Weekly Post, "The Daze of My Life: Robert Glenn Ketchum, An Autobiography"

The Daze of My Life:  Robert Glenn Ketchum, An Autobiography

Biographies are studies of someone's life based on cumulative research. Good ones may reveal something, but probably barely scratch the surface of what actually went on. The internet is allowing me to do something VERY different. 
~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Friday, October 18, 2019

The Daze of My Life:  Robert Glenn Ketchum, An Autobiography #170: Daze, #170: After several very enjoyable days in a guest house on the summit of Mount Huangshan, Carey and I, have explored a myriad of trails, scenic view terraces, sunrises, and sunsets. We have also had some great dinners. We are always joined by our guide for this meal, which he uses to advise us about what we might do the next day. On our last night, he explains that in the morning, the bearers will collect our bags, and we will descend to the valley floor, staying in the same guest house we used, before coming here. Then, on the following morning, we would board a bus that would take us to Shanghai. He turned in after the meal, so Carey and I took a last walk under the stars, and hatched a VERY different plan. We have studied the various trail maps of the mountain, and believe we know where the stone staircase down to the valley floor begins, so that night we pack our bags, leaving them with a note for our guide, saying we will meet him for dinner at the guest house on the valley floor. Before dawn, while the others are seeking their view platform of choice, she and I go AWOL, and head for the staircase. We have NO IDEA what we are getting into, but after several hours of plunging down one STEEP stone staircase after another, there is certainly no going back. Our gear, looks like no one else’s on the mountain. We sport Patagonia fleece, state-of-the-art, climber’s daypacks filled with snacks, a very fancy Nikon camera system many lenses dangling from my hip-belt in foam padded-pockets, and most significantly, really great hiking boots. There is NO ONE on the stairs going down, but by midday, we start passing HUNDREDS of Chinese walking up, most in what foreigners refer to "Chinese slippers” - cheap, thin cloth shoes with plastic soles. Only some of those we pass carry a daypack, and ALL are dressed similarly - the men wear slacks with (mostly) long-sleeved, white collared shirts, and the women sport, dresses, slacks, or in some cases, jeans. When greeted in passing by Carey and I, most stand speechless, as though they have never seen anything like us. It makes for a VERY long and amusing day. It is also one of the most spectacular hikes of our lives. Going down!

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019 

@RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, "Late Fall High in the Sawtooths" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

Late Fall High in the Sawtooths

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

My partner, Vicki Golden, and I, have come to love backpacking in late fall. Although we risk getting snowed upon, most of the bugs, and virtually all of the people are gone. This is our last camping trip together, and the last time I ever camped in the Sawtooths. This is a short blog to say goodbye to both.  
~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Friday, October 18, 2019

High in the Sawtooths, #6:
Sawtooths #6:  Wowser! My partner, Vicki Golden (last post), and I, have established a late fall campsite in the Twin Lakes basin of the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. After a nice dinner, we are now agog over a late evening light show that has set the steep granite walls and pinnacles around us on fire with golden light. I have taken a walk around the lake, and now that I am back at camp, we are both sitting on a big rock, snacking and cawing. Caw! Caw! Caw! Unfortunately for me (or maybe not), my drive to be the photographer of the moment, finds me hopping up periodically to run somewhere for another shot. This one above, is a 5-Caw! Clearly this is one of the most beautiful lake systems, and evenings we have ever experienced. As it is our last trip before returning to my home/studio in Los Angeles, the gods have smiled upon us for being willing to try a backpack this late in the season. Not only do the colder nights suppress the bug population, but apparently, they have also driven hikers and campers away, as we are the only ones here. Oh yes, my dog, Belle Star, appreciates that, but she (and we) appreciate that it also makes the trout hungrier, so life is good at 8,800ft., and dinner is delicious. What will tomorrow bring? Another day like this, or perhaps, more expectedly, a fall storm. Stay tuned to find out.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, "Welcome to Hotel California: Some Pictures from My Backyard" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

Welcome To Hotel California:  Some Pictures From My Backyard

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

I was born, and grew up in Los Angeles. As my professional career developed, I traveled around the world working on various commissions, but seldom had opportunities to work in California. Nonetheless, I always came back “home,” and when there, I occasionally took pictures. For ten years I also taught a photography workshop on the Mendocino coast that provided some great visual moments as well. There is no “project” unifying these images, they are just my way of showing, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!”   
~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Hotel California, #8:
California #8:  Poison oak and Sycamore jungle in an arroyo, Santa Lucia Preserve.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, "Sundance: Artist-In-Residence" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

