Hiking with Tamanawas

For my first "hike" of the year, my brother and I sought out icy waterfalls along the old Columbia River Highway in the Gorge. Every year, there's a period of cold, dry weather that allows the many waterfalls, streams, and seeps in the gorge to freeze, with patterns of ice decorating the rock and building up in splash-pools. I've written about this before, and wanted to write about this trip, but it took a while to figure out what to write about. The entire time was subdued, from the music in the truck to the last-minute mellow decision-making to the white noise of waterfalls and falling snow. Nothing stood out as a subject; I had to look for the little beauties in the day. And I found them, to a degree: an empty snail shell, a brightly colored ginger leaf covered in frost, a fern frond frozen in ice. Also, time in the quiet, the spaces between the trees.

We started at Latourell Falls. Something about that stark amphitheater, with its black rock columns and incandescent yellow-green lichen and tall thin column of water, makes me feel spiritually and aesthetically at ease. It was one of the first solo hikes I ever took, up above the falls to another fall and back. But because it’s such a short hike, I’ve rarely been back, until I rediscovered Latourell in winter. Now it feels comfortably beautiful, like meeting an ex lover years later and becoming friends again, only without the heartache or loss or what-ifs or attraction (although she’s still gorgeous). Maybe that only happens in books, but it could happen – and if it did, it would be a good metaphor for Latourell Falls.

It’s definitely my favorite waterfall in the gorge.

Before we arrived at Latourell I mentally drew a connection to my last hike, in November with my friend Mike. That day, on our hike to Tamanawas Falls on Election Day, we hiked around a corner along the creek and saw a coyote. It stood in profile on a green log, and for a second or two we all froze – Mike behind me let out a brief “whoa” – then the coyote leapt down towards the creek, jumped across the stream onto a mossy boulder, and jumped again to the opposite bank before vanishing in the trees.

The entire encounter only lasted about five seconds, and was the highlight of the hike. I see deer quite frequently, elk occasionally, but this was only my third coyote, and each time it’s been a memorable and moving experience.

What made me remember the Tamanwas hike on the drive to the Gorge was the neat symmetry between the end-of-season hike to a gorgeous waterfall with the start-of-season hike to another gorgeous waterfall. This was fairly unplanned; Eric and I intended to visit Latourell, but we hadn’t made up our mind to start there, or somewhere else in the Gorge. And because this symmetry, I found myself a few nights later reading Ella Clark’s Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest.

Clark selected over one hundred native tales from oral and written records (including her own interviews with native storytellers) and in 1953 rewrote them for a general audience. She looked for stories that were authentic and interesting, and she freely admitted that her approach wasn’t “sociological or anthropological.” She was, however, a strong storyteller, and the book covers a lot of territory. I opened it for two reasons: first, to find a definition for the word Tamanawas, and second, to look for a myth I barely remembered that involved Latourell Falls.

Clark states that the word Tamanawas comes from the Chinook jargon, a trade language shared and spoken by tribes all along the Columbia River and eventually throughout the northwest. As a shared language, Chinook jargon was quite adaptive and many English and French words found their way into the jargon, which was spoken well into the 20th century. Some of these words – potlatch, for example – are still in use in the Pacific Northwest today, and many are familiar as place names (such as tyee, skookum, and cultus).

Tamanwas is difficult to define because it is more of a concept than it is a noun or adjective. Clark provides several shorthand definitions, including “supernatural,” “one endowed with supernatural power,” and “anything beyond human understanding.” Lewis “Tam” McArthur, in his essential Oregon Geographic Names, specifies that Tamanawas means “friendly or guardian spirit” (he also notes that Tamanawas Falls was named by the USFS). I’ve seen Tamanawas elsewhere defined in much more complex and nebulous terms as having to do with spirits, which are themselves as shifting and unpredictable as language and meaning – or coyote, for that matter, who makes an appearance in the Latourell Falls myth in Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest.

In Clark’s telling, three Beaver sisters had built a dam across the Columbia that prevented salmon from swimming upstream. Because of this, the people living above the dam were starving, so Coyote went to break the dam. After breaking the dam, he kidnapped the youngest of the three Beaver sisters, made his getaway by running across the backs of the salmon swimming upstream through the break in the dam, and made the youngest Beaver Sister his wife. She bore him two sons, but Coyote was afraid that she’d run away, so he locked her and their sons in a cave. Eventually they escaped, and ran towards the river. Coyote caught his wife, scooped away out part of a mountain, and pinned her to the rock – she became Latourelle Falls. Then he caught his sons, who he changed into standing stones – the Pillars of Hercules that now stand by the side of the river.

