Life on the Road

Around us, smoke rose from the fires that burned along the dirt path that stretched through the village to the river. A distant haze seemed to settle restlessly over the hands of the trees and the path before us disappeared into the indefiniteness of the shadows beneath the canopy of green.

Among the lessons we have learned is that nothing is ever as it appears to be. Not on the road. Rarely in life.

I smiled as I stood by the side of the river. Another one of those moments when what was supposed to be really wasn’t. We had been told that we would need to take our shoes off and cross a stream on our way to the falls. Only the stream wasn’t a stream. It was a river. And not just a river. Beneath the surface I could see moss covered rocks worn round by the discipline of the passing of the river. There was no way we would get our gear across without getting some or all of it wet. Even JD at six feet three inches wouldn’t be tall enough.

We decided we would take my camera. At five years old, if we were to lose one piece of gear that would be it. So, I watched as JD waded into the river, my camera above his head, as the river rose to almost his shoulders. When he was safely on the other side our guide came back for me. The river rose to my shoulders and I can still remember the round slipperiness of the stones beneath my feet. I am not one to trust and yet here I was, arms raised, my belt held tightly by our guide.

Around me the voices of our party chattered on. As I always do, I lost myself in the memories of other rivers in other places until we reached the falls. The thunder of water against rock pulled me back to the present. Back to the moment. The last moment I remember I was standing over the falls, my back to our party, looking down.

“Falcon,” said a voice somewhere behind me.

I turned quickly. Water against wet rubber on round stone. I went down on my back – concerned only for the camera. Concerned only for the completion of the assignment. Rock against flesh. The dissonance of pain rushing over my back. I knew this feeling – my ribs had taken the full impact.

“Are you OK?”

“I’m not worried about me,” I said not really answering the question. “I heal. The camera won’t.” I remember looking at the camera closely. I held my breath as I took a photo. “Yeah, it’s OK.” A chip in the rim of the polarized filter. Another scratch on the camera body. Another time when things were not as they were supposed to be. Another moment in a life lived on the road.
A moment I remembered with every rut and every bump on the road back to Trujillo……

Descartes, the French philosopher, changed modern philosophy with a single question: Of what can I be certain? In the end, Descartes concluded that there were only two facts about which he could be certain. The first was embodied in his now famous statement, “I think therefore I am.” The second, that god exists. All of my life, I have had my own version of Descartes’
facts. The first is that all things die and one day so shall I. The second was the confidence that no matter how difficult, how miserable, how desperate the circumstances into which I had been born, I would have become the person I now am. If not the person I am now, then certainly, I would have been as successful as I am now.

One need only look at my life to see that this confidence is not misplaced. I nearly died at birth. I suffered severe abuse as a child, near blindness, anorexia… and here I am. Alive. Successful. I not only survived. I followed my dream and left the horrors of my childhood and the challenges of adulthood behind. I am tough, disciplined, focused, and when it comes to pursuing what I want, I am single-minded, passionate, and relentless.

Until Trujillo.

No, it wasn’t the poverty. I have seen poverty at least that bad before. I had been through rural Maine and eastern Kentucky. What I had not seen in person, I had seen in books, on TV…. Besides, the sense of hopelessness that seemed so much apart of my childhood never clouded my determination. It never stopped me from dreaming. When times were the hardest I had found the strength to stand in the face of adversity and survive. No, I didn’t just survive. I actually thrived.

But it was different in Trujillo.

Every day in Trujillo is the same as the one before and identical to the one that will follow it. Each day is as it has been for generations. People bathe in the river as they have since the sixteenth century. People wash their clothes in the river as they have since 1502. There is no sense of a world beyond. No sense that life can be more than it is. No sense of the possibilities the world beyond the narrow confines of Trujillo holds. No sense of tomorrow. No sense that there is a reason to want something more.

The waters of the Caribbean rose over the edge of the beach and washed over my feet. The sun was still low in the sky. Restless, I had left my hotel room. It had been a long nyght. A long, restless nyght that still burned against my desire to sleep. A part of me had died and I did not know what to make of what had happened to me. Like Koestler’s Rubashov, I no longer believed in my infallibility. I no longer believed that one way or another I would have become the person I am now. Never in all my life had I been so possessed by self doubt. Never.

The wheels of the plain struck the tarmac in Greensboro. As I always do, I chose to sleep during the aircraft’s descent. As the plain rose and then settled again, I remember wondering who I might have been……

Her eyes haunt me. If I am condemned to live as long as time itself, I shan’t ever forget her, the little girl who sat by a river in a world so far away from mine….

