Hey Folks
Why 2 posts so close to one another? I just got an email from this fella, whom I met and hung with in Chile this last winter (their summer). We went down to the Baker River together, along with a bunch of crazy folks, and all had a good time. We were there for 4 days, but the trip took another 2 days traveltime. It was quite a mission. Continue reading
Hey Folks,
Here’s the last of my series on the Arctic national Wildlife Refuge, for now. I’d like to write some more about the place, but will do that later. I wanted to post this because I read somewhere the other day that because the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not a pristine wilderness, we may as well go ahead and drill there. What so often is forgotten or neglected is that much of the disturbances to the pristine nature of the land here are a function os previous oil exploration. Out on the coastline, the tundra is littered with signs and debris of oil exploration. Whilst I was hiking one afternoon, I counted over 300 empty oil barrels lying on the tundra in one very small section of coastal plain. Continue reading
Hey Folks,
I was lucky enough to spend a few hours one long afternoon with this little short-tailed weasel. I’ve hardly ever had to work as hard as trying to photograph this little fellow. Weasels are like ferrets on crack. Unbelievable energy. They stop for a second, glance around, and take off again, top speed, racing around, darting this way and that, Continue reading
Hey Folks,
I wanted to follow my previous post with this photo, showing the environment and landbase the tundra swan lives within.This is the same bird, in the same pond, from almost the exact same spot – but this photo was taken with a wider lens (Nikon 70-200mm). I love tight, close-up portraits of wildlife (and people) but I always enjoy a photo showing the subject in place. I think of ‘in place’ as reference to the greater scope of what we mean by ‘nature’. When we closely consider the world around us, we begin to see that these creatures and features we share this existence with do not live in isolation, and aren’t, in fact, separate from one another. Continue reading
Hey Folks,
On my last evening in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, camped out on the edge of the coastal plain by the Beaufort Sea, I hiked countless hours trying to find subjects to photograph. The light was magical, from about 10:00pm until I went to bed at 4:30am. Unfortunately, I had a tough time finding subjects to shoot. I saw a few foxes, but didn’t get close enough to any for photos. I saw my first ever snowy owl, an unbelievably beautiful, yet extremely skittish bird that I never got close to. Continue reading
Hey Folks
Wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. This is a red fox kit, taken just a hundred yards or so from where we camped along the Canning river on the coastal plain. This photo was taken around 3am. It was pretty cloudy and overcast, but the clouds didn’t go all the way to northern horizon, so eventually there was a little break, where the sun dipped just below the cloudline towards the horizon, Continue reading
Hey Folks,
Here’s a photo of the arctic coastal plain, near the Canning River, ANWR, Alaska. This is the now infamous ‘coastal plain’, known as Section 1002, the area that is so frequently proposed be open for oil drilling. One of the big arguments made in favor of opening the area to drilling is that the coastal plain is ‘boring’, or ’empty’, or ‘nothing’. I disagree that it’s boring. I found it stimulating – the place simply feels alive, vibrant. There’s an energy here Continue reading
Hey Folks,
Next I’m going to do a short series on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as ANWR, in Alaska. I’m sure most of the readers here are reasonably well versed in the situation in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the seemingly constant proposals to open the coastal plain to oil drilling. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, a quick summary would go like this:
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge sits in Alaska’s far northeast, extending from south of the Continental Divide in the Brooks Mountain Range, north over the Divide, stretching across the coastal plain to the Beaufort Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Continue reading
Hey Folks
Here’s another of my buddy Matze, running a little drop on the Baker River, in Patagonia, Chile. The Baker River is absolutely awesome, 4 or 5 of the biggest Class 5 rapids anywhere. It’s huge water. I was fortunate that some of my friends were nice enough to get out of bed early one morning and come run the Baker in nice light. Matze took this crazy line after doing some scouting – it wasn’t his smoothest line, but he made it OK. Continue reading