And at this point, the symmetry between the hikes was complete and utterly fitting, as though designed. Tamanawas Falls, a place of spirits where I saw Coyote on my last hike of 2012. Latourelle Falls, unexpectedly the first stop of 2013 and associated with Coyote in myth. Two hikes, two beautiful waterfalls, two connections with Coyote and the electric sense of the Other.

Eric and I spent the rest of the day visiting other waterfalls, photographing ice formations, and wandering trails in gently falling snow. It was good to get out, good for the body and mind, and good for contemplating little beauties and hidden connections. Tamanawas indeed.

How'd ya like the island, eh? Hiking Vancouver Island's Forbidden Plateau

Last September in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island. Mike and I are in the checkout line at the Country Grocer. The clerk weighs corn on the cob and white potatoes, scans individually wrapped Babybel gouda and vacuum-sealed packages of locally made Grimm’s Hot Pepperoni sticks. Looking up, she gives us a motherly warning wrapped in a strong Canadian accent. “We have bears and stuff. Cougars, too.”

We have bears and “stuff” in Oregon, too, but the clerk has a point: Vancouver Island is home to one of the largest and most dense populations of cougar in the world, and we were about to backpack deep into the thick of things, into the Forbidden Plateau, right in the middle of Strathcona Provincial Park and the some of the wildest country on the island.

Forbidden Plateau is a high rolling country of lakes, meadows, and forests below a ridge of mountains that separate the plateau from the rest of the park. It’s reminiscent of Indian Heaven Wilderness in Washington, but wetter at the same elevation, with a tangled understory and a more complex rain-forest filled with hemlock, cedar, and fir. The trail gains and loses a surprising amount of elevation a it follows tree-lined mountain lakes set in bowls – and there are a lot of lakes. We planned to spend four days and three nights in the park, with hikes to the summit of Mt. Albert Edward (6,866ft) and other surrounding peaks. It didn’t turn out that way, but then, things seldom turn out as expected when Mike and I get involved.

Our trip to Forbidden Plateau was incredible, but it was hard to plan. In part that’s because resources in the US are scarce, and in part it’s because we made assumptions based on experience backpacking in the US. Canada is different, in minor but important ways (don’t confuse meters and feet on a topo), and our trip was on a budget as well as a timeline. I originally posted this report on Portland Hikers, but I’ve edited it to be – hopefully – more accessible for the interested reader. At the bottom of this post are links for resources we found helpful.

Day #1 and Day #2

We left Portland in late morning and drove to Seal Rock campground on Hood Canal. Seal Rock has become a regular car-camping spot on our trips near the Olympics, and provided a good opportunity to drink beer around a camp-fire and celebrate having a week off. After darkness fell, we walked down to the bay and watched the moonlight on the mirror-clear water. The sky was bright and small waves lapping gently against the rocky shore seemed auspicious omens for the days to come.



The next day, we caught the 12:30 ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria, and after arriving, we realized it was too late in the day to drive north and car-camp as planned. We booked a room at the fantastic Oceanside Inn, the hostel we’d return to after backpacking, and spent the evening wandering downtown Victoria, generously sampling local beers at Swann’s, and taking in the buskers and shops along Government Street.

Day #3

In the morning we stopped at Crown Bookstore to get a map, and drove north on Highway 1, which splits into Highway 19 and Highway 19A. My touring map showed campgrounds along 19A, which winds through small towns and resorts along the Strait of Georgia. All the campgrounds marked on our map turned out to be RV campgrounds, but eventually we found a public campground at Lake Comox, close to Courtenay. The campground was conveniently only 40 minutes or so from the trailhead at Mt. Washington, but was expensive at $28 per night. That money, however, pays for clean restrooms, showers, and firewood delivered to your camp. The host was a delightful Irish man, armed with information and self-published books about the history of the area and the wealth of nearby mountain biking and rock climbing opportunities.

The campsites were very close together, right next to a public beach, and water-skiers raced past all afternoon long, blasting mindless pop music and endless techno beats. But we made the best of it, and hung out with the local guys in the site next to us: Joe, a painter trying to turn pro-snowboarder, and Josh, a laid-off sprayer at a mill. Both were young, more or less down-and-out, and trying to make ends meet in an economically depressed region that bears resemblance to Oregon in the early 1990’s. We talked for several hours around a campfire, stared at the stars, and crashed around midnight, hoping to get a good night’s rest before heading in to the wilderness the next day.

