Taking Chances

The wonderful thing about film is that it collects in boxes of prints and negatives.  What this allows for is rediscovery; the review of shots that are actually incredibly meaningful but that you've forgotten about. The instant you see them, it takes you back there - sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. I remember years ago my dad found an undeveloped roll of film in his camera.  It'd been there for several years. When he had it developed, there were pictures of me down by the seaside in Victoria, at Clover Point, in autumn of 1982. We were out there for my grandfather's funeral. It was like a time capsule.


I found some negatives of black and white Agfa APX400 I shot during my second attempt at Mt. Logan in 2003 with Guillermo.  These weren't photos of the climb, but of the road trip, the waiting, the abandoned buildings, the long trip home in defeat.

The still frozen shores of Kluane Lake. We spent several days camped here, waiting for the weather to clear enough to fly in. It was from this spot that I would phone on the sat phone, back to Edmonton, and begin to understand deeper the chances I was taking not only on the mountain, but with the lives of others I left behind.

Sleeping in the campground. Waiting. 

I dreamt that she sat by my head, tenderly ruffling my hair withher fingers, playing the melody of her touch. I looked at her faceand struggled with my tears, till the agony of unspoken words burstmy sleep like a bubble.I sat up and saw the glow of the Milky Way above my window,like a world of silence on fire, and I wondered if at this momentshe had a dream that rhymed with mine. 

(Rabindranath Tagore - Lover's Gifts XXVIII: I Dreamt)

Abandoned building at the appropriately named Destruction Bay on Kluane Lake.  I remember feeling pretty lost when I took this picture. Since 1986, The North has always had the most incredible pull on me; it draws me in, frightens me until I want to run away, but calls out to me like no other place so that I long, ache at times, to return to it.

Every day.