CLOUDLAND CABIN JOURNAL - May 2005
Cloudland Cabin Deck Cam, 5/20/05, 7:45am, warm and hazy | ||
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CLOUDLAND CABIN JOURNAL, updated 5/18/05 A trip to the river to see more bears, and MY photo of St. Helens
The May Print of the Month NOTE - the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd decades are in PART A 5/10/05 My fourth decade, the roaring and not so roaring 30's. As I was beginning my 30's I met the future Mrs. Ernst, Hallie Dee Grisham from Harrison. We became fast friends and within a year held a very large party on top of my favorite spot on earth, White Rock Mountain. In the video that was shot during the ceremony at the edge of the bluff, you can see hundreds of people lined up all along the bluff in the background. I'm sure it was quite a spectacle. We had a party that lasted for many hours, ending with a couple hundred bottles of champagne - that probably should have told of things to come. Something else that should have been an eye-opener for me was the fact that I had to have a bouncer on guard just in case a bad dude or two from Hallie's past showed up. The maid of honor did not arrive (which was a good thing), and my future mother-in-law stepped in. I won't get into life with my new bride - there were some wonderful times, but also some of the very worst times of my life. We had a good marriage for the first year, but then it went south in a hurry. The second year went down the toilet, and we were divorced by the third year. At first I was kind of knocked back off my feet, but when the light of day finally begin to shine once again, I realized it all had been a giant mistake, and I was lucky to have escaped as soon as I did. To give you some idea, after we had split up, she told me that she in fact was never in love with me, but rather just was using me to get back in good graces with her parents - which worked (her parents were both WONDERFUL folks, the very best in-laws I could have ever asked for - at least, until, I met up with my current ones!). It would take me several years to get back on my feet financially. And during those two very long years of marriage, I really didn't do too much else in life, so there is not much to report. OK, 'nuff of that. At some point in there I opened up a brand new photography studio, but soon closed it down because I was not making any money. Then I became a car salesman, selling BMW's and Toyotas. I must say that those five months were some of the very blackest of my entire life - not just because I was a car salesman - I actually was pretty good at it, and quickly became the #2 guy at the store. And I got to purchase an absolute dream car - a BMW that sometimes I loved so much I would just to sit in it and listen to the stereo. But there were so many other things going on in my life that I was quite miserable just about every second of every day. I really just wanted to get away from it all and be out in the woods. And that is where I eventually went. As my marriage was falling apart, I left the car sales job (only the second real job I ever had in life - the first one being the cave guide job), sold my beloved BMW, and bought a 4WD Toyota station wagon. And I headed to the woods. The only way I could think of to put all of my misery behind me was to jump head first into some major project, and so I did. I started work on my very first book - the Ozark Highlands Trail Guide. By this time the trail was mostly complete, and my old maps were just not enough (I had published three updates to that original map that sold so many copies). I worked seven days a week, out on the trail with a measuring wheel and tape recorder. I sat down and figured out exactly what I would want in a trail guidebook, looked at many dozens of other trail guidebooks and figured out what was good and what was bad about them, then finally came up with my own format for the book. I spent an entire Saturday down at the Pack Rat with prototypes - putting them on the bookshelf there and watching customers reactions to various photos and formats, and even running around sticking the guidebooks into folks back pockets to see what would fit and work the best. I wanted this guidebook to be USER FRIENDLY. Then finally, after many long months of intensive labor, I was finished with the book and sent it to the printer. I had been selling the maps at just a handful of outdoor stores, but when the first guidebook came out I was able to expand into many more stores throughout the region. The first edition of the book was sold out within a year and I had to reprint it - thus began my publishing empire! A couple of years later I decided to produce a guidebook to the Buffalo River trails - something that Ken Smith had been working on for many years, but at the pace Ken did things, it would be another decade before he ever got it completed, so I said what the heck, and jumped right on in head first and did one. When I was working on this second guidebook my good friends Ken and Terry Eastin from Little Rock convinced me to do all of the design work on a computer in a program called PageMaker - the original OHT guide was done on a typewriter. OK, so I moved into the Eastin's home and sat down to learn PageMaker, and before the week was over, I had mastered it and the new Buffalo River Guidebook was finished. Well, it did not happen quite that fast - actually it did, but it hurt a lot. I worked on the new book and the new program and the new computer night and day - more than 20-something hours a day - for a solid week. And I mean SOLID. I literally only stopped in the middle of the night for an hour or two of sleep and then would get right back to work. Ken took off work and set his computer up next to mine and drew all the maps, printing them out for me to make corrections on, then he would draw some more and print them out again. It was a grueling schedule, but I was a man on a mission. Just about the end of the week I realized that I wanted to include just one more trail - I always do - so I drove up to the Buffalo area and hiked a new stretch of the Buffalo River Trail from Woolum to Hwy. 65 - about 15 miles - returned to Little Rock later that day and wrote up the description. Ken drew the map the next day and it made it into the book. Back then we had to print out the final pages, and then send them to the printer in Michigan (we do all of that electronically now and don't have to print it out). I had to go down to Terry Eastin's office for that - she had the big laser printer that produced the best quality. I remember running into her at 3 or 4 in the morning there - I think she had had enough of me and was ready to get rid of me and get her husband and her house back. I had been up almost 24 hours a day for more than a week - really - and was running on fumes. Yet I never felt really tired the entire time. It was still dark before daylight when I finally collected all of my stuff and got into my car and headed back to Fayetteville. Within an hour on I-40 I had fallen asleep at the wheel and wound up running off of the road at 70mph. I was able to wake up just in time before I killed myself, and realized that I had to stop. I pulled over at a rest area, and was sound asleep almost before I got the key turned off. I woke up about eight hours later, still strapped into the driver's seat! That book went over really well, and I sold a lot of them in a hurry. I had asked the great and famous and legendary Neil Compton to write the forward to the guidebook, which he gladly did. He wrote an eloquent bit about me and trails in Arkansas - as only Neil could do - and he unknowingly took a jab at the famous Ken Smith - something Ken has never gotten over - he refuses to speak to me to this very day.