Day #4

Because of the extra night in Victoria, we were a day behind schedule, but that mattered less when we woke up to rain and heavy mist. All the forecasts had been sunny, so this was a surprise (note to self, when you plan to hike up a mountain on a rain-forested island in the Pacific in September, expect precipitation). We packed in a hurry, grabbed coffee at the Wandering Moose Café in Cumberland, picked up donuts at Tim Horton’s in Courtenay, and arrived at the TH around noon. The rain tapered to mist, and after paying $10 per person per night for a permit (ouch!), we loaded up our packs and set off past a “Caution: Bear in Area” sign.

The trail followed boardwalks through Paradise Meadows and hit dirt as it passed Battleship Lake, completely obscured by the weather. At times, we couldn’t see the water just below us – forest on one side, emptiness on the other. It was gorgeous in the mist: lakes faded out into the void, and subalpine flowers bloomed in green grassy fields that slipped away to a white horizon outlined by the silhouettes of trees in various shades of gray and deep green.

Forbidden Plateau is extremely popular and as a result, all the official trails were clear and intersections were well marked, with square posts holding placards with directions and distances. At various intersections, there were signs with simplified maps showing trails and distances between intersections and campsites. Because of heavy use, camping is allowed only at designated sites (lakes Helen MacKenzie, Kwai, and Circlet). Each CG has bear-proof food caches and a covered pit-toilet, and tents must be pitched on low wooden platforms. Knowing that it might be crowded further in, we camped at the first available site, which turned out to be a completely deserted Lake Helen MacKenzie.

The sites at Helen Mackenzie are very close together and connected by boardwalk, but we had the lake and the rain to ourselves. The first order of business was figuring out how to tie down tents on top of the wooden platforms; regularly placed eyehooks helped. The weather helped keep the mosquitoes down to a tolerable level, and thankfully it didn’t get cold, except for a damp chill just before dawn, and the temperature during the day was decent under layers.

Since campfires are prohibited in Forbidden Plateau and everything was damp, we spent the evening playing hackey-sack and hoping the weather would change. A few hot toddies with Canadian whiskey helped enliven the mood. I’d brought a sturdier two-man tent instead of my ultra-light solo tent, and had plenty of room to figure out how to get comfortable on wooden boards. We were in our tents shortly after 9pm, trying to fall asleep in the early darkness and steady drip of rain.

Day #5

I rose by 8am to overcast skies with blue showing in streaks, and a golden light falling in ribbons on Mt. Elma across the mirrored lake. I grabbed our food from the bear cache, sprayed on insect repellent, and started coffee by boiling lake water. Water access at Helen MacKenzie is difficult, at the bottom of an 8ft cliff. There might be better shore access, but I didn’t feel like hiking and bushwacking through thick, wet brush to find it.

The sun made a good effort but just in case, we made another “scale it back” decision to camp at nearby Kwai Lake, and day-hike from there towards Mt. Albert Edward. We intended to camp at Circlet Lake, closest to the Albert Edward summit route, but we weren’t sure if the weather would hold and we were leaving the next day, so Kwai seemed a good alternative – closer to the mountain, but not as far from the TH. To get to Kwai, we took a trail past Croteau Lake, where we stopped for a snack and battled aggressive gray jays. They swept in overhead, buzzing us from trees with their eyes fixated on our food. And for the first and only time, the clouds opened up enough to see the long tantalizing ridge leading to the summit of Albert Edward.

Pushing on, we arrived at Kwai. It’s small but beautiful, deep green and ringed with trees, and once again we had our pick of campsites. After we ate lunch, a group of teenagers with a few adult guides hiked past on their way to Circlet Lake, and paused for a break on the trail below our camp. After watching the kids feed the ever-present gray jays from their hands, Mike tried it out – known locally as Whiskey Jacks, the jays are quite habituated to humans. The jays swept down to perch on his hand with no hesitation at all.

That afternoon we took a short hike towards Circlet Lake but weather turned us around before we arrived at the lake. Just after we got back to Kwai it started to drizzle, but the rain largely held off until after dark. Camping here at night was kind of spooky – I really felt the solitude, the darkness, and the elements, and the tension arising from needing to stash food in a bear box. And once again, it was hard to fall asleep “early” at 10pm – but what else was there to do with no campfire, at night, in the rain, miles from anything else? Oh yes, finish the whisky, and dream of bears among the mossy hemlocks.