Sundance:  Artist In Residence

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

From 1987-1989, Robert Redford invited me to become the first visual Artist-In-Residence at his newly established Sundance Institute, part of the community he was building around his recently purchased ski resort in Utah. The residency provided me with subject matter that produced some of the most significant images of my career, but importantly, it also afforded me my first aerial work, a platform that would become increasingly important throughout my life. A limited amount of these images were ever published, and NONE of the aerials ever were. The best will now appear, please enjoy! 
~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Thursday, October 17, 2019

SUNDANCE: Artist In Residence, #66:
Sundance #66:  At their upper elevations, the US Forest Service recreational access roads reach areas where exposed vertical rock rises to the summits. These walls are not as verdant as the forest-choked lower valleys, but there is still plenty of growth here to put on a stunning fall show, as it creeps straight up. Clusters of Vine Maple and small evergreens grow in places where there appears to be no available soil, they just pop out of the rock. In a hard rain, many of these un-vegetated chutes become streaming waterfalls, as well. I love this Artist-In-Residence, in which I am participating. It is a feast for my eyes in EVERY season, but the fall, in particular, it is off-the-chart. Were it not for these pictures, if I just described this to you, no one would believe it.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, "Stoned Immaculate: A Trip in the Desert" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

STONED IMMACULATE:  A Trip in the Desert

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

As a young photographer, two places I “discovered” by chance greatly influenced both my photographic vision and my personal relationship with the greater planet. A previous blog, LIMEKILN, is the story of the first location. THIS is the second location which I discovered because my car broke down. As Jim Morrison/The Doors wrote, “Out here we is Stoned Immaculate!"

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

"háadish nitsʼééʼ łeeʼ sitą́?, ąąʼ háádę́ę́ʼ?"

circa 1985 -1995

Stoned Immaculate, #153:

Immaculate, #153:  from the portfolio, STONED IMMACULATE

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, "Arctic: At the Cutting Edge of Climate Change" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

ARCTIC:  At the Cutting Edge of Climate Change

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

In 1993, I began traveling to the Arctic. I have been across The Northwest Passage by yacht; to the North Pole twice; to little-visited Russian islands; and aboard research vessels in Greenland, Labrador, Newfoundland, and Baffin Island, taking the opportunity to visit Iqualuit, the capital of Nunavut, the recently created Inuit nation and territories.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

ARCTIC:  At the Cutting Edge of Climate Change, #166:
ARCTIC, #166:   Our mail plane ride into the high Arctic, has stopped at historian, John Bockstoce’s request to visit memorialized grave sites for members of the ill-fated, expedition of Sir John Franklin in 1845, who hoped to find the Northwest Passage. The graves are located in a deep bay of Beechey Island, so we circled the bay to check the landing site, AND to look for Polar bears, finally putting the plane down on a vast beach of small stones, where we disembark. Bill Simon and his other guests are viewing and taking pictures around the memorial bronze plaques, but I have wandered further away to enjoy the stunning silence and beauty of this stark environment. As dry, cold, and barren of vegetation, as this location is, it is strangely alluring, and the longer I sit and study it, the more I begin to appreciate the vast landscape before me glowing in the light of late afternoon. When we approached our landing, we flew low over the long beach leading to the grave sites, so we could look for Polar bear, and none of us saw anything but the stoney shoreline and cliff bluffs of the island. Nonetheless, one of the pilots is standing guard over our group with a shotgun, even though we can see for hundreds of yards in every direction in the crystal clear air. Suddenly the reverie of my visual trance is shattered when he fires his gun into the air, and tells us all to return to the plane,..quickly!. Sure enough, from out of nowhere, and still a considerable distance down the beach, we are being approached by a curious/hungry Polar bear, so back into the plane, and we are off to our next stop, the town of Resolute on nearby Cornwallis Island.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, NO PEBBLE MINE: Pictures from Ground Zero by Robert Glenn Ketchum

NO PEBBLE MINE Pictures from Ground Zero

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

 

Since 1998, I have been working to protect the spectacular resources of southwest Alaska and the fishery of Bristol Bay. Two Aperture books, a national traveling exhibition, a massive coalition of concerned users, and a lot of personal lobbying, had it looking like we were almost there. Then Donald Trump took office claiming he would always put America, and American jobs first. SO WHY destroy a BILLION-dollar-a-year, RENEWABLE salmon fishery and over 100,000 jobs for a group of international mineral speculators that will leave us with a Superfund site to clean up, and NO fishery left edible? And yet, he did,..so please, keep saying NO TO THE PEBBLE MINE!

