35 mm Artifacts – Water is Life

Born to a much degraded and long maligned midwestern prairie, I didn't know jack from wilderness.

Then when still but a kid, we took a family vacation to visit maternal family on the Gogebic Range, along the Superior Basin.

I saw my first footloose bear where a wild rushing river pours unfettered into a great freshwater sea. They were cubs, like me. On perhaps a different river, a massive rainbow trout leapt into the air and for a moment, glistened like sunlight. I can still sort of see it.

One evening while on our way to fabled fresh fish dinner, a locked & loaded momma skunk stopped traffic in all directions with only the power of suggestion. When all the cute little skunk babies were safely across, she let us pass.

Then there were those northern lights, for one one night only, dancing beyond the bedroom window.

What the hell. A sky!

In situ, I understood the leftover bits of truly awesome oak savannah I'd explored all my short life and so dearly loved weren't actually 'the woods.'

It took just a few short days in wonderland to know.

As you'll imagine, I was pretty well spoiled for scraggly prairie remnants after that.

Next time I met Superior was on the cusp of adulthood, traveling with Heather. During that trip, I learned for certain where I belonged.

Working wild water with 35mm film is how I taught myself to selectively see the natural world as proscribed by a proscenium stage, captured through a selective lens.

Shooting 35mm transparency taught me film's limitations. I pushed at those, always.

Occasionally even failures beguiled. In the field that's mostly due to the splendor of the moment, not any particular skillset…

The best thing about working wild waters was that the work drew me to them during sublimely quiet times.

On that field you learn to accept what you get and better luck next time, as needed.

There's no finer time to be alone in the woods at water's edge than twice daily.

The second best thing is that wild water generally provides for an inclusive image, as the entire body of wild life is so well represented in and around it.

Sure, sometimes you can get away with shooting 'just' water.

But as a rule, some visual frame of reference is needed to keep the viewer anchored in a recognizable landscape.

Even when what's called "the vanishing point" really does.

My love of wild water led me to canoes. As I grew comfortable in those, my by then ancient Nikon F accompanied me.

Truth is it's a whole different viewpoint out there. Where sometimes even during the best golden hour, no gold's found and you don't want any anyway.

It was Boy Scouts first taught me to be prepared. But being a field photographer sure reinforced the adage. And in a canoe, you never can know who'll drop by.

Out there, you're the intruder. But when you're quiet and respectful, mutual curiosity sometimes prevails.

Plus, the loon's eye perspective often provides the best lakeside view.

About the image below, a dear friend once told me 'That's it right there. The Northwoods in a nutshell.'

Or words to that effect.

In any event, over time while wielding my trusty Nikons, I made myself a fair to decent 35mm landscape photographer.

The best of my young self typically has water of some sort in it.

Yet I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the results.

In film, size really did matter. Digital capture too, but that's another matter for a different time.

The deeper I dug into Superior's Northwoods, the more I knew if I wanted to amount to anything as a fine art field photographer, I'd have to seriously up my game.

Truth is, even the best 35mm transparency was akin to shooting with toy film. And there were precious few avenues to achieve creative differentiation when working the wild world with that.

There were also millions of 35mm landscape shooters out there. Every snap shooter's ever lived shoots those, then and now. After a while, we've seen it all.

Years of fieldwork combined with commercial lab expertise meant I understood both the limitations and the possibilities of my chosen medium as well or better than most.

By the time I pushed the final roll of 35mm chrome through my trusty Nikon N90s, I'd also learned to see.

That last day found me caught between hard rock and an even harder place.

Things had to change.

Shining Light on the Prairie - Summer Solstice

Love in the time of drought...

I'd given up trying to capture hummingbird moths on the wing. Geez they're fast. Like my wildlife work back when, I'm simply not geared for the task.

Then one spring evening I spotted what looked like a dead leaf caught in wavering tallgrass. Closer inspection revealed it wasn't that at all.

Instead, it was a glimpse into intimacy not commonly seen.

And a splendid visual gift, as it turned out.

Plus, now I need never again chase hummingbird moths with a lens. And am remined of why I treasure tallgrass.

Especially the rich diversity of life the seeming mess typically obscures.

Notably chill and no more than damp through early spring, only the lupine actually liked that.

After scant snowfall during winter, sopping spring rains never did arrive.

With May, it grew near desperate dry on the prairie.

Yet tallgrass and oak savanna are well equipped to deal with that stress.

This past spring, like every, had its opportunities.

Maybe one had to look a little closer, is all.

That's okay, I'm fair good at it.

Now and then, even substandard imagery admirably serves.

As on the bright morning when out from tallgrass new life emerged to stare me straight in the face.

Last thing in the world I wanted to do, was return that gaze primarily through an artificial lens.

The longest day of this year dawns hot, mired in technically severe drought.

On the prairie clear skies run hazy. The edge times most days blaze hunter's orange. All courtesy of far-off Canadian forests, burning.

Lupine are gone to seed. Milkweed's soon to burst. Great black wasps and monarchs will follow. Warmer now than it's been, I expect this week our first of the year fireflies will dance at dusk.

So welcome summer. When the living's said to be easy.

Here's hoping that's true.

#summersolstice #hummingbirdmoth

MINONG – The Misty Isle Emerges

This is the 2^nd part of my friend Philip J. Kucera's Isle Royale expedition.

Access the 1^st part here. 

Departure prep. Kayakers in fog, morning mist. Courtesy Jeff Price, ©2022

Approaching Isle Royale by ferry in a dense Lake Superior fog, the 45 mile long "Rock" can loom into view in an instant under a clearing blue on blue as the vessel begins to maneuver through the sinuous Smithwick Channel to dock at the Rock Harbor complex. Fear not armchair traveler, the ship captains have navigated these waters before.