OK, so I was really off and running, and now it was time for me to do a really BIG guidebook that would cover hiking trails all over the state. It took me more than a year to hike all of the trails that I wanted to include in this book, which meant I had a very tall pile of cassette tapes that I needed to transcribe. That is the way I worked on these guidebooks - I would hike each trail while pushing a measuring wheel so that I knew exactly where all the interesting points and intersections were, and would have a running narration of it all as I hiked, speaking into a tape recorder. When I finished hiking the trail I would label the tape and put it on the shelf - I really enjoyed the hiking part, but hated the transcribing part! So a year's worth of tapes piled up. They sat there for a good long while, and then one day I just got up and decided it was TIME - I sat down and spent the next several weeks transcribing all the tapes and writing the actual guidebook. Ken drew the maps once again. And then I had a brilliant idea. I had always been a big fan of Bill Clinton, ever since I spent an evening with him at a graduation event many years before. There was something special about this guy, and I made it a point to get my foot in the door when he was a relative unknown. He, of course, was elected governor a few times, and was running for President. I decided that it would probably be a pretty good selling point if my new guidebook about Arkansas would have an introduction written by the President of the United States, so I started on him many months before the actual election, and asked if he would write it. The answer was yes. With my connections in Little Rock (thanks Ken and Bryan and the OTHER Ken Smith), I managed to get his signature on the original forward dated the day after he won the election - it was his first signature as President-elect! Very cunning of me. Timing is everything. With this new book, complete with a foreword by the new President, my retail outlets tripled in number - everyone wanted to stock this new and exciting guidebook. And they all had to stock my other two guidebooks as well. Sales sky rocked, and for the very first time, I was actually making a living at things I had written - an incredible feat for a guy who hated to write, and who was about the worst student in the world. Somewhere along the line while this was going on my nature photo business continued to grow, and I continued to push the limits of the quality that I could get out of my camera gear. I went from my old Nikon 35mm stuff all the way up to the extreme end things, getting a custom-made 4x5 inch field camera, then spent a good long while learning how to use it. I made frequent trips out west, and also to many places in Arkansas. From my old party photography days, I formed a bond with the guy who originally set me up in the photo business, Joe Ownbey, and one of his largest customers, Greg Heinze, who was from Kansas. The three of us worked together at times during the previous decade, and now we all were more or less out of the business, or on the way out. We decided to get together at least once a year and spend a weekend doing nothing but photography (and consuming a little bit of gin and beer along the way). We named our little group the OAK Photographic Society, which stood for "Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas" - which is where we all were from. We adopted nicknames of our favorite photographers, and mine was, of course, "Ansel" after Ansel Adams. I have been referred to in some news articles as the "Ansel Adams of Arkansas" - while I hardly deserve such lofty comparisons, I am always honored to ever be mentioned in the same paragraph as this most greatest of all nature photographers there will ever be. Greg and I also would get together once a year or so and make a major photo trip to someplace exotic - or at least exotic to me and within reach of a day or two drive. Greg always flew everywhere - him being a commercial airline pilot since leaving the party pic business - and often I would pick him up at an airport - like in the Tetons - and then we would spend a week doing intensive photographer, and drinking a lot of gin and beer. We got some really great images during those trips, and listened to a lot of Beatle and John Denver music. Also during this time period it seemed that I did not date too many ladies that were local - in fact there for a good long run of perhaps 8-10 years every girlfriend that I had lived out of town, often in another state. And when they would come to town to visit, I naturally would not want to share this precious time with anyone else, so I hardly ever took them to public events with me. That meant that most of my friends never saw me with a girlfriend, and I guess thought I simply was doing without. While I never had a relationship that lasted even a full year - actually I did, but only once, and for a couple of years - I almost always had a girlfriend, just a long-distance one. That was good because I did not get caught up in the day-to-day things and was free to roam around and spend a lot of time out in the woods. Also not too good because I never had a close lady friend around for many of the important events in my life, and really missed out on a lot of those very same day-to-day things that you want to be with someone special. Anyway, we had a lot of fun, but my life continued to be missing out on a lot, namely a life mate, something I really deep down inside wanted and longed for ever since I was seven or eight years old. Yes, my life was mostly out in the woods, but my heart had been aching most of my life as well. The same year that I got divorced and wrote my first guidebook, I started my professional trail career. I went to work that summer for the Student Conservation Association, and spent five weeks that summer, and then each summer for the next five, out in the wilderness with a group of carefully-selected high school kids, doing volunteer trail work in Arkansas and Wyoming. It was a lot of work for these kids, but they all advanced many years in maturity in those few long weeks. For one thing, by the time they left my crew they could all go home and COOK for their entire families, and do all their own laundry, and keep their rooms clean. We had a lot of fun, saw some terrific country, and got a lot of trail built - like, for instance, the Little Missouri Trail down in the Ouachitas, and the eastern side of the Shores Lake Loop Trail. Out in Wyoming, we built many bridges out of lodgepole pine, all by hand using only hand tools. Those structures will continue to be in use for the next 50 years or more. It was a great experience for me, not only being around high school kids, but also learning a lot of new trail techniques. Plus I would come home with an entire years supply of toilet paper and mac and cheese! I also started to build hiking trails for money. No one else in Arkansas had the expertise that I did, and folks were willing to pay for that. AND I was willing to work my butt off to build the very best trail money could buy. My first trail was the Shaddox Hollow Loop Trail at the new Beaver Lake State Park. I also built the entire Pigeon Roost Loop Trail there - all of it done during the hottest and worst part of the year. I worked on that trail for three months, seven days a week, until it was completed - eight miles of hiking trail. Here is how my schedule would go - I would get up very early, before dawn, go through the Hardees drive-thru and get two breakfast burritos (it was the only place open at 5am back then), drive an hour to the trailhead, then hike in and work all day until dark. I would have cans of veg-all for lunch - I actually ate three or four cans a day - plus drank several gallons of really cold gatorade - I filled up gallons jugs half-to-three-quarters-full with gatorade, then froze them overnight. In the morning I would fill them up with water. As the day went on the jugs with more ice in them melted, and I always had cool wet stuff to drink. But about all I ever ate was the veg-all, all day for three months. Then I would hike/drag myself back to the van at dark, drive an hour back home, stop in to see mom, then go home and cook up a large bag of this WONDERFUL pasta and vegetable mix that they used to sell at SAMS (no longer available). And I would drink a half-gallon of really COLD V8 juice. Then I would do whatever business needed to be done, then fall back into bed, totally exhausted for a few hours of shut eye. I would get up at 4am the next morning and start all over again. Seven days a week for three months. I worked my little fanny off, which by the way had grown pretty small by the end of the project. I lost something like 25 pounds - I was already slim when I started the project, and got down to less then 160 pounds by the end. Needless to say, I was in GREAT shape! When I first bid on this project, I was up against the largest construction companies in the state, and managed to underbid them by just a little bit and won the bid. I walked away with more than $20,000 in my pocket (before taxes). Not all of my trail projects were that lucrative, but I did tend to throw myself into each and every project and worked just as hard, non-stop until the trail was completed and