~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Tuesday, October 15, 2019 

NO PEBBLE MINE #370, Pictures from Ground Zero
NO PEBBLE MINE #370:  My spectacular flightsee to the headwaters of the Kanektok River, bring us to the source, two large lakes, Pegati and Kagati. They are much bigger than the numerous lakes we have passed over downstream, and their blue waters glow in the dappled illumination, shining down through the broken cloud cover. Although there is plenty of weather passing overhead, it is not raining, and there is little turbulence. Although the lake waters show some riffles, there are no waves or whitecaps. It is truly a beautiful day to be flying. As we enter the lake basin, I can see the outlet for the Kanektok, and the curvaceous shoreline of Pegati, which we fly above as we follow it around to its connecting point with its “sister” lake, Kagati. This also carries much closer to some rugged summits that crowd the northern shore. My pilot takes our flight right down the middle of the lake, which allows me dramatic views of the complex drainage. At several points, valleys open up between the summits, allowing fleeting glimpses of other, smaller, distant lakes beneath steep peaks. From those lakes, rivers cascade down to the Kagati shoreline and fan out into broad deltas. Kagati even has some islands, and again I wish we were in a float plane, so we could land and go ashore. I would have loved to have a ground-eye view, from the island in this image. As that will not happen, I certainly can’t complain about my current perspective, except to say, it marks the end of my headwater exploration, and now our flight will leave the Kanektok headwaters basin, passing through several mountains passes in the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, back into Wood-Tikchik State Park, and on to Dillingham, where I will stay for the next few days to regroup. It has been a remarkable afternoon of flying, and I am very sorry to have it end.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd @NRDC @OrvisFlyFishing #NoPebbleMine #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post: THE TONGASS: Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees by Robert Glenn Ketchum

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

In 1985, I began a 2-year commission to explore the Tongass rainforest, the largest forest in the United States Forest Service (USFS) system AND the largest temperate rainforest in the world. It was a unique, old-growth environment under siege from industrial logging. The resulting investigative book I published helped to pass the Tongass Timber Reform Bill, protect 1,000,000 acres of old-growth, and create 11 new wilderness areas. This is the story of how that was achieved.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

THE TONGASS:  Stop the Cut, There are Salmon in the Trees, #164:
THE TONGASS, #164:   Having established our final campsite before paddling out to the Native village of Angoon, we all settle in and begin various late afternoon activities. The tidal falls adjacent our narrow forest terrace is nowhere to be seen because the tide is still incoming, and it appears that we are simply next to a slowly moving body of water, which is in fact “filling” Salt Lake, which we traversed to get here. With the dream of fresh salmon in their minds, several of our crew, break out their fishing poles. I, on the other hand, break out my camera and tripod, determined to capture some of our surroundings dappled with the glow of late light. The terrace that hosts our tent sites abuts a relatively steep embankment of trees and old growth understory that rises 30ft., and more, above us, finally leveling off on what appears to be a forest “floor,” populated by ever larger trees that just get bigger and bigger, as they recede into the interior. Before our guide, Jeff Sloss, notices my activity, I climb a series of fallen trunks to have a marginal view of this woodland above our encampment. When Jeff sees me, he suggests I be extremely careful, so I don’t fall into a “hole” beneath the logs. Finding his words a bit unsettling, I downclimb to ask what he means. To better explain his comment, he takes me over to the towering wall of trees and vegetation, and pulls up part of the vertical, mossy carpet. Sunlight floods into the exposed hole, revealing a deep recess of tree trunks lying atop one another, as far beneath the forest floor above us as the light will reach. When I was a child, periodically National Geographic magazine would publish a story about a particular habitat, accompanied by a “cut-away” illustration showing all the creatures living in that domain, revealing not just those on the surface, but those above it, and beneath it as well. I loved the idea of these secret worlds revealed, and I now I stood before an actual one. The moss here, and on the forest floor above is just a thin layer, covering, hundreds, if not thousands, of years of fallen tree trunks and forest debris, accumulated beneath the covering vegetation. It may well be the big trees we see above us, are simply branches of even bigger trees that have fallen, but are still growing, or serving as “nurse” logs. Were I to have stepped off my log ladder onto the forest floor above us, I might have easily plunged into a “hole” such as the one into which I am now peering. I am also fairly sure there are creepy, crawly things in this deep, dark entanglement, I want NOTHING to do with, so I assure Jeff, I now get it, and will forgo my exploration. I also make sure we replace the moss cover on the open whole, as I don’t want any of the “things” living in this ancient world, coming out tonight to visit us - LOL!

