capable of crossing the Santa Barbara Channel. Thus, it’s possible that instead of crossing the Bering land bridge we took a boat from Siberia.

Neat.

January’s Autumn

Went up to Ojai and stopped at Bart’s Books, an outdoor bookstore where I scooped up another book on Buddhism. Continued into the mountains north of town and made a brief hike up to Rose Valley Falls where I photographed water cascading down the moss-covered rock face.

At the end of the waterfall a creek began, and it was here that I shot the fallen red leaves that had collected themselves in the basins of meltwater along the meandering water. It’s strange to see autumn foliage nestled in these hidden valleys in the second week of January. Deciduous trees stand with their mottled yellow and orange leaves alongside verdant green palm trees. Weird.

As I was heading back to the coast I recognized a sharp turnoff at the base of a mountain and realized it was the very same one I had pulled over on 7 years ago when my cousin and I were trying to find a local hot springs in the night. A little farther down the road I saw the springs we had finally found, and a torrent of memories flooded my mind. The little parking lot was a time machine, and I remembered the sulfur smell, the inky black sky untouched by the glow of electric lights, the water trickling over rocks in the shallow water. What a lovely memory this adventure gifted me.

Made it back to Ojai and decided to do the Valley View Preserve hike in the canyons just north of town since I hadn’t had enough hiking for the day. The acoustic profile of the canyon bottoms amplifies the chirp-chirp-chirp of crickets among the canyons making them sound like fearsome predators. Did a loop around the mountain and got back to the car from the opposite direction I came through part of town. Kinda odd walking through the unfamiliar slice of town to get back to where I had parked the car.

Montezuma’s Castle

Woke up just before 7AM and pink streaks are running through the sky as the sun climbs into the sky. It’s 9F and I actually slept well enough through the frigid night after putting snow pants and the winter jacket on. The new sleeping pad is damn comfy. I did have to set the alarm to wake up every two hours though to check the interior temperature of the Escape. If it was too frosty then I’d start the car so that the contents of the solar shower and other things didn’t freeze. This night has been the coldest I’ve ever slept in the car, and it happened in Arizona of all places. Go figure.

Pulled over in Payson and had a breakfast of yogurt with a banana from Safeway before cleaning myself up in the bathroom there. Up to this point I’ve just been heading to Arizona, and now I’m here. It’s profoundly disconcerting - I have no plan beyond this parking lot. And it’s about 40 degrees Fahrenheit colder than what I was expecting. Shit… do I keep going to Cali?

It’s Xmas Eve and the entire town has been consumed with feverish holiday energy. I stopped by a Goodwill store to look for local travel guidebooks, and as I was in line the lady in front of me lost it and started shouting at the man in front of her for buying so many items and making her wait 5 minutes. Once they left I asked the cashier if she was ok and I told her that us normal people appreciate her being there. There’s nothing to really say about people that act this way.

Now, what to do with myself…

Drove west and up up Montezuma’s Castle on the suggestion of a friend from high school who I had been chatting with on the social media. I made it there at 1:30 and they closed at 2, so the lady at the front let me in for free. The “castle” is actually an old Indian cliff-side settlement constructed 700 years ago, before the conquistadors had ever heard of the new land.

From there I continued on to Sedona, where the rocks are a deep crimson and dotted with green shrubs. Fitting colors for the holiday season.

Pastels over Sharp Waters

The island is my jailer, hemming me into just a few square miles. My friend’s old beater sounds like a go-kart on steroids. She always has to spur it to action by stabbing the battery terminals with a screwdriver, so we decided to leave it and the screwdriver in Kodiak and grab the rental instead. In the morning we drove out to Anton Bay, but the road turned to ice after we passed into the shade of a mountain. It was too much for the all-season tires (and my nerves) to handle as we slid across the road, so we turned around and went to Chigiak instead. Then, as we neared our new destination we discovered the road had been washed out by the bay, so we had to turn around yet again. After a morning of failures we went to Rendezvous for lunch to figure things out. At least this is a beautiful place to fail. Fog has settled into the valleys between golden peaks, lit up by the sun hanging low just over the winter horizon.

Eventually we settled on a southern bearing and set out for the beach at Pashagshak. As the tires sped over the island I realized that this is the most solid rental I’ve ever had (I’m not holding the all-season tires against it). Despite the 123k miles on the ‘03 Toyota Tundra with a camper on back, it has some serious response and handles itself as well as any new thing rolling off a dealer’s lot. It’s no wonder the Toyota War was a thing, where Hilux and Land Cruiser models had machine guns mounted on them and sent into action. The truck took us to some amazing places.