the very best it could be - I learned all about doing this as a volunteer, and carried this on into my professional trail building career. Towards the end of this decade, I would escape the heat and humidity of Arkansas and head to the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming to spend up to five months each summer. Most of the time I was on the payroll of the forest service, running their volunteer trail program, and also producing trail logs of all the trails in the two wilderness areas on the district (out of Lander). One summer (actually two) it was my "job" to go out for ten days at a time and hike every foot of trail, and take pictures - that was it, all summer. And, of course, since I was only allowed to "work" no more than eight hours a day, I had a lot of time left over to flyfish for trout - a newly-discovered passion of mine. Once summer my goal was to catch trout out of 100 different named lakes and streams. I stopped counting when I reached 117, yet continued to fish the rest of the summer. And one summer I decided to fish all summer long with just a single type of fly, and see if I could catch every single species of trout that lived up high. I did indeed use the same fly all summer (actually I only had to use two flies of the same pattern - a wholly bugger), but I missed catching one species - lake trout. I got all the rest, including the prized golden trout. One of the worst things about spending my summers in the high mountains of Wyoming - indeed probably the only negative thing - was having to leave my mom behind. I felt just terrible about that - she was all alone, although she did have a fulltime job (even into her 70's) and lots of friends, but she and I had always been best buddies and it just cut deep every time I drove away and left her standing there in tears. That is one of the worst things I ever did in my life - run off and leave mom alone. And I knew it. Often I would drive around the corner, and have to pull over because I could not see through my own tears (it is happening again). Sorry mom, I wish I could do it over again, I would stay home with you... My mom did a great job of running the business while I was gone, especially with the help of our right-hand girl, Keiko Peterson. She would often come live in my house for months at a time and the two of them would wade through all of the book business stuff and make it all work. Good thing that back then the book business really slowed down in the summertime. Besides looking for my life mate since I was seven, I also spent many years and a great deal of time and effort looking for the perfect piece of property to build a cabin on. I had a few requirements - namely that it be bordered on at least two sides by government land for protection, and that it either have a terrific view or be located on a river. I looked pretty hard for more than 15 years, checking out everything that came up. Nothing. Not even a remote possibility came up. Then one night when I was 37 a forest service lady from Jasper called to tell me there was a piece of property that had just come up for sale near Hawksbill Crag. It was way too expensive for the forest service to consider, and she wanted me to know about it. I called up the owner - who was a chicken farmer in Gravette - and bought the land sight-unseen that night over the phone. There was nothing on the land but timber, and no view that the guy knew of. But it was bordered on two sides by the Upper Buffalo Wilderness Area, and from the looks of things on the map, it had possibilities. I drove out to the property the next day, and then again twice more that week, but each time the land was covered with thick fog - I could not really see a thing. But I did find the corner marker, and figured that I could possibility build a cabin nearby and maybe, perhaps, just have a nice view. The cabin now stands on that exact same spot, right where I first located it. And I decided to call the land "Cloudland" - after the fact it was always up in the clouds, and also because I had just been to a picnic area high in the Colorado Rockies named Cloudland. A perfect name, then and now. Over the years various friends of mine has always told me "if you find that special piece of property and need someone to go in with you, just let me know!" I did not want nor could afford all 80 acres that were offered, but I went ahead and committed to it anyway. Then I started going down the list, beginning with my good friend Ken Eastin. One after another after another passed on the deal for one reason or another, and I can safely say right now every single one of them regrets that decision to this day! (the owner had five other offers on the land - at a higher price than I paid - before the end of the week) I was going through with the deal when I mentioned it to a fellow volunteer who was helping me build the Artist Point Trail one Sunday afternoon. He was not interested in land, but this got him interested, and we drove out to the property later that day. Before we even stopped the car and got out, he said "I'll take it!" That fellow was none other than Bob Chester, my partner in the property out here. So he go the 40 acres that included the old Faddis Cabin, and I got the other end of it that was just woods. Bob later would purchase an additional 80 acres next to us, and now owns 120 acres. Good move Bob! Somewhere along the line I met a lady named Beth Motherwell (aka Beth Garrett). She was the marketing director for the University of Arkansas Press, and convinced me that it was time for me to produce a coffee-table picture book of my work. We worked on the University Press a little bit, but it was obvious the director at the time was only interested in publishing books of poetry - not really much of anything related to Arkansas. My book would have been a perfect fit, but he was a poet, and one on his way out, and really didn't have time for other things. So I bit the bullet and sat down to design and publish my own book - something that is almost unheard of in the photo business, at least for folks who actually plan to make money on it and not lose their shirt. I had built up a pretty good retail store base around the region, and felt I would be able to sell these books, although I really did not know for sure. It would be a $60,000 gamble, but one I was willing to take. So how in the world do you go about designing a coffee table picture book? I spent a LOT of time in bookstores all over the place looking through other books and trying to figure out a pattern, and read and read and read everything I could find on the subject (not much available). And I came to the conclusion - sort of like the hiking trail guidebooks - that there was no special formula, and the best way to do it was to simply produce something that I would like to have on my own table. And so I did. With literally zero experience about all of this, I sat down and designed the entire book (although I did get someone else to design the covers - Liz Lester - and she did a great job - and Matt Bradley picked the actual cover photo, plus Beth did all of the text editing). I was led all the way through the project by John Coghlan, who is still my "print broker" and handles all of my full-color work (works directly with the printers overseas to make sure the job is first class in every way). That first picture book was called ARKANSAS PORTFOLIO: TWENTY YEARS OF WILDERNESS PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM ERNST. It sold out in six months and I had to make another printing. YIPPIE, I had a picture book in print! Once that book was out and doing well my head began to get a little too large for my own good, and I decided I could do the very same thing for wilderness areas in the entire country, and set out to make a plan to shoot the photos and produce a national coffee table picture book. I spent an entire month planning - I literally sat down and listed each place I would love to visit, and when would be the best time to go there - like New England in the fall; Yosemite in the summer; Yosemite in the spring; Yosemite in the winter; Rocky Mountains in the summer; etc. I realized that I COULD actually visit many of the places on my list and do so in a single year. Such began my eleven-month odyssey to photograph the greatest wild places in the United States. That trip is an entire book in itself, but I will say here that was an orgy of brilliant light and color and stone and trees and sand and surf and just the very best of everything this country had to offer. I visited 43 states, drove more than 50,000 miles, and shot more than 40,000 pictures (each costing me about $1 each - MAN I WISH I HAD DIGITAL BACK THEN!). Oops, I am getting on into my fifth decade during this trip, so I had better put this to rest. MY FIFTH DECADE WILL BE POSTED LATER TODAY, I HOPE! But FIRST, here are a few photos I dug up and scanned from the past few years...
FIFTH DECADE - MY 40'S. Just after sunrise on my 40th birthday I left the van and began to hike into Buckskin Gulch in this neat wilderness area in southern Utah. I found a photograph to take, but ended up spending several hours there while the light changed. Turned out to be the back cover of the new picture book - here is a copy of it, with me standing in the way!