Day #6

Woke in the rain, slept a little later, and packed up quickly during a drier spell. For variety’s sake and a shorter hike, we chose a different return route, one that led past a ranger’s cabin in the mist back to Helen MacKenzie, and the return trail to Paradise Meadows and the trailhead.

From Kwai, the trail lead uphill then leveled out in meadows before dropping to Helen MacKenzie. The ascent and descent weren’t much but the trail was wet, slick, and filled with roots. We both slipped a few times and I took a spill that injured my pride far more than anything else. The only really sketchy section of trail we encountered was here, where erosion at a steep downhill switchback forced us to cross exposed bedrock slick with rain and clay-like mud.

On the way, we met a hiker from Victoria who was attempting to summit Mt. Albert Edward in a day. That’s a pretty ambitious plan for the average hiker, who, I think, could make it to Circlet in a day, summit Albert Edward the next day, and even hike out on the summit day. That might work for locals, but after driving up from Oregon, it’s worth it to spend more time. Circlet Lake is the most popular CG, and as sites are first-come first-serve, you run the risk of having to backtrack to Kwai on busy summer weekends. But all in all, Forbidden Plateau is worth a few days exploration, and while it might be heavily used, it doesn’t see nearly the same number of visitors as do Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge, or Mt. Hood.

After changing into dry clothes at the truck, we walked over to the volunteer nature center and had a fun conversation with the staffer working there. She was genuinely interested in our trip, in learning what trail conditions we encountered, and in sharing enthusiasm for hiking and backpacking.

All told, our total mileage in Forbidden Plateau was about 12.7 miles, with 2300ft of gain, but that’s a rough guess. If the weather had been nice we would’ve doubled or tripled that, and spent another day up there. After leaving, we drove down to Courtenay, had coffee and donuts at Tim Horton’s again, and then sped down 19 back to Victoria and a few nights of urban adventure.

Never did see any bears and stuff, though.

Thoughts on Wilderness on Vancouver Island

At first glance, it would seem Forbidden Plateau is well maintained. We met two young rangers doing advance preparation for helicopter-aided pit-toilet service; the boardwalks and tent platforms were in good shape; the trails were well graded and very well marked; and the depth of knowledge and enthusiasm at the nature center was refreshing. But in reality, Forbidden Plateau probably gets a lot of attention because the trailhead is so close to a ski resort, accessible by paved road. The rest of Strathcona Park has few trails, many of which are accessible only by permission or advance notice on gated logging roads in actively logged areas, and the forests directly outside the park’s boundaries have been decimated by logging. Commercial interests continue to try to operate within the park, and funding is abysmal – the nature center is maintained by donations, many of the campsites and trail signs were installed by local mountaineering clubs, and BC Parks doesn’t have the budget to hire more than one ranger per ten parks on the island. It’s both sad and enlightening to compare conservation issues and challenges in another country to those in the US.

Vancouver Islanders also appear to approach their wilderness somewhat differently than Americans do theirs (barring the very public resort/family-style campgrounds we both have). Feeding Whiskey Jacks seems accepted, but they take protecting Forbidden Plateau so seriously that they built miles of boardwalk and designated tent platforms to protect meadows and campgrounds from erosion. Car camping seems uncommon, perhaps due to a shortage of public lands, and on Vancouver Island, pure backpacking appears to be uncommon as well. Canadians appear to backpack in order to do something else when they get into the woods, like climb, ski, snowboard, or fish – and the fishing in Forbidden Plateau is great, according to a guy floating in misty Battleship Lake who had earlier caught a few 16” trout. As an aside, there are stricter rules for wilderness travel in popular Forbidden Plateau than there are in the rest of Strathcona, which has far fewer established trails and more “routes,” and sees much far fewer people. But on Vancouver Island, everywhere north of Victoria is rural and increasingly remote, with economies dependent on natural resources or tourism. The island is caught in time, facing the same challenges rural Washington and Oregon encountered when their logging and fishing industries collapsed. I’d expect there to be a different approach to the outdoors, one that viewed the land as a commodity as much as a familiar place to escape the pressures of the city, the town, and outside forces.

Recommendations and Resources

Spend at least one night in Victoria or in a town along the coast. That will give you a day to get to Canada and time to buy supplies and explore the coast before hitting the trail. Vancouver Island has a lot of neat history – logging, mining, First Nation culture, etc – that deserve a closer look.