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post, High and Wild: Three Years of Wandering in the Wind Rivers

High and Wild: Three Years of Wandering in the Wind Rivers

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

After receiving my MFA from CalArts, I was invited by Bill Lund, Sharon Disney’s husband, to come stay at the families' Diamond-D Ranch in Dubois, Wyoming. Bill thought I might like to photograph in the nearby Wind River Mountains, which I did, backpacking through them extensively over the next three summers. Welcome to a world of big granite walls and huge alpine lakes!
~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Monday, October 14, 2019

High and Wild:  Three Years of Wandering in the Wind Rivers, #112: Wind River, #112: As my partner, Vicki Golden, and I, continue our first backpack of the summer, we have risen from Big Sandy Lake, to Clear Lake, where he had lunch, and now we are on our way to Deep Lake, even higher up. We are traversing the base of Haystack Mountain, now, and the forest trail has given way to one across open granite, aflow with much running water, and pocked with beautiful pools. There is no “path” to follow, but generations of hikers before us have built cairns to guide us on the passable direction, so we do not get cut off by water that cannot be crossed. Although we are DEFINITELY climbing, at times rather steeply, it is a enjoyable effort because the granite provides an excellent, gritty walking surface, and the surroundings are strikingly beautiful. My dog, Belle Star, especially likes it, and anytime we stop to snack or rest, she goes and stands in a pool - those Labbies are such water dogs! As we rise, Haystack is more than visible with its massive, sheer walls completely blocking our eastern horizon. For awhile, all we can see ahead of us, is the upward curve of granite slabs, but in time, the summits that surround the Deep Lake Basin begin to reveal themselves. One of the tallest in the Wind Rivers is the first to emerge. Temple Peak, at 12,977ft., is still in the considerable distance, but in the image above, can be seen poking out from behind this boulder erratic. “The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get."

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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Weekly Post: "The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get" by Robert Glenn Ketchum

The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

Growing up my parents had a home near Sun Valley, Idaho. It was there that I learned to ski. Over many years I befriended members of the Decker Flats Climbing and Frisbee Club, with whom I had both life, and art-forming outdoor experiences. I had my camera, and these are my adventures. Enjoy!!  
~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Monday, October 14, 2019

The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get - Sun Valley and the DFC&FC, #180: DFCFC, #180: On the last day of our 6-person, snow cave camping, ski tour of the Hyndman-Old Hyndman-Cobb basin, we enjoy a sunny, warm morning while we eat breakfast and break camp. As the organizers of this expedition, Gordon Williams, and I, operate on a first-in-last-out basis. We were the first helicopter in, so we could determine if camping would be possible. Now, we are the last to be flown out, assuring all others are out safely. Since our encampment terrace has been such a hub of activity for the last several days, it nows seems strangely empty as Gordon and I sit in the silence of our surroundings, pondering what we have just accomplished. Ever the curious scientist, Gordon decides to amuse himself by determining how thick the snow dome was over our heads in our snow cave. Donning a parka and leather face mask, and armed with his snow shovel, he goes inside and begins to cut his way through the “roof”. When he finally emerges, he seems yeti-like popping up out of his hole. Turns out we had about 4-1/2 feet of insolation from the sub-zero outside, keeping us inside a snuggly 28-32˙ while we partied and slept. Not longer after Gordon's emergence, Danny Danielson and his copter arrive to fly us out, and on our flight back to Sun Valley, he tells us he admires our intelligent prep for the conditions, stating if it were anybody but us, he would not have let them stay in a multi-day, sub zero camp, risking their lives. (Think that ensolite pad has seen a lot of DFC&FC action? HaHa!)

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2019, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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