Later that day I drove into Page, Arizona and bought myself a b-day present - a new CD by this Sheryl Crow lady. I played it non-stop for several weeks. "All I Want To Do, Is Have Some Fun..." I continued on through Monument Valley and passed through Moab, Utah, where I went to the McDonalds drive-through for my birthday dinner. The day ended with me hiking into Delicate Arch in Arches National Park in the dark - I had special permission from the national park service there to spend the night at the arch - I wanted to do a series of long exposures in the moonlight with star trails behind the arch - got the one I wanted at about 3 or 4am. It was a pretty darn nice birthday. I spent quite a bit of time in May in southern Utah, and also in Yosemite Valley, and elsewhere in the west. I had already covered quite a bit of country since my trip began in January, but still had a lot to go. Later in the summer I picked up my girlfriend at the airport in San Francisco - she was from Texas, and we had been dating for ALMOST a solid year - nearly a record for me! We spent the next three months together driving a lot and working and taking photos for the new book project. We both knew we would end the trip enemies, but it turned out OK and we did not even attempt to kill each other - just being within a few feet of each other for 24 hours a day can really take a toll, but we did just great. The next year I put the book together and published WILDERNESS REFLECTIONS: AN INTIMATE LOOK AT WILD AMERICA. The book got some national attention, including having articles written about it in three national magazines at the same time. And one funny note about that is the fact that all three articles published the very same photo - one from Roark Bluff in Arkansas! (I just sold a print of that scene today as a matter of fact.). While we do have some incredible country in the US, we also have some of the best right here in Arkansas. Later that year I was honored to have a major solo print exhibit at the International Photography Hall of Fame, and then later another solo exhibit at the Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville. At the Arts Center opening the place was so crowded that I had to give multiple programs because they could not fit everyone into the auditorium at the same time. By the end of the exhibit I had sold all of the prints but two of them. Also that same year I attended a big convention in Texas that included most of the big names in the nature photography business. Since Ansel Adams died, the undisputed king of them all was (and still is) David Muench. One of the absolute highlights of my entire photography career was when David and I were next to each other autographing books - AND he came up to me later and asked if I would autograph one of my books for HIM!!! I nearly passed out. I also got to talk with Galen Rowell, Art Wolfe, George Lepp, Art Morris, and a slew of other really famous photographers. That book remains my most favorite picture book of all time - and I am both happy and sad to report that we only have three cases of them left, and after they are gone, they will all be gone forever! I had dinner with George Lepp and his wife a year or two later in Springdale, and we had a long conversation about my career and where I was headed. He kept trying to get me to take some much larger steps and get up into the really big leagues with him, and quite frankly, I really had no interest in such things and told him so. "You are doing such a fine job of it George, why should anyone else butt in!" He is a wonderful and gracious person, and one of the most successful and talented nature photogs on the planet today. I don't get to drop too many names, but I do have a pocket full of famous nature photographers that I can use when needed.... One of the things that I did at every chance was to examine log cabins while on that year-long trip around the country, especially when I was up in Montana. One day while screaming towards the western entrance to Glacier National Park, I came to a screeching halt and flipped a u-turn to go back and look at something I just saw flash out of the corner of my eye. It was a group of small log cabins that were all brand new - Silver Wolf Bed and Breakfast. Forget about the photo ops for the day, we checked right in and stayed for several days. THIS was what I was looking for in a log cabin - it was love at first sight for sure. It was not the design, but rather the logs themselves and the construction of them that got my attention. I got the name of the log home company, and tucked it away in my briefcase. A year or two later when I began to get serious about building my dream log cabin on the Cloudland property, I went looking for this company, and much to my great surprise and shock, I found a group of Amish builders right here in Arkansas that represented this same company from Montana! It was a no-brainer, Kooteni Log Homes was going to build my cabin. I spent a good bit of time drawing up plans for my cabin - spent a lot of time looking at other cabins this same company had built, and were in the process of building. I took the good things from them and took out the bad things. I built the cabin from the ground up to suit me. It took about six months for everything to come into place, but finally my cabin and the property were all ready. The cabin was actually built in Montana first, then it was taken down and shipped to Arkansas and hauled into our site on trailers for reconstruction - it only took the Amish crew two days to erect all the logs. Then another three months to build the decks, roof, and other stuff. I would spend the next year finishing other projects before it was really ready to live in. When I first built the cabin I had no idea if I wanted to LIVE here or just have it as a weekend retreat. I built it large enough so that I COULD move in full-time if needed. Of course, that is exactly what I did a couple of years later, and I have not looked back since. Long about this time we all were hit with some very tragic news - mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And I watched as this strong and very proud lady who was taking very good care of herself and being quite self-sufficient (with a full-time job 30 miles away) sank into a deep depression and really let all the life run right out of her when she was told she could never drive again due to this terrible disease. From that point on she went downhill rapidly. Our good friend, Keiko, moved in with her and helped her out for a year, but soon she needed more care. We eventually found a guardian angel in a young lady named Jeannie - who just happened to have gone to school with my sister, Dorcas. Jeannie took care of mom for another year as mom continued to slide. Then we had to get full-time care, 24 hours a day, and Jeannie's good friend Bill Metzner was able to step right in and handle everything. He was a godsend. I HATED to take mom out of her home of more than 50 years, and wanted to keep her there as long as possible. Jean and Bill being there helped make that happen, but eventually we had to move her into more suitable care. By this time the lady that I knew and loved was no longer with us - nothing but a shell of her former self, and her mind was long gone. I know there are many ways to die, but that has got to be one of the worst. And it is also for those around watching and caring for you. She was the greatest person of all time, no doubt. And touched so many lives. And continues to do so. Thanks, mom, once again... My publishing business continued to grow all through my fifth decade, and I produced more guidebooks and photo books - one of the photo books being the BUFFALO RIVER WILDERNESS that I did with one of the best watercolor artists in the country today - William McNamara. Billy is actually our closest neighbor out here, and is a genuine character in every way. I got to spend many weeks looking through every painting that he had ever done of the Buffalo River area in my quest to pick the best ones for the book. In the end all three of us agreed on all but two of the paintings to go in the book (me, Billy, and his wife, Milancy). My most favorite painting of his of all time was a view of a lady wading into a quiet and colorful pool of water, bare to the waist, and long, flowing hair covering much of her back. The feeling of this painting was quite wonderful. But for some reason neither of them liked the painting, and I think actually did not like the person who purchased it at all, and after weeks of pleading, there was no way it would be included in the collection that I was going to publish. On the other hand, there was a painting that both of them really wanted in the book that I thought was not very good at all - in fact it kind of turned me away when I looked at it. So I held my guns, and it