Winter Solstice, 2022

 

Searching for first ice...

 

 

 

 

 

Water is life.

#solstice

Journey's End – Ten Years After

 

The original Odyssey was designed to have a beginning, a middle and an end. I returned to the field one last time in November 2022, sure that I'd reached my end in more ways than one.

I carried with me all the film in the world I had left. It wasn't much.

 

Late season light along Superior's southern shore ranges from stark to sublime with little room between. Given the limitations of film, the light often proved nettlesome.

By then, I was well prepared for that.

 

Each successive day of fieldwork got squeezed a bit harder at both ends. There simply weren't many productive hours to be had, regardless of conditions.

And it was cold.

 

The final day of my Superior Odyssey went by lickety split.

As light ran short, I headed to where the wild Presque Isle River enters deep Ottawa National Forest on its way to the big lake.

In other words, I went home.

 

That afternoon, the woods were silent.

 

Not even birds uttered any sound.

 

Only my beloved wild river spoke softly to me.

 

With the last of my film, I responded.

 

The light grew increasingly difficult.

 

Time ran out.

 

After 26,000+ miles over 14 grueling months and with 20 sheets of short-dated large format transparency still left to my name, I shut down 30+ years of fieldwork and called it a career.

By then I was physically, emotionally and professionally spent. Can't say I was exactly unhappy to see it all end, in the moment.

The car at least, could be made warm.

 

A year or so later, Heather informed me I couldn't not be a photographer any longer.

The wholly unexpected transition over to digital capture caused this entire project to evolve from original intent into...

Something else, over time.

They say Man makes plans, god laughs.

So here we are, ten long and still reasonably productive years after.

 

Shining Light on the Prairie – the Cusp of Winter

 

We're told that the first hard freeze of autumn will arrive this weekend.

 

They say to expect it'll settle in.

 

That'd be only a couple days later than seasonal average.

 

So provisionally at least, science wins again. Damned science.

 

But I'll hang onto October just a bit longer all the same, thanks.

Shining Light on the Prairie – The Cusp of November

 

Opportunity coincided with unseasonably fine weather so last week, we went walking.

 

First toward the west-southwest, where at a natural museum autumnal life hadn't yet rolled over completely cold.

 

Indeed, in places it proved remarkably resilient.

 

That's what happens when life is closely tended with love & money while accumulated knowledge is plowed back into it, season after season after season.

 

On our walk through the natural museum we met old an old man, hanging tough.

 

And babies, preparing to.

 

Soft light streamed through oaken woods.

 

 

The forest floor collected and held moisture from the night before, the first real rain in a month.

Barely a breeze stirred.

October drew fast to a close. Sensing a last chance, we headed north to an oasis of more or less original life, hemmed in by a vast artificial desert.

 

Not at all like a museum of curated sights intended to attract paying customers.

Rather, a tiny preserve of savanna and recently resurgent grass.

 

 

That day on the treasured sliver of natural world, all light led straight on to winter.

 

Artist In Residence – Ten Years After

Over time, significant life events simmer down to what's inside you and go on to inform life ever after from there. Eventually, specific memories of those events turn to vignettes.

As has happened to my October 2012 artistic residency in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness…

 

 

Bio portraits give me the willies. That'd be why there're so few of them and mostly, far between.

I've used this one despite the pretense that I'm Joe Cool photographer/writer guy.

Because in this single image, taken by my dear friend Phil on the afternoon of a much dreaded event, both my primary and secondary jar of Heather's Magic Trail Mix stand plain.

Trust me, that's a thing.

Fifteen months. Approx. twenty-six thousand miles. A genuine Odyssey everywhere I could reach around the Superior Basin. One or both of those jars was always within reach.

Water. Zippo lighter. Heather's Magic Trail mix.

Check.

Remote mine sites. Collapsing farmhouses. Crumbling school basements. Each and every time I stepped away from the car and went off alone into the wilderness, most often with no one in the whole wide world knowing where I was.

Every mile of every day, Heather's Magic Trail Mix helped sustain me.

 

*

 

After months of regularly scheduled endurance trials, my stay at Dan's Cabin was ideally timed and I counted on that.

Nearly done. Two full weeks anchored to the same place. Full on autumn. Home turf, no less.

Among friends, old and new.

That first night at Dan's Cabin I was so jacked I set the little travel alarm for extra early the next morning. Except I neglected the time zone change that wanders through the Porkies.

Boy that was early.

So I sat a long time on a log enveloped in pitch black, sipping coffee while from unseen trees Barred Owls called out here and there around the small clearing that in the deep forest allows for the residency fire pit.

What is that stupid human doing anyway?

