Finlandia of the Western Landscape, Arches National Park, Grand County, Utah a gallery (4 images)

Click on any image to enlarge.

 "THE JEWELERS BENCH," 

 The Fiery Furnace

“SOMETHING OF FOREVER WITNESSED ON THE FRINGE OF THE FIREY FURNACE"

"MILLENNIA BEFORE PHYSICS OR EXTREME SPORTS 

WERE EVEN DREAMED OF BY THE CARBON UNITS, 

SANDSTONE HAD BEEN PERFORMING SURPRISING FEATS"

"AND THEN FOR NO REASON, 

THE WAY OUT GOT ALL DIFFICULT LIKE A WOMAN"

The Carribean, Visions of an Island Realm, a gallery (3 images)

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RESIDENT CONDUCTOR OF THE TRADE WINDS SYMPHONY

ST. THOMAS, UNITED STATES VIRGIN ISLANDS

Relaxing in Caribbean hammocks and looking up at various kinds of island flora, I have wondered why the sound of wind in leaves isn't given a higher status on the music charts.         

"The Great Coco Key Sand Wing" 

Bahamas

 

The beautiful white beaches of the Caribbean and Bahamian Islands are primarily coral sand.

When ocean currents move through straits between islands the sand can be swept into long graceful streamers.

This one appears as if the sea is in a dream of flight.

"Freighter Long Aground in the Twilight"

Turks and Cacos Islands

 

Imagine how the captain of this freighter felt when either he or his crew failed to note how close they were to an offshore sand reef not unlike the one pictured above, which grounded the ship so firmly that it has been stranded there for years.

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Ghost Towns, America's Past in Aspic, a gallery (3 images)

Click on any image to enlarge.

"THE DRAMA CONTINUES LONG AFTER 
THE FINAL CURTAIN CALL"

COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, BELMONT, NEVADA

 

This photograph of the Cosmopolitan Hotel was taken in the early 1970s.  As it too often happens, some guys, overcome by their testosterone, destroyed the building just for the hell of it about ten years after I took the photograph. 

I’ve often wondered how much money those individuals would have wanted, to do the same work, if someone had hired them to trash this piece of American history. I'll bet it would probably have taken more than minimum wage to even interest them.

Up until the silver mines closed in 1905 and the population drifted away, the Cosmopolitan was probably the best place a traveler could come for a drink, a night’s relaxation and whatever entertainment could be arranged in a landscape of vast desert valleys and mountains that still seem to go on forever. 

For that small segment of time, at least, the Cosmopolitan was indeed the opposite of loneliness. 

Do thoughts like these ever cross the minds of males who, because they subconsciously doubt it, need to prove they are men?

"GHOST TOWN CURB APPEAL" 

BODIE, CALIFORNIA

   

There are roughly three kinds of Ghost Towns.

Those preserved by national, state or local governments as public trusts,

Those that have been bought up and resettled by private individuals, technically making them post ghost towns,

And places where there used to be a ghost town. See the Cosmopolitan story above.

The reason Bodie is the quintessential American ghost town is that gradually as the mines played out, one hold-out resident kept buying up the town as people left. Before he died, he deeded the whole place to the State of California with the stipulation that it remain an historic park. It survives now, thanks to continuous maintenance in a state of arrested decay.

Thank you, James Cain, his family 

and the State of California.

“MIRRORS OF SILENCE, WINDOWS OF MEMORY," 

BODIE HOTEL,  MONO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

In June 2002, 30 years after the "Curb Appeal, "image was taken, the thriller novelist, Gary Braver, and I came to Bodie, me to reconnect with the West in my blood, him to fill his creative mind with a broader experience to inspire his craft. 

I was delighted that the natural decay had been arrested and locked up so well that it looked like no time had passed since 1972. 

Sometimes governments can do stuff real well.

Portraits, An Adventure into Time and Face, a gallery (2 images)

Click on any image to enlarge.