did not make it in. All the rest were terrific, and this book sold really well (it is now out of print, except for a small handful of autographed copies that we reluctantly ship out from time to time). When I realized I was spending more time at the cabin than I was in town, and UPS agreed to come out to Cloudland and pickup packages, I made the decision to move here full-time. Of course, I had to build an office and warehouse first, but that only took a little bit of planning, and a very large Bushwhacker Party and it was almost complete. I moved in and continued with my guidebooks and photography. At some point along in there - in fact it was actually before I moved out here - I started keeping a Journal of life out here in the woods. In fact it was on May 18th, 1998. We are coming close to the 7th anniversary of that first Journal entry. I only wanted to write it for a year, but I was unable to stop, and so here we are. Most of the interesting things that have happened to me since that date (that are fit to print) have been written about in the Cloudland Journal and are available for you to read - so I won't bore you by going over all of that once again. But I will make a comment about the most important thing in all that time that happened to me, indeed the most important thing in my entire life. I scheduled a hike on a rainy day in the summer of 2000 on a trail that I had recently constructed for the city of Eureka Springs. It was an official outing for our hiking club (the Ozark Highlands Trail Association), and there were quite a few folks gathered at the trailhead when Aspen and I arrived. As we walked up to greet the group I saw HER from a long way off - from that point on that day I could think of nothing else but her, and in fact could not for a good long while after that. To say it was love at first sight would be an understatement. Her name was Pamela Dedmon, and she was from a little town just outside of Springfield, Missouri. I, of course, used Aspen to his full potential in order to get her attention, and to keep it, and oh brother did he ever come through for me! Pam and I began a serious e-mail correspondence over the next few weeks, and eventually she was invited to Cloudland for the weekend. I think we both knew long before that first day here that we would be together - just one of those things that hits you and you KNOW is right. We spent the very first night up in Aspen's meadow, curled up with each other on sleeping bags under a blanket of a million stars above. (there was NO hanky panky going on, just two folks enjoying being with each other) The next day spent a lot of time at the cabin - and had to deal with a Journal groupie that sort of invited herself in (poor Pam, she got up to speed right away with strangers dropping by unannounced!). Later one I took her down to the Buffalo River and we went swimming. All I can say is the entire time with her - every moment - was pure magic - STILL IS!!! But on that sunny afternoon in a secluded hole of water, my life hit its stride, and finally, after all these years, I found my life mate! There really was no question about it, but just to seal the deal - and I will never forget the look in her face nor the sound of her voice as long as I live - this vision came swimming over to me and asked a very simple question: "Isn't this called the SKINNY DIPPING HOLE?" Yup, I knew I was hooked! By the way, we had already set a few ground rules for our first weekend together - there would be NO hanky panky allowed! This allowed us total freedom from the usual stress of wondering if anything was going to happen. We simply took it off the table and were able to be honest and open and well, begin the process of getting to know each other without all that sex stuff getting in the way. None the less, we had a terrific time down on the old Buffalo River, and to this day that remains one of the greatest moments of my entire life, and always will be. And, of course, Pam turned out to be a package of two. It has never been a secret that I did not like kids. In fact for several years there was a sign on the front door of the cabin that read: No smoking. No shoes. No arguments. And PLEASE, if you have dogs or children they must be tied up outside! But this one was different - from the moment I met little Amber a second relationship that I hope will last a lifetime began. And after all, I have had this obsession with the number "3" all of my life, so it was perfectly natural that we would become a family of three. On the first day of spring the next year, Pam and I returned to the spot at Lake Leatherwood where we met and were married. For the first time in my life I had it all, and was the most happiest camper on the planet! Yep, it is all about timing. 5/11/05 Today I begin my sixth decade on this earth - it’s about TIME I got here! (I count 0-9 as the first, 10-19 as the second, etc.) I’m not a normal guy, and have been looking forward to moving into middle age for a good long while now. And while a lot of folks will point and stare and laugh at me for turning 50 today, the joke is on them - I love it! How could I not? I am in the exact place where I want to be, right where I belong, and where I plan to continue to thrive in both my personal and professional lives. I wake up with the woman of my dreams every day. My life is filled with joy, and with all the projects I want to pursue, whenever I choose to do so. And a big added plus - my in-laws are just perfect, and are moving into the county soon! Just to give you some idea how complete my life is these days, here is what the best daughter in the world just handed me: For your birthday I will write a fifty-word essay on why I love you in my life. Wow, I’ve already used 22 words! You are sweet and kind, loving, caring, and think things through. You are funny and a kid. You support me in every thing I do. Done! Happy Birthday - I Love You! ---Amber
Yup, I’m 50 today and am the happiest camper on the planet (have I already said that?). And I hope the quick and erratic review of the past 49 years have not been too long or boring for you here. As this milestone approached I sat down the other day and decided to put down a few of the things I could remember from my past years, and then I realized - as I sat there writing hour after hour after hour - that my life has not been quite as simple as I had thought, and that it would take a few pages to digest it all. So I wrote and wrote and wrote, and then I wrote some more, all the while knowing I was missing out on about 90% of the important stuff. I never talked about the head-on collision that changed my life, nor going to the White House to meet President Regan and get an award from him (and sneaking off while in the Rose Garden to go pee behind a tree - and getting caught by the Secret Service!); or when I was inducted into my high school Hall Of Honor (boy, what THAT a shock!); or going back to Washington to receive the volunteer of the year award for the nation from the chief of the forest service; or a million other things that have been so much a part of who I am and have become. This has been a brief look, and I thank you if you did indeed wade through it all! I hope to continue to report about life here at the edge of the wilderness for a good long while yet to come, and will probably point my camera out the window a time or two as well. THANKS to each and every one of you who have ever logged in and read any of the Cloudland Journal - if not for you, there would be no reason to write. OK, got the first half in the bag, now it is on to the next 50! NOW, back to today. We’ve had a bear at the cabin every night this week, and got to measure his tracks the other day - after he knocked down and walked all over one of our out buildings with his muddy feet. His rear feet measure about eight inches long, and the front paws are just over five inches - not sure how that measures up in bear land, but the tracks seem kind of large to me. Normally it is the two-year old bears that are kicked out of the den and have to get out and fend for themselves and get into trouble this time of the year. And this guy is probably one of them, just one with big feet! I was outside late last night just milling around and it was kind of spooky - the frogs and other night voices were sounding weird. And then all of a sudden Lucy got into a tussle with a raccoon - we have only ever had one of those up here in all this time! She did a great job of fending it off and chasing it into the forest. Way to go Lucy! It was HOT here yesterday, as I'm sure it was where you were - the temp got up to 82 degrees and the AC kicked in. My daughter challenged me to a water balloon fight - she is still young and did not realize just exactly WHO she was dealing with - I'm a pro at such things, and one of us limped back to the cabin