I don’t spend many of my journal entries talking about gear. It’s an occasional diversion, but by and large I try to keep my ramblings focused on the creative side of making images. But a couple of weekends ago, right before the latest Polar Vortex enveloped Minnesota, I spent the weekend up at the cabin with Leigh. It was still pretty cold. Sunday we were going birding at the Sax-Zim bog, and that day turned out to be some serious cold, with nearly -30°F in the morning near Cotton, Minnesota.
It was an incongruous setting. The harsh artificial lights turned bright ceremonial garments neon and cast a strangely-angled glow on the pink walls of a deep canyon of stone, steel and glass. Snowflakes fell and spectators were swaddled in their warmest for the ten degree Fahrenheit weather. In the background, men on folding chairs surrounded a large central drum and sang loudly to the beat, telling a story, I can only surmise, that was unintelligible to all but a few. The dancers swirled and shook feathers and streamers. The eagle feathers were not, for once, in support of Philadelphia.
Sometimes, all the stars just align perfectly, so to speak, for a rare image to come together. It’s always a mixture of the right opportunity, the right light, the ability to capture it, having the necessary gear along, and a huge dollop of luck. Such was the evening that resulted in this image of curling by luminary under the stars on the St. Croix river in Wisconsin. Emphasis on the huge dollop of luck.
The St. Louis River was running unusually high for the late fall season, the product of some recent prodigious rains and a wetter-than-normal season overall. The air was crisp and colors bright. We explored a trail down along the river, running past a huge array of impressively noisy cataracts.
