BC // 50
I just returned from a dreamy week of backcounty skiing in British Columbia. The trip, a belated 50th, was supposed to happen last year, but the Canadian border was closed so we had to postpone until this year. It’s hard to believe that the trip I did to the Alps for my 40th was over a decade ago.
In the decade since, I’ve gone on to sell through the Alps pieces several times over. I have also gone on to make other bodies of work that continue to sell. But how the idea for a project comes into existence is still a mystery to me. Sometimes the ideas come from trying new stuff, throwing paint at the wall, playing, doodling. Other times, it’s an idea that won’t leave my head for weeks, months, years, and I realize that I need to get the idea out by just seeing where it takes me.
But on this last trip to BC, while walking across a glacier, I had a distinct moment where an idea came to me like a vision. To give some context, a few months before this trip, I had a vivid dream where I was asked to give a talk about photography, and how it relates to design. In this dream, I was laying out the similarities between the two — good photos and good design both depend on form, composition, and color. Their foundations are built from the same elements.
I awoke from the dream inspired, with a deeper belief that this idea of universal connection goes far beyond photography and design. This shared existence extends across natural and supernatural worlds. We, and everything around us, are all connected. It’s so simple. But it’s a big idea that feels overwhelming. And now that I’ve seen the world this way, it’s impossible to go back. So this idea of universal connection had been spinning around in my mind for months. I wasn’t sure what to do with it — I just knew it was a big, sticky concept that wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Snowfall Lodge is not close to anything. To get there from Boulder, you have to fly to Spokane, drive 6 hours north, then take a helicopter deep into the Selkirk range. The mountains here are steep, rugged, blanketed in glaciers, and make for excellent skiing. The lodge sits lower in the trees, next to a creek that provides water for drinking, cooking, and occasional showering. It was built entirely by hand, with materials brought in by helicopter, and is a really impressive achievement.
A week at Snowfall is pretty simple. Each day, you wake up, eat breakfast and head out for a full day of skiing in the surrounding mountains. There is no helicopter or snowcat — you get up the mountain by walking up it. Because the lodge is sited lower down in the trees, safely out of the avalanche paths, you need to go uphill to get to the good skiing. Some days, we’d hike uphill for several hours before taking our skins off and skiing back down.
Going uphill on skis is not unlike hiking uphill on foot, or riding uphill on a bike. You settle into a rhythm of moving and breathing that’s very meditative. I usually enjoy going up as much (or more) than going down. It’s a beautiful way to move through the mountains, and I’m convinced that the rhythmic breathing brings about a level of clarity that’s hard to achieve while sitting at a desk. Thoughts are clearer, and focus lasts longer.
On the fourth morning of our trip, we were hiking up through a blanket of fresh snow. Broken clouds and blue sky were mixing overhead, filtering the sun into an achingly beautiful, dreamlike landscape. We were traversing a glacier, and had spread out so as to avoid putting too much weight on the snow bridges that cover the known crevasses under our skis. As I hiked slowly across the vast uniform glacial field, acutely attuned to the possibility of falling at any moment through the snow into a dark, icy crack, I just kept breathing and moving. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a swirling combination of the beauty of the moment, a feeling of universal connection, and gratitude for the experience of being alive, here, in this special place:
Then, I’m not sure how else to say this, but an image came to me. It was a circle, framed by a messy rectangle. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and was really clear, like a photograph. I focussed on the form, trying to decipher it. After walking for a few more minutes across the glacier, I understood that the circle symbolized universal connection, oneness, breath, life and death. And the rectangle represented reality — the structure and systems that we develop and build around ourselves. It was simple, but given what I’d been dwelling on for the previous months, it just made sense, and several fragmented ideas suddenly snapped together into a cohesive one.
After a spectacular day of skiing in some of the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever experienced, we went back to the lodge. I sat down and did a few quick drawings of what I’d seen, so that I wouldn’t lose the idea:
Since that day, I have been exploring this idea in more depth, following it to see where it goes. I’ve made prints on my press, and built photo illustrations using images from the BC trip. Each iteration gets me a little closer to understanding this idea — the tension between these two spaces — the reality we live in, and the one where we’re all connected. I’m not sure if I’ll ever arrive at any kind of hard conclusion, but so far the journey is really interesting and inspiring. More to come…