soaking wet - it wasn't me! Right now the eastern and southern skies are turning rosy pinks and reds, the air is kind of hazy and filled with the sounds of laughter and play by all sorts of feathered friends. I have two major jobs today - one, to finish planting the "burm" out in front of the cabin that I started on Mom's Day; and two, to sit down and select the photos for the new 2006 Arkansas Wild & Free wall calendar. Pam has been working on all the dates and stuff to format the calendar, now all I have to do is look through several thousand photos and come up with the best 13! For Mom's Day I wanted to plant a few flowers in honor of my mom, but first I had to clear away two years worth of weeds, some of them several feet tall. We have this "burm" right in front of the cabin - kind of like a much larger one that mom used to have at her house. She planted that one each year with impatience flowers in the spring and mums in the fall. I want to keep up her tradition here. But first, those darn weeds. I have been waiting for it to rain out here for a couple of weeks, and wouldn't you know it but as soon as I put on my work gloves and stepped outside it finally began to rain! On one hand, yippie! On the other hand, yippie too - I love to work out in the rain! I pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and within an hour or two had just about every single weed removed from the burm. Then I scraped off the top layer of weed roots and stuff with my handy-dandy McLoed trail building tool. Then I moved a giant iron kettle over and set it up on top of the burm. This kettle was brought to the United States in the 1800's by great, great, great, grandparents, and was used to make lye soap in (among other things). Mom has been planting flowers in it for the past 30-40 years. Then I started planting the flowers here, digging individual holes and mashing them in just right. While I was doing it the sky really opened up and I got rained on pretty hard, but it felt WONDERFUL! I only managed about half finished before the clock got to me and I had to go clean up and head into town for a board meeting. So today I will get the rest planted. Come on rain! The wind is blowing this morning and it is quite pleasant outside. My birthday present to myself is to begin to get into good shape today, and will include at least one trip a day down to the river for my fitness hike. My lovely bride has been outdistancing me by a huge margin of late in her cancer walk training - yesterday she did 13 miles, the day before 17 miles, and later this week 18 miles! I knew I would have trouble keeping up with her......So I'm leaving the computer behind here in a few moments and heading down to the river, then will return and get to those plants, and then back to the computer to begin picking the calendar shots. Sounds like a pretty nice day to be alive in the wilderness, and a great start to my next 50. Oops, I think I hear my bride calling - something about those 50 spankings... LATE EVENING UPDATE. Another hot one today, but I got my exercise in down to the river and back before it got too steamy, and I even made it all the way back up the hill without stopping to blow - pretty good for this fat OLD man! The forest was beautiful, as always, and lush and thick and mysterious. About half way down I found a colorful garter snake, so I stopped to take his picture. In my haste to get the camera all set up and focused just right, Mr. snake got tired of posing and ran off. I did get a nice photo of a wildflower on the way down - one I had not seen down there before (identified as a Virginia waterleaf by the famous and always-at-the-ready Don Kurz!).
As I got closer to the bottom I started to hear the music of Whitaker Creek - that was very good to hear because I was afraid that with our lack of rain the water would be all dried up. But it was running pretty good, and was colorful in the morning sun. I stepped out into the middle of the creek and shot a photo looking both up and downstream. Nice and quiet and peaceful. And the temp in that last little bit down by the creek was probably 7 or 8 degrees cooler than just up on the top of the bank.
My next chore for the day was to finish planting mom's flowers in the front yard, which took me about an hour - my lovely bride came in behind me and covered them all up with a thick layer of mulch to protect them from the heat and to help hold water. I discovered that our water supply was just about empty, so I loaded up the trailer and big water tank and headed on down to the spring in Boxley. It takes about two hours to drive down there, fill up, and make it back to the cabin. I ended up making two trips down to the spring - we have been gradually filling up Amber's little swimming pool this week (which is why our holding tank was just about empty), and so we have been using quite a bit of water. As I approached the cabin - just before dark - with this second load my girls were standing out on the front deck with a strange grin on their faces, and sort of jumping up and down. Just a few minutes before, while Pam was downstairs working out, Amber had walked out onto the deck and into the yard and looked up and right square into the face of a GREAT BIG BEAR! (the first one she had ever seen anywhere) He was actually "sitting on his behind just like Aspen does" according to Amber. Needless to say she was very excited, especially since this bear was many times larger than her, and sitting less than 50 feet away. She said the bear immediately looked up at her, made a very strange grunting sound, and then got up, turned around, and ran off into the woods. HOW EXCITING! But also how scary. I don't want my girls running into bears out here at our home. Benny and Mildred are over at Bob's cabin today and reported significant damage from the bear over there. Hum, seems like this guy is making a real pest out of himself. As soon as I got the water tank pump installed and working - it was getting dark by this time - I put on a pair of jeans and headed out into the woods in the direction the bear had run to. Holy cow it was already DARK out in them thar woods! I walked along the trail slowly and as quietly as I could - I wanted to see if I could find the bear. It was so dark that I could only make out shapes, not any color, however I could certainly still see movement, and something that was coal black as this bear was. I went out several hundred yards to where I had a wide view thorough the trees and stopped and watched and listened. Before too long I began to hear noises - something was rustling in the leaves. The bench off to my right dropped steeply off the hillside and out of sight - and that is where the noise was coming from. I strained in the darkness to see any movement, any BLACK forms, but nothing. My heart was racing, and I could feel it thumping on along. I began to envision all sorts of things (do you remember the time that I wrote about here in the Journal when I was in the porch swing and a bear came up and licked my face?), Including turning around and seeing the bear charging right on down the trail at me. However, no bear appeared, at least, not that I could make out. It was almost pitch black in the forest by the time I hiked on back to the cabin. The girls were waiting for my report, and I hated to disappoint them, but no bear. We try to keep things as clean as we can around here - especially as far as garbage and stuff like that goes - but sometimes the bears just come right on in and make themselves at home anyway. I'm hoping this is the last we see of this bear right here around the cabin, but you can bet we will be keeping a sharp eye out for him - and Amber will probably not venture outside much on her own for a while! By the way, for those of you who try to keep up with such things, it looks like President Bush has just opened up more than 58 million acres of forest service land in this country that had been protected, and now will allow logging and motorized vehicle use where it had not been allowed before. This includes some pretty large tracts of land here in Arkansas. Simply amazing what you can do by stuffing a big wad of cash in the right pockets. It is getting late and things have quieted down here a bit, though Amber is still pretty hyped up about the bear, and is kind of scared to go to bed. I'm going to go out and make the rounds once again here in a few minutes, and I hope that will calm her down a bit. A tiny sliver of a moon is dropping low in the west, the night birds and frogs and other critters are up and playing, and I suspect that old bear is out there dancing around a little bit too - just looking for a partner - I'm not really any good at the two step Mr. Bear! Oh yes, and I have to go out and soak in the hot tub a little bit too...... It has been a wonderful birthday, and I THANK ALL OF