It was a long drive from Arches to Bryce Canyon. I must have stopped a dozen times to photograph some new rock formation or scenic vista. It is hard to travel through such a diverse and beautiful landscape when you are a photographer and a wilderness enthusiast. Every bend in the road presents you with some new opportunity to explore or climb or photograph.



I was honestly relieved when I arrived at Bryce Canyon National Park. I had been traveling all day and I was exhausted. I was also beginning to become a little stressed about fund raising for my mission to Costa Rica which begins in November. I absolutely hate fund raising. It is not so much an issue of receiving money from people. That does not bother me. It is really an issue of not liking to ask and ask repeatedly for people to give you money when they already have other financial responsibilities. This just really stresses me out for some reason.

Luckily the L-rd saw it fit to give me a little rest and relaxation at Bryce Canyon in the form of star gazing. After a wonderful video/ interpretive program on the constellations and Native American mythology, we were invited to go behind the visitors’ center to see the stars through a number of very large telescopes.

Unfortunately, the sky was cloudy, and we were only able to see a couple of constellations, but we were able to see one thing of great interest. We got such a close up view of Jupiter that we could see 4 of its moons as well as the dark bands that encircle it.

Later that night, or really the next morning, I awoke in the back of my truck to see a beautiful night sky filled with stars, which are especially bright in Bryce Canyon. Apparently, the plateau surrounding the canyon is supposed to offer the best view of the stars of all of the National Parks, with the exception of Death Valley.

The heavens declare his glory!

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“Mother Nature is Awesome!”

I almost threw up a little bit at that point.

It is disgusting to me how a 50 year old man can be standing at a view point in one of the most beautiful places in North America and think it appropriate to thank “Mother Nature” rather than the L-rd who shaped this landscape. The word says that “the firmament shows his handiwork”. This magnificent creation was not sculpted by chance, nor was it created by Mother Nature, a gentler, socially acceptable substitute for G-d. There is nothing gentle about the way this landscape was formed.

Any time a sculptor works to create something beautiful, the process is violent. Our national parks are no exception. They were shaped by floods, rivers, tectonic plates colliding, volcanic eruptions, earth quakes, glaciers, repeated freezing and thawing, acidic rain, the list does not stop. When you see the grandeur of Balancing Rock, you must remember Chip of the Old Block (the balancing rock 100 feet away that toppled in the 70s). When you see Landscape Arch, you must remember that in 1991, 180 tons of stone fell from the west side of the arch. That is how these features are created, and that is how they will be destroyed. It is sometimes a slow process, but it is almost never a gentle process.

I wonder if that is part of the reason why life can be really hard and messy sometimes. Are all of the challenges and difficulties that we face constantly just a part of G-d chipping away at the stone to shape us into something beautiful?

I really do believe that is the case. How beautiful would Arches National Park be if there were no violent forces to shape the stone there? Would it be worth visiting, or would it just be a large mound of rough, unshaped stone?

PS: Before anyone jumps on me, I am aware that Mother Nature is a part of many Native American religions, and is the counterpart of father sky. I am not putting down mothers, or Native American religions even though I do not believe in those religions. I am talking about the way that middle-class, Caucasian Americans use the term basically to mean a series of random occurrences which shaped the world.

The Not So Promised Land

For some reason, I had always pictured Utah as a big desert, and it is, but it is not at all the empty, arid, ugly place that I had thought. I can see why the Mormons feel like this place is a place of refuge, even going so far as to name one of the national parks here Zion. Utah is the kind of infinitely varied and beautifully sculpted desert that makes desert life actually seem appealing.

Salt Lake City is like a moderately well watered garden, with confusing streets and plenty of room to stretch out in. The city spreads out like a blanket to cover the entire valley, the arms of the city reaching far up into the surrounding canyons like roots of a tree, searching for water and nutrients.



There is a feeling about the area, as if everyone is pretending to be happy. Businessmen walk about town in nice suits while soccer moms wearing too much makeup drive SUVs to their small suburban mansions. Parents occasionally yell at their children in the supermarket because their child is “making a scene”. The feeling of false happiness is not all that different from Alabama really, except that Alabamians pretend to be polite, not happy.