Isle Royale possesses a mystical quality for visitors. Sailing from Michigan's U.P. on a hot, muggy midsummer day, a first sighting might find the island floating far above the horizon, a long thin line of haze. Mirage? Temperature inversion? A Fata Morgana, if you're a reader of Arthurian legend. Islands do carry a certain mysticism…detached as they are.

French missionary Claude Dablon wrote in the Jesuit Relations of 1669-1670 that Indian canoeists told him the island floats. "Sometimes far off, sometimes near, according to the winds that push it and drive it in all directions." Can that be the work of Ojibwa trickster Mishipeshu?

Some sense the primordial as they tread thousands year old footpaths through mossy coastal glades, pondering bogs rich in exotic plants…

…or are stopped short by the raucous jungle cry of pileated woodpeckers weaving suicidal through close forest growth, with "Old Man's Beard" lichen dripping morning dew.

The midcontinent suffered a violent birth over a billion years ago when volcanoes spewed mountain building lava flows and a gigantic rift tore the land apart, creating what would become the Lake Superior Basin. The intense heat is visible today in the fiery blacks, grays and reds of Isle Royale's basalt basement rock.

Over eons, mountains eroded to sediments that eventually compressed to stone. Mile thick glaciers arrived, scraping away the intervening soft rock to expose the mass of hard basalt, Isle Royale's backbone. Glacially gouged shore faults play host to subalpine vegetation today…including the ever-present harebell.

The last glacier closed the Ice Age about 11,000 years ago, its meltwaters filled a deep wide rift and the floating island emerged bobbing in Glacial Lake Minong…Lake Superior.

Earliest humans followed the great melt, hunting mastodons and saber-toothed cats as well as many other cold climate creatures to extinction. They visited the island chain from 6,500 to 5,400 years ago, mining veins of copper and silver exposed on bare rock surfaces.

From the Philip J. Kucera Collection

Long lines of deep excavations are scant evidence of their activity, along with tens of thousands of notched stone hammerheads, most broken, now hidden under accumulated duff.

Cold wintery winds sent the ancients packing south with their metallic treasures, striking for Cahokia, an Archaic Era trade center for the continent. Sited near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois Rivers, the vast marketplace filled with highly skilled artisans, some of whom beat raw copper into tools, weapons, and exquisite hammered repoussé ornaments.

The miners eventually disappeared into the mists of time…and the island rested.

Near five hundred years ago the Ojibwa settled the upper great lakes, guided by the "Megis" sea shell and ending a long migration from the Atlantic coast in search of turtle islands. The tribe aptly named the place "Minong," The good place. And it was.

Caribou and moose were hunted, fish were abundant in island lakes and offshore. They picked thimbleberries, gathered ceremonial and medicinal herbs, and returned to their mainland winter camps well before the snows. You'll find three dioramas depicting Native activities on the island on lounge walls of the large park service motor vessel, Ranger III.

In the late 1830's the American Fur Company established nine seasonal fish camps on the island, supplying fur trade canoeists -voyageurs- sustenance for 'the road'. Large catches of lake trout, whitefish and herring were hauled into Mackinaw boats, a craft that supplanted birchbark canoes on the big lake. Fish were salted and packed in wooden barrels coopered from island trees, shipped to lower ports.

Courtesy Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper County Historical Collections

Beaver were trapped from the 1600's into the mid-1800's, mainly for the felted hat market – the rage in the "Old World" back then. Fur trade declined throughout North America as over-trapping almost annihilated the beaver population. Fashion trends change, if slowly at times.

The American government appropriated Indian land in Superior Country through a series of treaties during the 1840's. One treaty added Isle Royale to its list of acquisitions. The island was purchased for $400 dollars in gunpowder and $100 dollars in fresh beef.

(Reference: the 1844 Isle Royale Compact.)

Prospectors soon swarmed the island 'discovering' copper in the ancient workings. Minong Mining Co. owners paid a couple to "winter over" to protect their newly acquired property from claim jumpers. Among the few through the centuries to take on the winter challenge, here's their harrowing story.

Scandinavian immigrants began settling the island before the turn of the twentieth century. The rugged beauty and low fjords of Isle Royale reminded them of home…and fishing was a way of life they knew well.

They adopted the Mackinaw boats, "The greatest surf boat known," rowing or sailing the small open craft to fishing grounds often miles from shore, in weather fair or foul. Worked daily for decades, the boats were eventually powered, renamed "gas boats" by locals. "Belle," built in 1928, sitting landlocked today at Edison Fishery, served its masters well to the close of commercial fishing in the early 1950's.

To carry their families through lean years, fishermen built rental cottages to house occasional island visitors. Resorts quickly sprung up to handle increased tourist traffic arriving by steamship. They came for "the airs," for hay fever relief and to escape hot, crowded, smoke-clogged lower lakes cities. They came to experience the wild, to view wild creatures and they filled the resorts for entire summers.

Courtesy Michigan Technological University Archives and Copper County Historical Collections

A few purchased land, even islets, and built cottages large and small. They paid fishermen to caretake their properties, and guide "Sports" to ancient fishing grounds.

Each year, as chill autumn winds stirred – before Lake Superior turned mean, they packed their trunks, shuttered cabin windows and hauled boats high ashore beyond the grasp of gale driven combers. Heading back to the mainland, they left the isle to battle the winter spirts alone.

And once again, the island rested.