YOU who have been sending in a steady stream of notes all day long. I made my favorite dishes tonight - Banff Pasta - and my bride baked a cake - you guys are the icing on that cake, and I appreciate all the kind words - I will try to live up to them all! 5/12/05 Lots to do early around the cabin this morning, but I was able to slip away and get out into the woods just after daylight for a little hike. Nice and cool and quite aromatic in the deep woods. One of my most favorite flowering plants in the wilderness is the wild azalea, or mountain azalea, and while I think this year has been a banner year for them (like just about every other blooming plant), I have not pointed my camera at any yet this year. Today I was lucky enough to find a perfect little group of them, with each flower just right. Often times one or more of the flowers in a group are either not quite flowered yet, or past their prime, or have something wrong with them. I was told that frost bit a lot of the blooms this year, especially ones out in the open where the heavier frost could make a direct hit. These plants that I found today were back in the forest and must have been protected from the frost as none of them were burned. Their fragrance was heavy and sweet, and covered everything with a fine dust. When you do this sort of thing - take macro shots of flowers and such - you have a very limited depth of field (the actual area front-to-back that is in focus). So if you want to get everything in focus, you have to try to line up the plane of the subject with the camera, and that often means the camera has to be high up in the air - that was the case today, and my tripod took the camera up above my head, and I had to use this special finder attachment thingy in order to be able to see through the camera viewfinder to line up and focus the shot - it makes it all kind of awkward to work with. Once I got everything set up I had to wait, and wait, and wait - there were breezes blowing through the trees and these azalea plants were dancing right along with them. Sometimes the branches moving would let some of the early-morning sunshine in, and the flowers would literally light up and glow. Too much of that light was not good, but just a little bit was perfect - especially when I could bounce some of it off of a cloth reflector I was holding out in front of the flower back up into the face of the flower. As you might have noticed I really like doing macros this year, especially now that I have been using a couple of special lighting techniques like this to really make the flower stand out - the way any good portrait should do! About an hour later I had taken two photos - or should I say 100 shots each of two different poses. It was tough to make sure the flower was absolutely still and the lighting was correct. Let's see, 200 shots times $1 per shot for my old medium-format camera, would be, hum, $200 SAVED on film and processing today because I was using digital! I spent a while inside making up some test prints and files for the new picture book that I am working on - we are working with the printers overseas to refine our workflow so they can produce the very best quality out of these digital files. In the "old" days we used to physically ship a CD of our files over to Hong Kong or Korea for them to test, but now I can just upload the digital files onto their server and they can get to work on them right away. I then print out some test prints from the same files on my printer here, then they will try to match those test prints. Once they get that all figured out, then we all know what the final printed output of the books and calendars will look like. This afternoon I had to make a quick trip down to the Hastings store in Russellville - they have become our largest book dealer in the state (and out of the state too). And today they began to stock both of the National Geographic Trails Illustrated maps of the Buffalo River - the East and West maps. These are the best maps to get to go along with the guidebooks - for those of you who must have a topo map with you. So now folks in the Russellville area (or anyone heading up to the Ozarks that takes Exit #84) can pickup a copy of these maps - we just became distributor for them. On the way back home I finally, after driving and hiking by thousands of specimens of this flowering plant, stopped and spent some time taking a photo of wild indigo. The evening sun was low and quite lovely, and while I had to fight with the wind once again, I think I got the photo I have always wanted - shot another 60-70 shots of this beauty to make sure I got one keeper.
The air was very clear outside this evening just before dark - kind of warm, with gentle breezes. It has been quite hazy this week, but I think a cold front or something must be moving in. And so is the wildlife moving - today I saw several different sets of deer, two raccoons, and a bob cat, all crossing the road in front of me. I expect our bear will be on the move as well, I just hope he is moving away from us. He came back late last night just as I was getting ready to step into the hot tub, and hung around a little while before I managed to scare him off. In fact, I'm headed out that direction right now - for a quick soak. The night sky is dark and full of stars, and the airwaves are booming with the music of the wilderness. 5/17/05 The wilderness is cool and calm and quite wonderful at first light this morning. The sun has just popped up over the eastern horizon and bright sunshine is not flooding into the canyons below. The world is lush - rather fat and happy. I have not written in a while, so will try to do a quick recap of things. We had a tremendous thunderstorm roll through the other night - one of the most explosive I've ever been through out here. And we got about an inch of rain out of the deal, which was great! It was very hard rain though, and went straight into the parched ground - I doubt there were many waterfalls running as a result of it. At this time of the year the expanding vegetation sucks up everything it can get. I got an e-mail a couple of days later from some guys who were sleeping out on Hawksbill Crag when the storm hit. (sleeping out on the Crag is not a wise choice, no matter what the weather - it is very dangerous, and actually sort of bad ethics to camp right in the middle of a natural wonder, but I know folks do it from time to time - there are several level camping spots on the bench up above and out of sight of the Crag, and that is where folks are supposed to camp) They said it was quite a ride when the storm hit, and I bet was an adventure they will remember for a good long while. One of my fondest memories is surviving a direct hit from an incredibly powerful storm that set down right on top of us while camped at Silver Maple State Park in Texas one year - I just knew we would not survive, but he held on for dear life and did. We had a dinner party at the cabin on Saturday evening and feed 28 people some might fine food that included grilled tuna and chicken, and BBQ ribs. We had a few celebrities in attendance, including William McNamara - a first for Billy to visit one of our parties. Most of time Billy remains secluded in his mountain cabin near hear and you will never see him in public. But goodness when you do get him out in public he is one charismatic guy, never a loss for words - and he will hold your interest the entire time. Another author here was Glenn Wheeler, whose Swimming Holes of the Ozarks guidebook is picking up steam as the weather heats up (he is also working on two other books for us, one a guidebook, the other a picture book). And a soon-to-be-famous photographer and writer, Ray Scott, and his lovely bride, Susan, were here as well. You will be seeing Ray's name written here a lot in the near future. We are publishing Ray's very first picture book this year, and in fact that is what is consuming me this week and next - doing all of the design and layout work for Ray's book. It will be a small, intimate photo book with 40 of Ray's great images he has taken around the country, including several from Alaska and Montana, as well as Arkansas. Some folks think it is weird that I would work on and publish the images of another photographer, but it is actually quite fun - he has some really amazing images - just wait until you see this one shot he took in Glacier National Park that is simply breathtaking! And just as a side note about all of this, I needed one more image to fill out a section on "water" in the book, and kept asking Ray for more photos, more photos. Like many of the really great artists, he is his biggest critic, and never thinks his stuff is good enough. When I finally got him to scan and send along a few more images, one of them buried in the bunch turned out to be just one of the most spectacular