Online Resources:

• Summit Post
• Club Tread

Maps, Gear, Guides:

• Free map (not much detail)
• We used this map: Forbidden Plateau and Campbell River (92f11), ISBN 9781553418115, available from Crown Bookstore in Victoria.
• Guidebook: “Hiking Trails 3,” by Blier
• Robinson’s - In my opinion, the best gear store in Victoria

Lodging & Essentials:

• Lodging in Victoria: Ocean Island Inn
• Backpacking Booze: Forty Creek Premium Canadian Whisky

The Calendar Explained: March

Catherine Creek in the early evening on the Summer Solstice, with my Nikon CoolPix P100.

Ah, summer solstice. I placed this photo into March because it has an odd, subdued quality that feels old-timey to me, and more suited for a month more usually noted for rain. This photo was taken at quarter to six, on a hike when three friends and I stayed out until dark on the longest day of the year. I took this from the inside edge of an oak grove near Catherine Creek at a thousand feet above the Columbia, with the sun still a few hours from setting. Mosquitoes were biting in the shade and my friends were all ahead of me, but the combination of lupine, grass, oak, and mountain was too good to pass up, and the absence of middle distance made framing easy. The light was perfect, too: a soft, warm glow with strong shadows and backlit flowers and grass.

One of my photography goals is to take a photo that exactly looks like what I saw. This is one of the few times where I was successful in capturing both the subject and the mood, and it’s also one of the few times that required nothing more than pointing an expensive gadget at the scenery and pressing a button. I’m not saying this is a great shot, but I’m happy with it. If I’d had more time, and more knowledge, I’d have taken a better photograph. Anyone could’ve taken this – the camera did most of the work – but still, it was one of those moments where everything lined up, where the light and the mood were matched, and where all I had to do was click the shutter.

It all fell into place – just like the day.

2.

I was lucky with this one, but I set myself up to take advantage of it, in part because I was still learning about and playing with my camera (I’d only had it a few months) and I’d already set up the camera to shoot in that light. All I needed to do was adjust the exposure.

A snapshot doesn’t take much preparation or thought. There’s usually not much preamble, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes a snapshot is all you want or need. That’s what the auto setting is for.

When I hike, photography isn’t usually my main objective. But sometimes it is – a tremendous viewpoint, or a sunset from camp, or a scene in poor light all require a bit more from the photographer, and that’s where knowledge, skill, and effort come into play.

Effort is what gets you to the shot – the hike, in this case. Knowledge and skill are what allow you to take a good photograph. I don’t really have either. All that f/ stuff is mumbo-jumbo to me, but I do know how to make certain useful adjustments on my camera, and I know how to frame a photograph (when I bother to remember). The more complicated things get, though, the more distance I feel there is between me and the subject. Lots of things can go wrong in that space. But that space can be bridged.

Taking a really good nature or landscape photograph (and I’m not claiming this photo is one) requires a different way of observing and approaching to wilderness. It requires hiking for a different reason than I do – the interaction with the subject is different, but just as intense as with a hiker, backpacker, or hunter. It’s deeper than the casual hike with a few snapshots. It goes beyond the surface to touch on subtle things and profound things, things with emotional and psychological and spiritual meaning. The photograph isn’t just gifted to you. You have to be prepared for it, and be ready for it. And then you have to pay attention for a long time.

As I said, photography isn’t my main reason for hiking. But it does bring with it a bit of that different approach, and it adds variety and nuance to my experience. And sometimes, I take a photograph I really like.

Catherine Creek Journal: April 10th, 2012

Two days after Easter and I find myself back at the ponds at Catherine Creek. I hiked to the top of Tracey Hill and down the west side. Now I have time to fill, and the sun, which has been muted and shadow-less for hours behind thin cloud, has burned through. Still a few hours from sunset, but warm, in the sixties, and aside from a sometimes cool and always intermittent breeze, it’s been a fine day.

It’s been very quiet most of the day, and still – silence filled with darting birds and birdsong. Meadowlarks and startled killdeer, black crows and blue jays, buzzards, hawks, eagles – going up Tracey Hill I turned for no reason and a northern harrier swept low across the massive meadow, wings held in a motionless v, and looped around a stand of ponderosa before disappearing from sight. Coming down into Catherine Creek valley, a bald eagle lifted from the ground and perched for some minutes in a tree, then flew away with slow wing-beats when I approached.

