Description
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to those who have instilled in me, since my early youth, an interest and love of the out-of-doors, and especially to my brother Phil, to thank him for all the trips we’ve taken together. It’s doubtful I would have ever experienced the Awesome Wonder of true wilderness without him.
PREFACE
In 1885, Carl G. Boberg penned a poem in Swedish called “O Store Gud” (“Oh Great God”). The initial words of the first verse were “in awesome wonder.” In the 1920s, Stuart Hine translated the verses to English and made his own arrangement of the melody, which became known as the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” Hine was inspired by experiences in the Carpathian Mountains, a range of mountains forming an arc throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The hymn’s second verse reflected my feelings of admiration, respect, and fear as I traveled to many of the wonderful places in the world.
In Awesome Wonder is about traveling to the wilderness and photographing wildlife. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, the definition of “awesome” is “causing feelings of great admiration, respect, or fear.” I find this a fitting description for my journey into the wilderness through photography. I have experienced many moments of great admiration for the beauty of our planet and its inhabitants of the sea, land, and sky. I’ve gained a deep respect for the environment that sustains life on Earth, and for the ecosystem that adapts to changes in our climate and population. I’ve had more than my share of moments of pure fear, too, and these memories are just as vivid now as when they happened.
INTRODUCTION
The idea of wilderness has a ring that captures my imagination. Maybe it’s because it is nature in its original form: trees, rivers, lakes, wild animals, birds, places where few humans have been and change has never been. That is how I see wilderness. It is almost sacred and unto itself. There are few roads, trails, cities, or towns and no outside communication; they would destroy the sacredness of wilderness.
During my Boy and Explorer Scout years, I was exposed to the outdoors. Camp Irondale, the Gasconade, Little Maries, Meramac, Jack’s Fork, Current Rivers south of St. Louis and the Boundary waters in Minnesota all whetted my appetite for what I eventually wanted to experience. My brother Phil is a retired forester who worked in Minnesota and far more into the outdoors than me. On summer trips to Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, he told me about his winter cross-country skiing across the very lakes we were paddling.
After college, Mary Ellen Gallagher and I married and we had four children. Our family, plus my career in banking, kept me busy for 35 years, with intermittent float, family fishing, and camping trips to Jack’s Fork and Current rivers as well as Colorado and Wyoming.
In 1990, Phil called to talk about a trip to Alaska. He was interested in a float trip on the Koktuli and Mulchatkna Rivers in southwest Alaska. We took that trip with Phil, his son Mark, and my son Tim. Two years later, Phil, Tim, a friend of Tim’s from college, and I arranged a float trip on the Marsh Fork and Canning Rivers in northern Alaska, floating north to the Beaufort Sea. Thus began my travels, along with photography, into wilderness and the world of Awesome Wonder.
