Tag Archives: America

Battle Along The Columbia

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As many of you already know the Bokeh Maru, the Institutes premier research vessel, is a remarkable vehicle. Outfitted with all the modern attributes of a world-class media center and loaded down with sophisticated electronic equipment including GPS, a Smartphone, contact receptacles mounted in the walls that interface with portable electronics like laptops, toasters, handheld devices that remove facial hair and a place to recharge batteries in all the professional photographic gear that is needed on an expedition such as this one. The power source alone that is a regenerative unit that provides nearly an inexhaustible amount of power in the form of AC/DC electricity, requires an advanced degree in mechanical engineering just to turn it on.

But perhaps the greatest and most useful device on board is a portable, slightly oversized, hyper-organic computer with the ability to perform incredible feats of observation and analysis of the conditions around it. Programmed with the latest algorithms and lightning fast calculations it is able to instantly react to stimulus occurring in a 360° radius of its location. That is until it goes on overload, reboots, gives you a blue screen and you crash into the guard rail and spill your tea. Fortunately that didn’t happen but it could of.

It, the organic computer named after the Hal 9000’s cousin Leland, was running its wildlife acquisition app as we sped down I-84 along the Columbia river just east of The Dalles in Oregon, when it suddenly sprang into action after locating life-forms just off the hwy and up a nearly vertical wall of rocks, sand, boulders and scrub. Sensing images to be had I immediately pulled over to the side of the road where fortunately the shoulder was just wide enough that if I nearly scraped the side of the Bokeh Maru against the concrete divider placed there to keep foolish gawkers from falling into the Columbia river, I could get far enough off the roadway to avoid being crushed to death by the semi-truck traffic rocketing by at 70 mph.

The life-forms turned out to be Bighorn Sheep, rams to be exact, that were girding their loins in preparation for the rut which would allow them to have unprotected sex with any female sheep they could coerce into mating behavior. There were 5-7 of these bachelor boys who took turns ramming their heads together (hence the name Rams) to see who would get first pick of any females they might blunder into. Half these guys  were so loopy that they didn’t know which way was up after several rounds of striking their heads together with enough force you could hear it over the sound of 18 wheelers screaming by inches away. Their numbers varied as they came and went, as they did battle, then retreated to take whatever headache remedy they could before returning to the jousts again. This went on for hours, all in all a magnificent display of the ridiculous, I mean, they could’ve just sent a nice bouquet of roadside sage or some tasty twigs they located, then after some small talk and a little wine, they could accomplish what nature intended without all that head-banging and bleating. But that is just a personal opinion and not to be taken as scientific fact.

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Here two of the Bachelor Boys contend for contendership and the right to do this again with someone bigger. The average good-sized ram will weigh between 250 and 300 lbs. with 30 lbs or more of that weight being their horns.

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Contact! They put every ounce of power they have into these moments.

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The impact is so intense that the energy rocketing through their bodies results in one or both of them actually being lifted from the ground. It is impressive to see and one wonders about the longevity of Nature’s crash-test dummies after being subjected to this dozens of times a day. Makes these NFL linemen we hear about today seem like pansy little whiners in comparison with their measly little concussions and all.

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After the immediate impact they stand there motionless, or I might say paralyzed, while they contemplate what just happened. At the moment of impact these 250-300lbs. rams are striking each other at speeds up to 20 mph which is the equivalent of a 250lb man on a fat-tired bike slamming into the concrete wall of a Starbucks at 40 mph. One can only wonder what they might be thinking at this moment.

As a trained observer I have theorized that those thoughts may be something like “Holy crap, did THAT hurt.” or possibly a false sense of bravado with one saying “Didn’t hurt.” and the other one responding “Did too!” or perhaps something along the lines of “Where am I? Better yet, what am I?” While these boys are standing there trying to figure out if they walked to work or carried their lunch, another pair begin the same ritual. These bouts can last up to 24 hrs. before they finally concede its dumb and they go get breakfast somewhere.

Although this was a unique adventure as there was no expectation that wildlife would be spotted in the narrow confines of the Columbia gorge, the real adventure was not getting sideswiped by every semi that came down the highway. The rest was that act of reentering 70 mph traffic from a standing start. For those who have never  driven through the Columbia gorge it is one of the principal entries into the city of Portland and consequently every truck in America is required to go through it, sometimes several times a day. And they, the large, malevolent, evil-smelling ogres of the road, do not like RV’s. Or cars. Or other trucks. They don’t even like their mothers, or Jesus, or Country and Western music, so reentering their domain takes an act of courage that many simply don’t have. But the Bokeh Maru does. She leapt into the fray with never a thought for her soft-bodied passenger inside and fearlessly held up her tail pipe in a obscene gesture in the face of that 90,000lb behemoth bearing down on her and pulled into the traffic lane. We lived.

It was on to bigger and better things as we pointed our broad nose to the west and headed for Portland, the city of narrow roads and high-speed traffic. New adventures awaited us.

How To Find Color

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MuleyPoint0735-0750click to enlarge

Lots of people come up to me and say “Hey! Mr. Photographer, how do I find color?” Well that’s an easy question to answer when you are a trained, professional, color-finding photographer such as I am. But of course there are tricks, just like in any profession demanding skill, intelligence and extraordinary luck, there are things that make Finding Color easier.