Despite the artistry of our work, we are photo-journalists. We have always observed a kind of Star Trekean “Prime Directive.” We observe the people and circumstances around us and record our emotional response to what we have observed with a kind of detachment that is, well, often disarming, even to me. It is, after all, what our Forebears – the likes of Gordon Parks, Avedon, Atget, Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith - all did before us. It is a skill we have worked tirelessly to hone: See it, capture it, and move on. Whatever the “it” that moment happens to be. The way we hold our cameras, our ability to shoot from a moving car and still get what we saw, everything we do is designed to take hold of the one moment that caught our eye. Forever.

The water of the river without a name surged over rocks that rested deeply beneath its surface. I was soaked from the river crossing – from the neck down. The length of my black cargo pants hung pressed against my legs beneath the rising heat of the Honduran sky. Barefooted, I stood at the edge of the river, just letting the water run from me to the earth beneath my feet.

We had passed her and her siblings on our way to the river – they lived in a small cluster of, well, I am not sure what to call them. Hovels. Dirt covered shacks. Primitive shelters. All apply and yet none speaks to what I saw and felt as we passed along the narrow dirt trail to the river. I had seen her and the other two children as we walked to the river. I was surprised that they had somehow followed us to the edge of the river. We had been gone some time – perhaps an hour or more – there is no sense of time there, far from the edge of the city and I found that it took little for me to fade into moments that seemed elastic and random. She held her cat – the same kitten that had been near her feet when we passed the partially finished shelter that was her home.

The youngest of the three, held by the one who I took to be her brother, had a distended stomach, skin that seemed pale and white and hair that was thin and reddish. She was covered with welts. There was some speculation about the cause of the welts and in the end we were told they were mosquitoes. But I had seen all this before. In the third world, young children suffer all manner of illness and cruelty. It is my job to keep a kind of aesthetic immunity from scenes such as this. I can only allow myself to enter so far into all this lest I loose the distance that erodes my sense of objectivity.

She sat on a single stone next to my feet. Her kitten sitting in her lap as though it were a person – its back was to her chest and its paws extended in a way they might were the kitten sitting a dinner table somewhere. I smiled at her. I wish I could say that she smiled in return but she did not. There was little emotion that I could see or feel. I sat down next to her on another stone.

At first I stroked her kitten from across the distance between us. Then, for a moment, I took the kitten, held it so that I could try to show her that I shared her affection for it, and returned it to her.

I am still trying to understand her reaction to what I did. It was, for me, a profound departure from our Prime Directive: “Observe, react, commit to an image, and then detach.” But never, under any circumstances, are we to cross the line between what we observe and ourselves. Doing so compromises our objectivity. Doing so blurs the line between what we see and what we feel to the point where it is emotion that drives the creation of an image, and not the observation of the moment that elicits the emotional response that gives birth to the image.

I had crossed the line.

I knew I was doing it.

I would do it again.

I smiled as warmly as I could. Usually, that is sufficient to elicit a smile in return. There was no smile. No warmth. Yet I sensed in her something. No, I cannot find the words to express what that was. Not even now.


We had been gone longer than anticipated and around us there was a stirring of conversation and movement. It was time to return to our world and leave hers behind. I smiled, gently touched her hair, and stood. She stood too and from behind her kitten spoke to me without words. I took the last two photos – photos of her - my memory card could hold, and by the time I reloaded, people had begun to move down the trail towards the van and the Land Cruiser. It was a long way back to Trujillo over difficult and rutted roads. Darkness falls quickly and we had already had one vehicle stuck in the river. It was a long way back to our hotel and the showers that would cleanse us from the sand of the river.

From behind the kitten she smiled at me.

I remember standing there for a moment, the past person in our party, looking at her.

Another time, another place, I might have cried. But as I stepped away from her, I pulled myself back over the line. Back into the distance that I always keep around me. Back into the objectivity our Prime Directive demands.

And yet, she haunts me still. Even now. Even securely in my world. Thousands of miles away. She haunts me.

The Old Church

It was cold. Bitterly. Even through my gloves, the cold reached my fingers and I found myself curling my fingers into the palm of my hands to keep them from becoming so cold that I would lose all sense of having them.

The church stood on a hill to my right – I caught it out of the corner of my eye
as we drove back toward Sparta, NC. Lew and I debated whether or not we would go
over the fence but it really wasn’t much of a debate. We both knew we would go
over it. And so we did, carefully staying clear of the barbed wire. As much as I
do not like the cold, I treasure the silent sound of footsteps on the snow on a
bitterly cold day. Lew drifted to the right and I followed the drifting snow to the right.
The church is empty. Boarded up. A barbed wire fence tightly follows its outer walls. Locks hold the doors closed. I imagined the church as it might have been long ago, filled with people and voices, and wondered what could have happened.
For me there was more than a passing interest – having lost my faith long ago
despite my PhD in biblical theology. Time and memory and distance. Another life
I once lived so long ago.

