Light in a Box

Sarah and I were perched on a hill just in time for the waning moments of sunset. We pretty much ran half of the Badlands Loop trail to reach this vantage point before the sun slipped away. The night before, as the sun disappeared a bright orange ray cut through the navy blue of the distant mountains. It was between peaks from the trail that I noticed the band of light and it dissipated before I could get a clear vantage point. With another clear sky and a perch atop one of the dirt mounds I was confident I would capture the moment tonight. However as that sun dipped below the mountains again and the moment came for that orange beam to shoot down the hillside, nothing happened. The sun had found a straggling cloud behind the mountains that killed the beam.   Then next morning we grabbed a great breakfast in Furnace Creek, a little oasis surrounded by desert that includes the visitor center, restaurants, a resort, grass, palm trees and a golf course. From there we drove th...

4 o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting up in the bed of our hotel room in Basalt, Colorado. Sarah and I had planned on getting up early, just not this early. My phone had woken me up, but it wasn't the alarm I had set. Now I was staring at the wall trying to make sense of it all. I'd heard the words that were said, I felt the heartbreak on the other end and it paralyzed me. The only thing moving in that hotel room at 4:00am was my mind replaying the conversation, struggling to comprehend the words I'd heard. Morning found a way into our room and the wall hadn't moved, nothing had. Sarah clung to me, tears still in her eyes, I felt her warmth but beyond her the world had gone cold. A friend so dear had passed in the night. Someone I had spoken to two days before, sending good wishes, and suddenly he was gone. His battle had been unfair, his enemy was doing everything to crush him but he refused to let it win. He found ways to do what he loved, he found the st...

Even as a kid I was a light traveler. I quickly realized a backpack full of activities was frivolous luggage. Air travel kept me fixated on the view from above, and I would get car sick if I concentrated on anything but the road. My luggage became reduced to a small pile of clothes and eventually a camera bag. So, when I threw in an extra days worth of clothes and second pair of shoes for Oregon, something was up. On Friday morning, Sarah and I cruised through the Columbia River Gorge for the second time in two days. The sky is gloomy with clouds promising another day of slow rain. The sun has been up for a couple hours but hasn't made headway penetrating the sheet of gray above us: a typical dreary, brisk morning not uncommon to the spring weather we grew up with in Wisconsin. We can feel the moisture in the air as we saddle up for the hike. It has been a while since I've felt the cold stick of humidity. I close my eyes and picture a silent lake, stirred by the crash of a fi...

Sarah and I are still working out a system for traveling together. I have my photographic priorities, while she is used to more laid back vacations. For our trip to Oregon we tried to keep our days flexible to keep stress from accumulating if we miscalculated the duration of a hike, made a spontaneous stop along the way, or maybe the totally predictable spring weather decided to throw a tantrum. For our first day, we laid out three hikes we hoped to accomplish. Little did we know, the first hike would completely derail the entire trip. Punchbowl Falls is one, of many, picturesque waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge that cuts its way through northern Oregon. It serves as a popular swimming hole in the summer on top of its reputation as one of the most popular hikes in the state. We began our trek on a drizzly Thursday afternoon, hoping the combination of a weekday capped with gloomy weather would hinder the crowds. The camera can get frustrated having to work around oblivious p...