The family that I stayed with in SL city was absolutely wonderful. The father runs a successful online business, while the mother, when she is not helping with the business, paints some of the most beautiful landscapes that I have ever seen. My friend took me to the basement and showed me his father’s collection, which includes an AR-15, M-1 Garand which he uses to hunt elk, M-1 Carbine, and a fully restored WWII era model 1911 Colt .45. Like I said, these people were right up my alley.

One of my favorite things about staying with this family is that they are believers. They have what appears to be a very real faith that they walk out in their day to day lives. I am really impressed by people who live in communities that are not supportive of their faith. I can only imagine that living in the Mormon capitol of the world would do a lot to strengthen a person’s walk with the L-rd through trials.

I was only able to stay with the family for two days before heading south and east toward Arches National Park. In my short stay I felt very rested and rejuvenated. I hope that they are blessed by the L-rd for their hospitality to a traveler.

Big Coffee Maker in the Ground

It was a long, cold drive back to Artists point. I do not know the exact temperature, but last night felt like the coldest night that I have experienced this entire trip (my feet were frozen in my 15 degree sleeping bag). I arrived at the point at 7:30, tightly bundled up in a fleece jacket, down vest, flannel lined pants, and wool hat. There were a handful of photographers already on location with everything from point and shoot cameras to the Nikon D3 (retail value = a used car).

As I made me way from my truck to the point, I was struck with a brilliant idea!

Instant Coffee! I had purchased a box with several small packets of instant coffee in Missoula, so I gathered my camp stove, along with the coffee and mug and made my way to the point.

For the next half hour, I was the envy of every photographer at the point. Some people made friendly comments while others gave me jealous sideways glances as I stood happily watching the sun pour over the ridge and down into the valley to illuminate Lower Falls.

There are few ideas that I find more romantic than sipping coffee in the cool of the morning in a beautiful wilderness. This little pick me up, helped make my entire day more positive. I spent the next several hours stopping at every thermal feature I could find to catch the morning light illuminating the steam that poured from the ground. Because Yellowstone is basically the caldera of a giant super volcano, it is known for having the majority of all the thermal features in the entire world. By noon, I had made my way to Old Faithful, possibly the most famous thermal feature in the entire park.

The eruption of Old Faithful is quite a sight. Imagine a giant ant hill, with steam pouring from the opening. Next imagine that steam building in pressure underground until finally it erupts 60 feet into the air, like a volcano of water, spewing its stinky steam across an area half the size of a football field.

From Old Faithful, I made my way back south to Grand Teton national park where I had some beautiful encounters with moose before finally ending the night in the town of Jacksons Hole, Montana.

The Super Volcano

I have heard many different people say that the Grand Tetons National Park is their favorite over Yellowstone National Park, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why!

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Grand Tetons. They are some of the prettier mountains that I have seen, and I have seen more than my fair share of mountains on this trip. I also got some really awesome and rare moose shots in the Grand Tetons (rare because of the conditions of the shot).

The thing is, Yellowstone has so many different things to do and see, and all of them are interesting (with the possible exception of the natural bridge, which is a very long hike to a very small and unassuming arch).

Immediately upon my arrival in Yellowstone, I was faced with a heard of elk cooling off in the shade of one of the many employee barracks at Mammoth Hot Springs, one of the most beautiful set of hot springs in the park.

As I journeyed East and then South along the grand loop road, it was like a journey back in time. Each place that I stopped at was a memory from my childhood, when my parents took us on a western road trip. I remembered the creek where I caught 5 brook trout, and my first look at a bison, and the sulphur smell of the Geo-thermal features.

I took time to stop at one overlook for nearly an hour, watching and waiting for the wolves that had been showing up in this area recently. I never did see the wolves, but I saw quite a few hawks and elk.

I was so touched by the view of lower falls, from Artist’s Point, that I made a decision to drive back to the point the next morning, for what I thought would be better lighting. That night, as I camped off the side of the road in a national forest, I was visited by 6 motorcycles that pulled into my clearing, revved their engines for a couple of minutes, and then drove off.

