I’m thinking about making a few changes to the nature pictures I currently have posted on my web site, so this week I have been going through my files, taking a virtual tour down Memory Lane... I’m looking at places I’ve visited and photographed over my years of hiking in wild areas of the Pacific Northwest.
As I edited film and digital images, my office radio played in the background and I heard news stories about the climate change conference going on this week in Copenhagen. The reports were that rich and poor countries were bickering, and it sounded less and less likely that the conference would produce a meaningful agreement.
I realize that it’s risky business these days for any of us to try have a calm, rational discussion about a number of issues, climate change included. Folks seem to have formed opinions about global warming -- it is real, or it’s not; it is influenced by the actions of man, or it’s not -- and neither side wants to hear what the other has to say.
Here's one thing I thought about as I went through photographs this week: Though I don’t make my living with my nature pictures -- photojournalistic, people-photographs have always been what I do best -- I’ve been shooting landscape images as a visual exercise for about 30 years...which doesn’t seem like a terribly long time. Nevertheless, two of the pictures I found right off the top in my archive could not be shot today, due to climactic conditions.
The image above is Whitehorse Mountain near Darrington, Washington. The picture was shot on a brisk morning, December 17, 1996. Local meteorologists say that this year we’re experiencing an El Nino winter, meaning it’s warmer than usual, the snow level is higher, and only the upper part of Whitehorse is frosty-white. Maybe it’s indicative of something significant, probably it’s not, but Whitehorse Mountain in December, 2009 does not look like it did in the same month of 1996.
Of more long term concern is the picture below which I shot in 1980 in the Paradise ice caves on Mt. Rainier. The Paradise Glacier has retreated to the point where, today, the caves you see here are long gone. Melted.
When the Copenhagen conference came to a close today, my reading left me feeling that a few small steps were finally taken, but we have a long way to go.
My personal conclusion? Well for the past several years I've been driving a LOT less. Once upon a time I went to the mountains nearly every weekend; now I go maybe three or four times a year. I’m trying to find my nature pictures closer to home, traveling on foot or by bicycle whenever possible. Mine is a singular and possibly an inconsequential effort, but it's arguably more positive than what seems to have come out of Copenhagen.