The wind stirred from the valley below and the shadows moved restlessly over the face of the snow. Our time here had passed.

How many men does it take to change a flat on a small Daihatsu SUV?

Theoretically, just one.

But theory and practice are often very different.

Fourteen hours after a long hot day started, we made our way in the Daihatsu SUV through the streets of Coxen Bay toward French Harbor. I did what I could to stretch out in the back seat – which wasn’t easy in such a small car. Eventually we found the restaurant, parked the car and went in.

It was late. Only one other table was occupied and as we ordered dinner we kept the conversation light. In short order I finished my second coke and waited for the third. In typical Latin fashion, dinner arrived in its own good time. It was quite good and it didn’t take long for us to eat, pay the check and then leave.

When we left the restaurant, I opened the back door and got in. JD walked around the back of the car and when he reached the other rear door he opened it and announced that the car had a flat.
“You’re kidding” I said knowing he wasn’t. I got out of the car and joined Mike and JD looking at the tire. Not only was it flat but a dog had urinated on it. Something told me it wasn’t going to be as easy as we hoped.

And it wasn’t.

We had to find the jack. That took some time. Then I loosened the lug nuts and jacked up the car as Mike and JD watched only to conclude that with the car parked on a slight incline the jack would not raise the car high enough to get the tire off. Easy to solve. Theoretically. All we needed to do was move the car to a flat surface and try again. If we could find a flat surface. The fact that all our camera gear – more than $50,000 worth or gear – was in the car didn’t help. While we were calm, there was a clear sense of urgency. We knew nothing of the neighborhood, had no idea how safe it was and it was late. Very late now.

Before we could move the car, the restaurant’s guard, complete with machete, and three other men from the neighborhood decided to help us. Only one, Marco Polo by name, spoke enough English to communicate with us and Mike did what he could with his Spanish to fill in the blanks. Instinctively, I wanted to get my camera – after all how often does one get to see not one but seven men try to change a tire - but logic told me that that was not a good idea.

One of the men knelt in front of the tire and grabbed it. I tried to explain to him that a dog had urinated on the tire and that he needed to be careful. Apparently either he did not understand or he did not care. “Help you,” he said as he moved his eyes in such a way as to let me know that they all wanted to help us.”

“I understand, but, listen, don’t grab the tire, a dog –“Not only did he grab the tire but he wrapped his arms around it and pulled it to his chest. I tried to tell him that there was too much pressure on the tire and that he didn’t want urine all over him. He smiled and I decided it was best to just let him try to help.

Meanwhile, Marco suggested that we lift the car so that the tire could be removed. “Bad idea,” I thought but it was too late. There were five men behind the car all attempting to life it. It was a bad idea. The bumper, nothing but foam and plastic, twisted and after a few seconds, the car came down again on the jack and the tire was still on. The only way to life the car was to raise the jack. Even if we lifted the car we would never be able to hold it long enough to get the flat off and the new tire on. Despite the twisted bumper they tried lifting the car again. And again. The second time the car shifted and I had to grab the jack and reset it or the car might have turned over.

“This is not going to work,” I said to Mike. “We need some wood. If we can raise the jack two or three inches the jack with raise the car enough to get the tire off.” Mike spoke to the men and I did what I could in English to explain to Marco how we would use the wood. One of the men, the one who lived in the house in front of which we were parked left and returned with some long boards – 2×6s that had to be ten feet long. There was a round of discussion – all of it in Spanish and under Marco’s direction the boards were turned sideways, placed under the car beside the jack, and then the men tired to raise the car by pushing the boards up. There was a loud crack and one of the boards snapped. The car came down hard.

This time I looked directly at Marco and explained that the boards needed to go under the jack and that once they were there we would get the tire off. I knelt in front of the tire as Marco placed the jack on the wood and raised the car. Except he didn’t want me to get dirty – though I was totally covered in sweat it was so humid and hot. I wanted to insist – until I realized that I would only offend him. I stepped away. Marco raised the jack and the tire swung freely. I had been correct. Raising the jack was the answer.

Once the tire had been replaced everyone was laughing and congratulating everyone. JD and Mike looked very relieved. Mike tipped the men and we washed our hands and the got in the car and drove away. We laughed and joke most of the way back to the hotel but beneath the laughter, we were immensely relieved that we had survived what could have been a very dangerous situation.

Sunset - Little Dixie Wilderness Utah

when a hard stretch of dirt is the only place to rest and there have been times when y back and arms have been so sore it has taken weeks after an assignment to recover.

It is important, therefore, to use the right equipment. For us that means the right boots, gloves (two pairs of light gloves layered to maintain good manual dexterity in the cold), the right socks, pants, hats and ThinkTank Photo camera bags. It is rugged yet flexible – when we are in the mountains or the desert or on the street we can configure our gear accordingly.