PS: why people hate photographers

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I made my way east from Missoula, crossing rolling glacial hills, fields of golden grass, and low, stony mountains, stopping briefly in Butte, a small mining town that stretches from the highway up the side of a large hill, “the richest hill on earth” as it is known, where prospectors struck gold in what is now the main street. For having the name, “the richest hill on earth”, the town certainly did not look like an overly prosperous place to live. Houses and shops were small and rundown, every fourth lot sat empty, and men wore wife beaters and drove rusty Camaros and old Chevrolet Pickups. It was almost exactly what I would expect a mining town to look like, except of course that a mining town should have more trees, and be very dark and cloudy all of the time.

I am always pleasantly surprised when I find a town that catches my eye. Bozeman is one of those towns. I think it is the downtown that attracted my attention. In my exhaustingly repetitive search for a place to sleep, I accidentally drove one exit past the Wal-Mart, and had to circle back through downtown Bozeman to get to my free version of the holiday inn.

I was shocked by the feeling of vitality that I got as I drove through downtown. People were still out and about at 9:30, stores and restaurants were still open, children and adult lined the streets alongside the college age, and young professional crowd. Bozeman feels like a town with some culture.

I drove all the way to Wal-Mart before deciding to turn around and get a little bit of the Bozeman experience. As I walked up and down the streets, feeling underdressed in my jeans and brown plaid shirt; I was approached by a man speaking truth out of the scriptures. His words were not long, his opinion not shared.

He simply stated: “seek yea first the kingdom of God,” along with a word of exhortation.

A few minutes later, a lady approached me to ask if I knew the location of the bus stop. I did not. After she had walked off, I got a feeling like I should make an effort to help her out rather than sitting on my lazy butt. I asked a passerby about the location of the bus station, and then found the lady and gave her a ride.


I ended up spending the next hour or so enjoying a glass of PBR with Carmen, while we talked about our life stories and our respective travels. Carmen is a former army medic, and EMT. She spent years working two jobs to support her teenage daughter, until she was no longer physically able to work because of the combination of no rest, and gulf war syndrome.

Now that her daughter has graduated, she travels around the country visiting friends in various places. I am always amazed by the stories of people that I meet, as well as by the words of encouragement that they so often share with me. As we talked about things that we felt like were valuable, I mentioned my own skepticism about the value of my photography, a skepticism that she did not share at all.

She told me that God gave me this gift for a reason, and that the images that I capture may not impact most people, but they impact some. She said that if a person looked at one of the images that I capture and stopped for just a second to think about G-d’s creation or our relationship to eternity, that would be something of value.

Coming Soon…

…To a maternity ward near you.

It is unusual to take maternity pictures when a mother is only 20 weeks pregnant, but then again, what do I ever do that is not unusual?

Kimberley Heger, a model in Kalispell, Montana, gave me the honors of doing her, and my, first maternity shoot. I have always thought that being a mother was one of the most wonderful and beautiful things that a woman could do, so it was a treat to be able to capture the beauty of maternity with my camera. Kimberly and I were both quite pleased with the results.

Night Light

My photographic adventure did not end in Kalispell. Just one long drive down a winding, scenic road from Kalispell is the thriving town of Missoula. Missoula is a real gem of a city, and one that I could see myself living in at some point in the future. The town of 50,000 people is home to the University of Montana, and supports a thriving downtown area, complete with bars, coffee shops, art galleries, alley ways, and on the evening that I happened to visit, a live band.

I stopped in Missoula to do a photo shoot with a student from the university there. The project that we were working on was light painting in an alleyway in the downtown area. Because of the technique, in which the camera shutter is left open for several seconds while a flashlight is used to “paint” light onto the subject, we had to shoot in a very dark area, which meant an alley at nighttime.

It is usually a bad idea to be hanging in dark alleyways at night, but Missoula seemed to be a fairly upstanding city, in that, rather than being attacked by drug dealers, we were harassed by a drunk blonde guy who wanted to hug my model, and a gaggle of drunken college girls, one of whom is actually trying to become a model.

All Forward Paddle

It is funny how people often mistreat each other, thinking that they will never see such and such person again. The truth is that our world is very small. This was illustrated to me as I walked through the parking lot of a Walmart in Missoula.

“Hey! I know that guy!”

I look up, and to my great surprise, up walks Michael, a guy that I river guided with at the JH Ranch in 2007.

So what is the moral of the story?

Be nice to everyone you meet, and not just because God told you to!