 

*

 

The two-week working plan was always for me to decompress. Take the opportunity of extended residency to relax and sink in. I'd counted on the inevitable foul weather days forcing my hand.

Didn't much work out that way.

Mostly, I roamed the general parameters of the park.

 

 

Revisited places I already knew. Took a few chances that played out.

 

 

Ambled, more or less aimlessly.

Which in all the time and miles since hitting the road in September 2011, I rarely if ever did.

One afternoon, clouds of irritated Dark-eyed Juncos rose from the forest floor as I walked golden woods near the cabin. Their scolding was persistent.

 

Travelers value good waysides. It pays to know where those are.

Spring of 2013, I first noticed Dark-eyed Juncos using our yard for a wayside along their trip north. They've stopped by by twice a year since, to & fro.

The Dark-eyed Juncos, they know my wayside. True fact.

*

It was always the plan to set one day aside during my residency, when I'd drive out to the far reaches of the Keweenaw and work a different sort of wilderness, the Wolverine Mohawk mine.

 

Staying in the cabin cut nearly two hours off the typical round trip. And I could get fresh fish & chips atop the hill in Hancock, so wouldn't have to think about cooking when I got back.

 

The day that chose itself happened to be Sunday. The fish & chips place turned out to be closed.

It was like a dagger to the heart.

 

On a lark, I hit the last best grocery store before wilderness closes back in. There, yesterday's Lake Trout was on sale.

That evening I feasted on laker and wild rice. So what if I had to cook it myself at the end of yet another long working day on the road?

Afterward I made sure no lake trout leavings drew any bear in the night, then slept particularly well.

 

*

 

Considering how persistently miserable October can be around Superior, the weather those two weeks ten years ago turned out to be like a gift from the field work gods.

Except for the morning it snowed.

 

By then very much alive in the moment, I embraced the prospect of an entire day spent in a cabin artisanally crafted so to invite the quietest creative contemplation over successive generations of temporary residents.

And maybe not even get my boots wet.

Kept the camera bags packed. Fired up the stove. Hunkered down. Did some writing. Stared at wet woods dripping just outside the great wall of glass.

Ate Heather's Magic Trail Mix as needed.

 

Relatively late, high quality light broke through the woods. The wilderness fell to an absolute hush. Not even birdsong pierced the cold air.

Like the world had that day rolled right over into winter. Except not, exactly.

 

Lickety-split, back at it I went.

 

 

Time slowed.

 

Through those couple hours of subtle light cast over chill, damp woods, I did perhaps the most purely representative work of the entire Odyssey.

Knowing I needn't drive anywhere after dark so to safely call it a day made that possible.

 

There was just to follow the river, go a short distance up the hill and be home.

 

*

Speaking of night...

Because Dan's Cabin is where it is, you're often some miles away from the next human being and that's nothing like solitary confinement.

As the cabin is also in the midst of a wild wood, prior to moonrise nights are so black you can't see your hand in front of your face. There, it's not just another turn of a phrase.

 

Taken as a whole, my exceptionally artistic residency at Dan's Cabin granted me the darkest, quietest nights of my life.

Once, I spent an indeterminate length of time siting comfy on the porch trying to figure out what I was hearing. Turned out to be mice, going about regular, busy mouse in the night business.

The forest is actually quite chatty. You just have to be able to hear it.

 

Today it's that supreme quietude, when only wilderness spoke and I listened, that most lives on inside me.

I expect it always will.

Thank-you, Friends of the Porkies.

 

*

 

The price of residency was that I'd have to speak about myself and my work for an entire hour. Less audience participation, if any.

I've never spoken extemporaneously for more than maybe five minutes on any subject, before or since.

From the beginning I didn't much think on that, because just the prospect scared the livin' bejesus out of me.

The big day came.

 

I spent a soft afternoon at the cabin, visited by friends. Enjoyed a good meal, cooked out over the fire.

Then they left so I could make ready alone, in abject silence.

 

Like the opening image, the clip below isn't there because I'm pretty.

Ten years ago yesterday, before an informed group of interested locals, I held forth on a region many if not most of them knew more intimately than I ever will.

Without my friend Phil captured the event, all I'd likely remember about it today is that the feared ordeal went reasonably better than expected.

Probably that's because when it came right down to brass tacks, I unleashed my native enthusiasm and trusted it to speak for me.

 

 

Afterwards, the entire year+ gig was to be pretty much home free.

Happily, the annoying verbal tic that afflicted me during the presentation proved to be a one off.

*

Later that night and again stone cold alone, standing surrounded by dark woods beside Dan's Cabin where you can just see open sky over its roof, I thanked the wilderness for my survival.

And also fully grasped that I'd soon be well & truly done.

In the moment, I was at peace with that.