First clean your glasses if you wear any, if you don’t, then blink. This prepares your eyes for the act of seeing color. Next and this is important, come to America. That’s right. Many people think you have to go on cruises, or fly to exotic places in a plane, or even sneak over borders on foot with all your worldly possessions on your back, but you don’t have to take those extreme steps to find color. Simply come to America. If, by some incredible stroke of luck, you are already here, stay here. You’re where you need to be.

Many people are under the mistaken belief that color exists everywhere. Don’t you believe it. There are huge parts of the world where there is simply no color whatsoever. Czechoslovakia for instance, the Balkans, Russia, everywhere in Russia except for a small area around St. Petersburg, I know this to be absolutely true because every movie I have ever seen about those places had no color in them, none, the people were grey, there is just no color there. All of South America unless you like green, Antarctica unless you like white, The middle east unless you like tan, the jails in Tijuana unless you like drunk-tank pink, I could go on and on but I think you get the picture.

The next step is a little trickier. Come to the Southwest. The Southwest is a huge area that is sort of down in the bottom left corner of America, you can tell when you’re in the Southwest because when you look around you’ll see – Color, huge amounts of it. It completely covers all of the scenery available. In fact there is not one place in the entire Southwest that is not stuffed to the gills with color. If you’re color-phobic, and I don’t even know how that is possible, then you need to go back to Czechoslovakia. I’m sorry but that’s how it is.

To see the very maximum of color that your brain will let you process in one sitting you have to go to places like the photo above. It’s simple to get to, just drive up Moki-Dugway, turn left a little, go around those big rocks and you’re there. Muley Point. Simple. Walk over to the edge and look, color, every single one, as far as the eye can see. [Warning: Beginners, and those who have kept their eyes closed for long periods of time, people from any of the places mentioned above where there is no color should approach Muley point with caution. A companion that has seen color before should accompany them in case they become so overwhelmed that they fall and need to be lightly restrained. You may wish to practice a little before attempting to view Muley Point in person so find a photograph of a colorful spot, the one above is a good example and look at it for a few minutes each day until you no longer black out. Also see the free Forest Service handout for “Foreign Visitors Seeing Color For the First Time!” with the directions for, Stick your wallet in their mouth so they don’t bite their tongue off, p.2 at the bottom.]

Now I have shared every bit of wisdom I have in the art of finding color the rest is up to you. Come to America and look. I’ll be the one with the cool sunglasses and the big camera.

Zen and Everclear

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AfternoonMist1404click to enlarge

We are fast approaching the holiday weekend and you know what that means. Holidays are free days for the staff here at the World Headquarters of our Media Empire and that means trouble. Yep, it starts with the staff realizing they can pretty much do whatever they can get away with and with the response time we have from local law enforcement there’s no point in dialing 911. It is left to us to handle the problem on our own. It is the primary reason we had the Projects , I mean staff housing, painted drunk tank pink. It hasn’t helped all that much. When we you get a crew stuffed to the gills with 190 proof Everclear, logic and common sense completely leave the building. We have a no-alcohol policy here on the compound , I mean campus, but that hasn’t stopped these people one bit, they are able to make this elixir of the devil out of old grapefruit skins, shoe polish, rusty nails, the odd bottle of warfarin stolen from my med locker, dozens and dozens of packets of artificial sweetener spirited from the mess hall, lard, anti-freeze, and huge quantities of cheatgrass gathered from the surrounding countryside when they should have been completing their research.

This is a dangerous mixture and has led to the occasional death and maiming of the unwary as well as creating an expense we never budgeted for. That is the providing of escort dogs for the dozens of temporarily blind staffers that have accumulated over the previous holiday periods from drinking this stuff. I, for one, am sick of it and I intend to hold a staff meeting about this and other problems right after the holiday is over. We should be getting the new crop of dogs by then, and most of the missing will have been located and led back to the Projects, I mean staff housing.

This seems to be a problem that is rampant in America today, the out of control drunken researcher problem, I mean. I have tried to talk to other directors of World Headquarters of Media production around the world about this situation but it appears we are unique in the field due to the fact that we invested in razor wire early in our construction and have a captive band of researchers as it were, whereas other facilities see their researchers stagger and drift off into the soiled tapestry of life outside of their hallowed walls and are not seen again. Our program has proved to be the successful model as we do get research done because our researchers have to produce or they don’t get fed.

To try and deflect some of the criticism we have gotten in the past regarding our alleged callousness and insensitivity to our indentured servants, I mean researchers, we have begun a new program in an attempt to protect our phony baloney jobs, I mean our reputation. Every Friday before a holiday weekend we will run a photo especially picked for its calming zen-like attributes. It is our hope that those still sober staffers that see it will be so struck with it’s beauty that they will decide to put aside their desire to get butt-dragging, projectile vomiting, murderously drunk and storm the Big House, I mean the World Headquarters of our Media Empire.

This image, the first of many, was taken from the observation deck here at the headquarters and is looking west towards Rocky Mountain National Park through the late afternoon mist forming in the foothills . This should calm even the most devious, conniving, wretched bunch, I mean, unruly staffers, but just in case we have placed our bank of stun guns on full charge and purposely not fed the dogs this morning. Have a great weekend and a safe and sober holiday.