I hiked past the bathtub and past the deer-kill I found last March. Not much remains but a skull in the flowers, a segment of vertebra with thick green grass outlining white bone. Hard to believe anything is left of it.

No deer, but sign everywhere: tracks, droppings, paths made for hoofs in the moss and stone. I haven’t been in the right place to see them, I guess, but it’s a warm day and only 6pm. Time yet. Grass widows are mostly gone but other flowers have taken their place. Buttercups are everywhere, alongside oaks toothwort and blue-eyed mary in the duff. There are shooting stars in the hundreds by the Dharma tree, and a carpet of glacier lily in the gully above the arch Yellow and purple desert parsley turn basalt crags and gnarled solitary oak into refined oriental gardens. Hound’s-tooth attracts bees and saxifrage fills the lower meadows, while lupine is everywhere about to bloom, and deep green bitterroot leaves are waiting. A few balsamroot brighten the cliffs.

After saying hello to some hikers near the arch, I didn’t speak again until almost back at the creek crossing several hours later, when I told a circling bee that “I am not a flower.”

Things are drying out and the oaks are beginning to bud. Everything is stirring. Up on Tracey Hill, coyote scat – gray, filled with hair and fragments of bone – lines the trail between labyrinths of gopher tunnels and dirt upturned into patterns like gopher writing.

Another change: above the corral, the ponderosa limb with that unusual growth has died and fallen; no sign of the growth left among the limbs and twigs in the grass. The tree looks healthy.

Almost to the end of this journal. Almost two years… Started at Crater Lake in 2010. Looking back makes me wish I’d written more. It also makes me realize how many miles I’ve traveled, how much I’ve seen, how much there is to come.

Mallards zip by overhead, a pair. Just a chuckle in greeting and they’re gone over the river. A good day for birds.

When I saw the harrier, it was because I felt I should turn around at that exact moment. It was different from stopping to catch my breath, or to look at the view. Irrational, but knowledge nonetheless. How much goes on behind me, when I’m not looking?

My thoughts have ranged up and down these trails with no order. But a natural order, a wild order. It’s a good day to sign off in this volume and move on to the next, with more looking behind and more looking ahead: next weekend, wherever it finds me. But first the drive home, a tick-check and shower, a beer and music while I look through the photos I’ve taken.

I’ll bet none of those photos will do today justice. None of them will last like that harrier on the wing.

Finis.

The Calendar Explained: February

Taken November 15^th, 2011. Camera; Nikon CoolPix P100.

f/5.6, exposure time 1/278 sec., ISO 160, exposure bias -1, focal length 76mm, aperture 3

1.

I posted this image online shortly after I took it, and even after cropping and adjusting for its rougher qualities, I still like it. Sunset comes early in November, and despite the pink sky and sunlight glinting in the waves, there was tension flowing through the day. The tide was high and the breakers at sunset thundered against the rocks. Terrible Tilly hovered above a heaving sea, with seagulls and light filling the space between. I remember actually feeling and hearing waves break against the rocks and reverberate through the ground. It felt like any minute the sea would reach in and sweep away the few people on the beach, myself included. As a hiker I love days like this, when nature presents such an impressive and unending emotive and thought-provoking display. The juxtaposition of sea and stone, light and space, and tension and release made for a memorable day, and that hopefully shows in this photograph.

2.

I’ve always loved that Dizzy Gillespie said “I don’t care much about music. What I like is sounds.” His words hold true when translated to any artistic medium, including photography.

Like writing, photography is a method of re-creating experience. A good photograph will do that better than a snapshot, and the way to get a good photograph is to be in the right place at the right time, and to be looking the right way.

This photograph, I remember, didn’t take much effort at all. That’s not actually an arrogant statement. I drove to the coast and walked down the beach. I made myself comfortable and stayed on the beach for hours. I slowed down and grew attuned to what was going on around me. In other words, I did the work and was looking the right way. I only needed to see the photograph before I took it.

I’m sometimes guilty of letting the camera dictate what I see. Before I took this photograph, I spent a long time taking photographs of waves crashing against rocks and splashing high in the air. That time might have been better spent just watching.

Truth be told, I took 250 photographs before this one, and my camera battery was almost dead. When I finally stopped taking so many pictures, my experiences became richer. It took the absence of photography to get this photograph. And after taking it, I only took nine more.

That entire day, I didn’t get a single photograph I liked as much as this one.