Amid the ever-changing biomes from one side of mountains to the next are spread a variety of island dwellers that I can’t say I’ve been around much, having lived a landman’s life. Maybe my favorite of the them are the sea squirrels that bob up and down upon tides as the ocean laps the island. One of them was clam-crazy and mowing down on what to have been an ocean’s worth of them. Apparently they love them as my companion tells me she was on her docked boat one quiet night and could hear the sound traveling over the water of one cracking open a clam shell and eating it.

My friend combed the beach for ocean artifacts while I gathered my camera gear in the Toyota under the pastel skies, listening to the rumble of waves outside. Even from a distance I could tell they had some muscle in them, and they looked ominous as they blocked out the setting sun in the background and replaced it’s light with a wall of water. Then a thought popped into my head.

How cold is the water, exactly?

It was cold. It was really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, cold!

I had exploded out of the truck cab like a house cat sitting by the window all day and someone had left the door open for a second too long. I darted over the sand and on to the mirror of thin water that had been left behind by the retreating tide as I charged forward. The waves I had seen from the passenger seat had grown into imposing predators when I approached them. They menaced at just beyond, and I faltered dove into a swell that reached my waist instead. The frigid water whirled around me, stabbing me a thousand times from a thousand angles in a moment. I thought I knew cold, but this Alaskan ocean was my teacher today. I lasted only a few seconds before retreating back to the heater vents of the 4x4. I’ll never forget that cold.

In a Ghost Ship Across the Gulf

Juneau, the place of Alaska’s first documented serial killer (though I’m sure some indigenous did it first; there’s always someone else who did it first). And on the subject of death, the “Titanic of Alaska”, the Princess Sophia, had grounded herself on a reef just a bit north up the channel from here. For 40 harrowing hours she teetered in gale-force winds beyond the reach of rescue boats, until the rising tide forced her from safety and dragged 353 souls down with her. It’s a horror story that no one seems to know about since news of its sinking was overshadowed by the end of WW1 and Spanish Influenza epidemic. But in the countless bays and channels along Alaska’s coasts there’s probably a horror story for each one. The sweeping tides and islands that funnel winds are treacherous, and any seaman probably has a dozen horror stories they can tell you.

Safe on dry land, I drove south to a tiny collection of houses that makes up the town of Douglas. Picturesque in itself but not as much for a natural landscape guy, I continued south down the Glacier Highway and along the Gastineau Channel. I pulled off on the side of the road to take a few shots of the water while a bald eagle cried out overhead from its evergreen nest. It's calls echoed across the channel. From there I continued to the end of the road and then turned around and hit up the Rain Forest Trail, where I made a short hike out to the beach and set up the tripod to take a few long exposures. I've never done long exposures of water, and the little waves lapping gently at the bay came out great on the Canon's LCD screen. I’ll have to see how the finished product looks in post-processing though.

Headed back into the capital at 4:45pm and it's dark-dark out. Juneau is such an interesting place of tall buildings crammed into a tiny strip of land with political powers and oily fishermen about. It’s weird to me to see Alaska license plates amid these almost-skyscrapers. For the complete experience, I drove out to the community of Thane at the end of the other road, and now I can say I've been the farthest I could go in all 3 directions. If I lived here I might start to feel trapped, like how I did for that month on Maui when I was trying to find a job after college. And this place is a fraction of the size.

At night I walked across the hotel’s parking lot to the comically-small airport to drop off the rental car and then walked back to the hotel. Total time it took = ten minutes. I crashed out at 8:45pm in preparation for the early early ferry departure. I woke up shortly later in the witching hour and cabbed it to the ferry terminal, when black magic was surely at it’s strongest. The cabby dropped me off in the empty lot. Weird, it’s super quiet at the terminal. Did I miss the ferry? There’s one ship at dock but not a soul is stirring and I can’t tell if it’s been there for awhile or not. Is this the right ship? Well, there’s nothing else here so I guess I’m walking towards it.

I walked past a gate into a fenced area and emerged from the dark at the dock. There’s another person here! Like Charon ferrying souls across the river Acheron, I submitted my fair to them and they let me board. Once aboard I realized my ticket didn't include a place to sleep so I shelled out another $180 for a roommette, of which someone left a copy of the holy bible on the shelf in it. Brrr, it’s chilly in the little roommette and blankets cost extra so I tried to tough it out. I spent the rest of the night huddling under my jacket tossing and turning since I couldn’t sleep. The next morning I got up at 7:30 and the first thing I noticed was a thermostat on the wall. Doh. I found breakfast in the ship’s mess and then went to the forward observation room and set up both laptops to work. I feel like I'm in command sitting behind the bow.