images in the entire book, a mirror-reflection shot on a lake up in Alaska that will, yup, take your breath away once again. Ray's book will be small in comparison to the ones I produce, and will be a perfect book to retreat to a quiet corner of your house with, or out in the yard. I'll keep you posted when it becomes available. Last night we had the biggest event around here in a good long while - Amber's elementary graduation ceremony at her school in Jasper. I was not expecting too much out of all this, but I must say I was impressed with how nice everything was, from the set up of the stage to the music to the ceremony itself. I was also stuck with one thought by the school Superintendent who told the kids (and the PARENTS as well) that one of the most important things in life they can learn is to FORGIVE - to forgive SOON, to forgive OFTEN, and to forgive COMPLETELY. Words to live by for sure. We all were obviously rather proud of our Amber, and one thing that I noticed that while she had on a very nice skirt and top, she was not all dressed up like the other girls - yet she was one of the most beautiful young ladies there. She has this natural beauty that needs no covering up (Amber is against makeup as much as I am). The other girls looked stunning as well, but they did not look like themselves with all the makeup. You may know that Amber is a pretty smart cookie. And she hauled in quite a few awards during the evening, including Honor Roll for the entire year. But she got two awards that kind of surprised us all, and made us so proud - one was a special Academic Achievement award that was given by President Bush. (she will probably never display that one because she can't stand the man, but it was a great honor for her none the less) AND she received a very special Student Citizenship award from her classmates - this was the highest honor for her in my opinion, and was voted on by all of her classmates. It is onething to be booksmart, but quite another to be considered as one of the best all around people in the class. We try to instill a level of respect for fellow human beings in Amber, and that was what the award was based on (this says a LOT about her her mom, my bride, has raised her, and the example that Pam leads by every day of her life). I was beaming the entire night, and really puffed up like a banty rooster because I was SO PROUD of Amber. And just a side note - I was the only person there wearing a sport coat, something you will NEVER see me wearing! (I don't even own a tie, but will put on this jacket for very special events.) This was my way of showing Amber what I thought of her, and how much I respect they way she is living her life. Today I will get to work on Ray's book, and that will pretty much be my life this week. With our three main photo projects hitting the fan this month (Ray's book, our 2006 calendar, and my own new picture book), I won't get to see too much of the great outdoors for a while! 5/18/05 HAPPY MT. ST. HELENS DAY! Twenty five years ago today I was headed to Alaska to spend a month taking photos. I had originally thought about going to Washington and hanging out near Mt. St. Helens and seeing if I could get a photo of it erupting, but glad I put that one off! I passed through the ash cloud somewhere up in Nebraska - it was quite impressive, even that far away from the explosion site. I picked up my buddy, Peter van den Heuvel, in Billings, Montana the next day, and we drove on up to Alaska, beginning the first of many great photo trips of my career. I would make it over to the volcano later in the summer - even chartered a plane to fly around it and take a few photos - there was a small eruption while we were up in the air, and the pilot had to fly away to cover - I, of course, kept telling him to bank left or right so I could get a picture!
This morning it is breezy and cool here at the cabin, and a little hazy. I was out wondering around late last night and it was windy then, with a bright half-moon shining down on the wilderness. But the moonlight was not real crisp, like there was haze in the air, and I guess there was. A couple of years ago I was standing on the top of a very tall bluff in the wilderness and spotted what looked like a very nice place on the main Buffalo River far below in the bottom of the canyon, and made a mental note to visit someday. Yesterday afternoon I fulfilled that promise (I needed to take a break from the book-design work). So I loaded up the truck and drove around to this 4wd road that leads to the edge of the wilderness where I would begin my hike. That road has gotten into pretty bad shape lately and it took some serious four-wheeling to get to the end of the road (in a another year or two only really serious high-clearance 4wd vehicles will be able to make this trip - takes a pretty serious one to get in there now, as I have). The temp was not too bad - in the mid 70's, and the wind was blowing so it was actually kind of cool. I had only gone about 100 yards along an old, abandoned road that was thick and grown up with trees and brush, when I looked up and saw two critters standing in the middle of the "trail" looking right at me - yup, you guessed it, TWO BEARS! These were not cubs, but were certainly twins - exactly alike in every way, and coal black, except for their brown muzzles. They were standing next to each other in perfect formation. We three stared each other down for a few seconds - I'm sure they were thinking, as I was, who had the right-of-way. Although I would have loved to, there was no way I could have taken a photo of them - any movement on my part would send them running. They eventually decided to yield to me and disappeared in a flash - only took them about three bounds and they were into the thick brush. They looked to be two-year old bears to me, much larger than cubs, yet not completely fullgrown yet, but they were pretty large bears. I had just looked at another bear the day before here at the cabin - and he WAS a monster bear. This is the problem bear that has been visiting the cabin lately - we decided he must have been a problem bear that had been trapped elsewhere by the game & fish commission and dumped out here - large, male bears like this guy just don't pack up and move into a new territory unless they are put there. Anyway, it was great to see the twin bears, but I hoped that momma was not around! I continued on hiking. The forest was lush, lush, LUSH, and every bush I brushed up against sent out a cloud of pollen. Within a few minutes my eyes were watering and I was coughing like crazy. I soon learned to look away and not breathe at certain times and I was OK. The trail was lined with wild roses bushes on both side - they were pretty thick, and the air was filled with their sweet fragrance. Down, down, down I went, until I finally come to an old home site once owned by the famous Harold and Margaret Hedges (Hedges Pouroff is named after them). They were involved early and often with the preservation of the Buffalo as a National River - this fact eventually caused them their home, as local rednecks burned down their house during Christmas one year when the Hedges were away. They moved into Harrison after that, and their homeplace taken over by the wilderness (we lost Harold a couple of months ago). From the homesite I continued on down the hill to the Buffalo River. I don't normally like to shoot photos in the middle of the day (well, actually it was 4pm by the time I arrived), but if you get the right composition, and get down really low to the water, you can get some incredible color reflecting in the water - that is what I was after, as well as the different shapes and colors in a pool that had these giant boulders tossed around all over the place in it. For the next three hours I was like a kid in a candy store, and set up shot after shot after shot. One problem though - as the sun moved lower in the sky, the light and color changed dramatically, so when I found a good shot, I had to work fast or it would be gone. There was a set of rapids that led into the big-boulder hole of water, and I found myself wanting to shoot images at BOTH ends of the rapids. There was not a good way to get from one end to the other, except to boulder-hop all the way, which got kind of tricky in a few places. And sometimes when I made my way to one end and set up and was taking pictures, I knew the shot I wanted was just perfect up at the OTHER end, and would be gone by the time I returned! Such is the life of a nature photographer in a "target rich" location like this was when the light was changing. I managed to get a few good shots I think before the sun dipped below the ridgetop to the west - most of the interesting color disappeared with it.
Back to the computer for me today! | ||
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