Other things we like about ThinkTank – Their gear is comfortable. Can you do seven hours a walking in the Valley of Fire without your gear wearing you out and exhausting your body? We can. There are pockets and flaps everywhere. These are ideal for an extra pair of socks, an Ace bandage, an extra turtle neck, or if we become over heated because the day has warmed, we can remove clothing and store it in one of our bags. It offers maximum protection. Is that important? It takes one bang of a $2000 lens or an $8,000 camera body and it is over.

Extreme photography takes a toll on all your gear. All of it. Including your memory cards – in fact make sure you buy cards that will withstand the extremes of temperature and weather. You do get what you pay for and I can tell you first hand what it is like to loose “the money shot”.

1. Protect your cards and use a card holder (most ThinkTank bags come with one by the way).
2. Before inserting the card into your camera make sure the card is clean and dry.
3. We have tested numerous brands and the only ones we trust are made by Hoodman USA. I have carried mine – literally – through a creek, numerous rain storms, in the snow, in the heat of the desert and the bitter cold of a Danish winter. I have crawled in the desert dirt with them in a card holder in my pants pocket (I won’t do that again) and I have never lost a single image.
4. Practice holding the camera with the strap wound around your forearm. Why? As I was reminded again a few says ago in the Valley of Fire in Nevada when some loose rock broke away under my feet on the side of a cliff, I was able to brace myself and kept from falling while the strap kept the camera from disappearing into the canyon or bouncing off the stone face of the wall to my right. In the urban extreme (yes, working on the streets of a major urban area can be every bit as dangerous) this can keep your camera from being stolen. It also allows you to quickly take hold of the camera for that once in a life time photo should it materialize suddenly.

Snow Fall

Silent.

Soundless.

Alone.

Despite the rising of the hands of the sun over the white emptiness of the trees, it was still bitterly cold. For a moment I stood looking into the distance, into the white emptiness of the snow covered world about me. It has been a very long time since I had been alone in the snow, and yet, much as I had many years ago bebearh a cold and barren New England winter, I watched as the wind came silently over the world around me and left its mark in the drifting of the snow.

Soon now others would find me and the silence would be no more. Quietly unmoved, I surveyed the world around me until over the edge of the tress the sun burned my eyes and bade me move. Down a snow covered path, into the silence of the shadows I left only my memories and my footsteps behind.
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Always  be  Prepared. For a NyghtFalcon photographer that means –

1. Check the weather for a week or so before going into a wilderness area. This is important for two reasons – it will prepare you mentally for what you will face and it will let you know the extent to which the environmental conditions can change.
2. If the weather is prone to changing radically from day to day, knowing that can help anticipate and plan for the unexpected.
3. Know your body and know how to dress. JD, for example, generates considerable heat. I generate very little. It is critically important to avoid extremes in body temperature.
   1. If you over dress and become sweaty and then are forced to stop and rest for a longer than expected period of time, you can chill suddenly, your body temperature will drop and hyperthermia could potentially set in.
   2. Hypothermia is just as potentially fatal as hyperthermia. Either one can kill you.
   3. Dress in layers and think about what you might discard in an emergency.
4. Know where you are going. Wandering aimlessly can get you lost, or worse, it can take you into serious danger. This is true in every environment. I like to check Google Earth before a trip.
5. Prepare yourself before going into a city – check maps, Google Earth, and form a mental picture of the city’s layout. Remember that an urban environment can offer a different set of challenges that can be just as dangerous. A wrong turn in Brussels once landed me in the middle of a Muslim neighborhood that was especially unfriendly to Americans. For about ten blocks I was followed by six or seven men until I found my way out of their neighborhood.
   1. Try to fit in. If you look out of place, if you look nervous, you will draw attention to yourself, this is never good.
   2. If you find yourself in the wrong place, get out quickly.
   3. If you need to ask for directions, don’t stop someone on the street. Step into a store or look for a police station. Stopping a stranger and asking for help is doubly dangerous.
   4. Use buildings as landmarks so that if you get lost you will have reference points.
   5. The best way to be prepared for danger is to proactively avoid it. For example, in many parts of the world, being an American is not a good thing. Once, in Lausanne, Switzerland, I took a break along Lake Geneva and upon discovering I was late for a meeting, I jumped some hedges and cut across the grass. In Switzerland, that was a very bad thing to do. Several old men at a coffee house along the edge of the lake stood up and yelled “American! American! Respect our country!” I got the point and I never did that again. How did they know I was an American? Think about. In retrospect, I told them very clearly I was not Swiss.
   6. When working in an urban environment in another country make sure you understand the culture and respect indigenous traditions. Not only is it good to respect other people’s traditions and culture, but it could make the difference between being singled out as a tourist and hurt, and not being bothered.