Hmmm, where’s the WiFi? After trying my devices for a signal a crewman appeared and informed me that they didn’t have it. FUCK. I ended up having to call a coworker and walking them through the technical steps from memory to create a report due that day. Poor thing, although I'm annoyed by the situation too. I had just assumed the 500-passenger ship would have WiFi since I’ve seen 30ft catamarans on YouTube with it. Relived from work and now on unplanned PTO, I sat back in the observation room and watched the bow sway up and down over the horizon. It feels like I'm in the ultimate Cadillac as shadows sway back and forth while the ship bounces along the waves. After lunch I watched the mountains get smaller and smaller as we ventured farther out in the gulf. With each passing minute the waves became larger and larger, shadows moving from side to side, again and again, longer and longer.

Oh gawd, I think I feel nauseous.

I started to feel queasy so I made my way to the stern observation deck, thinking that it would be like sitting in the front seat of a car when motion sickness starts to make it's ugly presence known. This was a mistake. Now I feel REALLY nauseous! After a short while we entered an open plain of high winds across the ocean that would pick the stern up and point it towards the clouds. In these moments it was like being at the top of a roller coaster, sitting precariously skyward until we slowly started to descend, quickly gathering momentum so that the stern would come tearing down and dive under the horizon. A dark blue wall would form in front of us, reborn darker in the next dive as the stern descended deeper, turning the moments to hours until a legitimate "BOOM!' erupted from below as the keel slapped the waters surface at the lowest point of the wave. A geyser of water erupted overhead a moment later and the wind picked it up and tossed it sideways onto the slanted windows of the observation deck. Water and sea spray cascaded down the decking so that it was like standing under the edge of a waterfall. “BOOM!” it sounded again, and a fresh geyser sprang again and the face of death appeared and peered at us through the windows.

I hadn't yet totally lost my composure so I nauseously stumbled towards the bathroom, thinking it would be good medicine to sit on the can. But then the wretched wind started to come at us from starboard, rolling and heaving the ship in all directions. I held the handrails like a horizontal game of monkey ladder and the floor kept moving out from under me. By the time I sat on the throne I was thoroughly thrashed. I couldn't sit upright so I lowered my head onto the toilet paper housing and grabbed on to it with both hands. Boat rocking, pants around my ankles, eyes closed shut, hanging onto the toilet paper housing for dear life I was probably as close to finding religion as I’ve ever been. No amount of money would have been out of consideration if I could have bought my way out of the situation. Then I felt the vomit come and lost myself to the nausea. Luckily, I had enough space in the stall to move my feet to the side before I lost my composure. But after this I couldn't do anything - I couldn't lift my head, I couldn’t let go of the toilet paper housing, I couldn’t even open my damn eyes. All I could do was wait for the next wave to hit and the ship to roll. As I laid there with my head down my mask fell off and into the vomit and I think I even passed out for a few times when the waves hit.

I must have held on to that toilet paper for an hour and a half until a 2nd wind hit me and I was able to pull myself together. Luckily, again, no one came into the bathroom the whole time (or maybe they did and I couldn't notice). I washed the vomit off my mask and stumbled back to my room. I do feel bad leaving such a mess for the crew to clean up, but I could barely walk back to the little roommette on my own. Once lying down in the dark it felt like a night and day difference and I felt a hundred times better. This ship is a stretcher now, carrying me from the waves. Maybe I will read that holy bible and find Jesus tonight, if I can pull myself together to stand again.

For solid 13 hours I slept and woke the next morning feeling just 100%. OMFG, I hope that never happens again. Shaved and put myself together and returned to the mess to get breakfast. Fuck, I’m ashamed to show my face here after the crew mopped up the mess I left last night. I talked with another passenger who’s been on board for a while and she said she almost puked yesterday. I replied that I did, thrice. It was more than that of course but that’s what I lost count at. We arrived at Whittier at 1pm and I was all geared up and ready to explore the little town, but as I was about to exit I was informed that passengers who have another final destination have to stay on the ship due to Covid. I watched a steady stream of passengers disembark at Whittier as the last of the sunlight disappeared beyond the mountains. Damn, I’m trapped aboard.