 

 Ellesworth Funk working fence Bodie Road, 

Mono County, California April 1972

Jerilee, Rick, and I were on our way up a winding dirt road to the iconic ghost town of Bodie when we came upon an early fifties Chevrolet pickup packing a very homemade camper. It was so odd that we pulled over, got out, and went over for a look. In a gully north of the road, we noticed a man dressed completely in leather, wearing a six-gun and a straw cowboy hat. It was kind of a time-warp experience. 

The man climbed up the bank and introduced himself as Ellsworth Funk. We started talking; I think he was pleased to have someone to say anything to, and one of them was a cute girl to boot. 

I asked him why he was armed. He said he was hired by a local rancher to mend fences, and the gun was for rattlesnakes. As he climbed into his camper to get a cup of coffee, I asked where he got his leather outfit. He said he made it himself ‘cause leather wore so well in his line of work. 

When he sat down in the doorway, I asked him if his underwear didn't roll or bunch up because of the felt texture of rough out leather. He thought for a minute and said, "What underwear? It must be . . . 10 yar or so since I had any on.”

I remember thinking as we were leaving, that I'd never met anyone who seemed to live within his name so well.

On The Plains of Idaho, a gallery (2 images)

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"The Thunder Symphony, First Movement" 

Arco Plains, Idaho

 

 

 

 

"The Thunder Symphony, Final Movement"

Arco Plains, Idaho

 

 

Lehua, a volcanic crater in the Pacific Ocean, a gallery (5 images)

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Lehua is about fifteen miles west of the Na Pali coast.

This progression of images is what you would see if you approached the caldera from the north, then turned south around its west shore.

"Within the Lehua Caldera" 

 

The caldera has been worn down on its northwest side until it is now just a half crescent. This image was taken while we were still in the ancient circle of the crater. The panorama is about a 240 degree sweep, so it looks as if you are seeing it as a long island in the distance.

In order to get the sense from the photograph that you were still in the crater, you would have to print it out to its full size of 20 inches by 10 feet and bend it around your field of view.

  "The Crescent end of Lehua"

Here we move west around the northernmost edge of the island.

 "A Crack in the Crescent of Lehua"

This is the crack you see in the first image. You are looking back toward the caldera.

"Lehua, Island of Iterations"

The island is made up from countless layers of ash raining down from many thundering eruptions. Each explosion adds a foot to a yard of new land to the island.

"A Crash Proof Wave"

For those who love the visual elements of pattern and texture, this place is a Nirvana of experience. The wheeling gulls, the way the ocean converses with the Arabesque coves, the lively submarine world below can make this place live in your memory with great peace.

Na Pali, Kauai's Great Feral Coast, a gallery (3 images)

 Click any image to enlarge.

 

"Na Pali Epiphany"

Morning along the Na Pali Coast of Kauai is both difficult to capture and magnificent to witness.  You have to push the limits of your equipment to find that minute sweet spot in the exposure that sets your imagination free.

"A Fingerprint of Fire, Fog, and Rain" 

Where the Dramatic Edge of Kauai Washes Inexorably into the Pacific 

 

Both the Big Island's Kohala/Hamakua and Kauai's Na Pali coasts are very remote and spectacular shorelines. Here on the Na Pali, there are tiny valleys that have insects that exist nowhere else in the world. In one of these canyons there is a verdant valley floor only a few acres in size where there are male fruit flies with tiny antlers. And yes, they butt heads on leaves just like larger game animals establish their territory and mating rights. The genetics of life on Earth is far more strange and magnificent than most of us know.

"Na Pali Post Meridian"

This same formidable shore greeted those who first saw the far west of Kauai

 

Early Hawaiians found peace and sanctuary along this coast because it was so remote.  Today there are good roads all around the coast of Kauai except the Na Pali coast, so a view like this can only be seen the same way those first humans saw it, from the sea.