The good captain passed through the observation room and visited with me, saying we'll arrive in Kodiak early tomorrow. While a crewman carrying a Ghostbusters-like backpack sprayed disinfectant nearby, the captain explained that the barge that supplies Kodiak broke down, so the ferry is loading 12 trailers full of food aboard. He’s never carried this many before, but they have straps to keep it all contained and they expect smooth sailing tomorrow, otherwise they wouldn't do it. His favorite activity is giving bridge tours but those have been stopped due to Covid, and he asked if there was anything the crew could do to make things better. I said no and that I was having a great time with my camera, though yesterday was a bit rough. He replied that he probably shouldn't say it, but he was feeling nauseous too. They had altered course on to plan B to get to smoother waters, and the curious little town I saw yesterday but didn’t recognize was Yakutat.

The captain left and I watched the dark sweep over little Whittier. Almost the entire town lives in a single tower of 13 stories, one of two massive buildings that were built during WWII. The other? It watches ominously over the industrial yard and the few other shops that make up the rest of town.

Another happy day.

The forward observation area where I’ve been left alone is eerily quiet. Really quiet. I haven't seen anyone in an hour where previously it had been full of people. The sun sets and an epiphany hits me. Holy shit, am I…

Am I alone now?

This is a ghost ship.

Maybe it’s the empty creaking ship, maybe it’s all the reading about the Mary Celeste and other doomed ships, maybe it’s the hours playing Dead Space, maybe it’s the monster I’m sure is aboard with me and I just saw crawl on to deck, but this place is scary. I quietly crept back to the little roommette, shut the door and made sure it was latched shut, and kept the light on. It’s unsettling knowing there’s nothing but a dark empty ship outside the thin door. I closed my eyes again and slept and waited for dawn’s light.

Whew, woke up to an open ocean in front of us. I worked on pictures in the predawn hours as the sun came up and realized that I do love this life, editing travel pictures on a boat in the ocean. If I ever write another survival story though, it’ll include this empty ship and the treacherous waters. We made Kodiak’s port a bit after noon, where in the light of day I found a friend waiting for me at the dock. I ended this chapter of The Shining on the seas.

Apple Cider in the Rockies

Lounged in the AM, Staunton State Park in the PM. Before leaving for the park I made some hot water in the coffee machine and mixed in some apple cider mix. For a year the cider packets had sat neglected in the kitchen cabinet farthest from the microwave, and I had to fight the urge to drink the aromatic fruit drink on the spot. I kept my composure though and poured the concoction into a thermos an old roommate left behind and I stepped out the door. It was amazing to hear the crunching sound of fresh snow on the stairs as I left the house! I haven’t heard that sound since last winter! With each step it tells me about the promise of a new world waiting for me in the mountains, which has replaced summer’s familiar.

A respectable drive later I arrived at Staunton State Park and brrrrr, it was cold! I bundled myself up and hit the trail.

The only other park visitor I saw.

I hiked 7 miles that despite the numbness building in my feet, I still felt the ache of distance and blisters in the hiking boots that I never wear and of which my feet decidedly hate. The good news is that the apple cider stayed steaming hot in the Thermos even as the temperatures peaked in the single digits. It felt a lot like my first time here, which had been another snowy day like this one. On that trip I had tried to scramble up a huge boulder to get shots for sunset and lost my grip falling a distance on to my hands. That fall wrecked my wrist for a whole year. So even though I didn’t really get any great captures on this freezing trip, I’m glad to have made the journey and not wreck myself this time.

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Lion’s Head in the distance.

My favorite part of the trip was scrawling a Happy B-Day message in the snow for a friend and lighting it up in the darkening twilight with my phone’s screen colors. Not all trips end with amazing captures, but at the beginning of each of those trips, knowing how they would end, I would still make the journey. Sometimes the journey is the reward itself.

Mirrorless Reflections

The Canon RP came in! As far as mirrorless cameras go it’s entry level, but for my rudimentary skills it’s perfect. It sat on the desk next to the laptops for the rest of the work day. As I was logging out for the day I got a call from a 71-year old guy, John, who lives down in the Springs. He was calling about the old 77D DSLR I had listed for sale on Craigslist. He's into photography and knows all about Canon models and apertures, lenses, etc. His son stopped by shortly after to pick it up. I’m sad to see my trusty sidekick that traveled with me from Costa Rica to Canada go, but the feeling quickly ended when I left the house with the new model.

This is my first outing with the mirrorless camera, and what great timing for it too. Warm sunny weather rolled, in and it's a breath of fresh air after the last two days of cloudy chilly weather. We didn’t go on any grand adventures this time, and actually this is one of the shortest trips I’ve ever had. But the pond just a couple miles east was soul-soothing.

Quackers swimming by this first-time visitor to the pond.

I love the way the Rockies roll up clouds along the Front Range. I’ve never seen cloud patterns like this anywhere else.