- It seems like it was so long ago now that my son and I took a road trip to Death Valley.
It was only a little over a year ago now. Our purpose was to take photographs to document our trip. It was a photographers outing. We both just wanted to get away from the must do’s of work and life itself. But that trip turned into something far beyond what I expected as did the coming year 2008. We had two weeks to ourselves, no obligations. The impending changes of 2008 that December before were just talk. Talk about how improbable it was that Barrack Obama would even make it through the primary elections let alone become President. The economy was not really on the radar as much as climate changes. We drove south from Seattle down the coast where a category 3 hurricane type storm battered the northern west coast like never before. The road lined with trees torn out of the ground and snapped off as if twigs were a testament of the power of that storm. Seawalls breeched by record tides had devastated the small towns along the coast that were now in a state of organized recovery. No national press about this storm like Katrina was in the headlines but the damage was impressive. As we journeyed on toward our destination, we talked a lot about changes that were occurring right now. Maybe it was just random events as weather is, or maybe not.
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After a long day of driving, we approached Death Valley it was dark.
Night comes early in December. Stop here I have to take a leak. Here was nowhere in the middle of nothing, just a dark road that connected Death Valley with the rest of the world. We got out of the car, lit a smoke, and proceeded to relieve ourselves when the sky lit up like a roman candle. As monstrous greenish blue fire ball with a tail that stretched across the horizon burned right over our heads. Did you see that? What the F_ _ _ was that Jake said. A meteor I think I answered. Let’s go! So we jumped into the car and headed down a steep grade that seemed to go on forever to the valley floor. As we arrived at Stovepipe Wells, we were still taking about that Meteor. That Meteor and the hundreds we saw over the next couple of days really change me, as did this scorched wasteland that is Death Valley. But that was in 2007 and I really didn’t know then what I know now because now was the future then.
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As I watched my son work, I realized how much he had learned in school, studying his craft as a Photographer.
He was perfectly at home with a camera in his hands; the camera was an extension of him now. He had encouraged me to bring his old digital camera with me; I wasn’t really a digital guy then, so struggled with this new gadget. While for him, the digital technology was just part of him. Jake I thought has always had a good eye a Photographers eye an Artists eye. Even back when he was a kid and I taught him how to develop film in the laundry room. He always made interesting and stunning images. Now I got to see him working at a professional level with confidence and excitement.
We spent the next couple of days running around Death Valley taking pictures by day and talking about what we had done around a campfire at night while watching an amazing meteor shower drinking Johnny Walker. Too soon, we headed home to Montana, it was the holidays and we promised to come home. Jake finished school and graduated in June. I went back to work life was good. Then came the bust, chaos, fear, and well you all know the story so it needs no repeating. Jake is still taking pictures, but jobs are lean. Me I am laid off for the winter and hope that spring will bring more work; there is nothing here in Montana now. That seems to be the story across the country, bad news and more bad news. Its damm, depressing.
Jake and I are beginning to work on a new project and have been talking on the phone and planning. Death Valley and our experience there is a starting point for what I, we hope will be an exciting Photo Documentary project, a future project. You see we have to keep going, we have to keep keeping on. So this is where I leave you with a poem I wrote about our trip last year.
You can’t see the meteors for all of the shooting stars
Meteors hidden by the tales of shooting stars
Foreign palm trees thirst in the sands at the bottom of the world
The desert broom blossoms with scant drops of morning dew
Butterflies nap in shady crevasses of wash cut walls waiting for the night
Ravens fly to and fro calling to those who wait for their voices ready to hear
Land void, punctuated by the transgressions of fickle men
Abundant rainbows of solitude waiting to fill the dry breath of eyes looking
Spring weeps courageous over the land parched after seasons of scorched thirst and death, full of breath and spirit and life
Do not grieve that; that is to pass and passing, continuance replenishes the void
Hope rises with every new sun; rest comes when coolness covers the world with a moon dark
Shooting stars hide meteors with fireworks in the moonless sky
Glass bottles melt in the fire so hot, cracking in the cool desert air into mirrors reflecting the end of all things that must come
Morning brings the grey dove of this desert that feasts on the ashes of the night lost
Follow the raven that sees over the horizon, flying without fear he enjoys today, his kind knows tomorrow having survived countless yesterdays in the barren landscape many forsake, hope is found by those who look, who see
Tomorrow will come as stars fall from a blue sky, be not like the coyote who waits at the crossroads for his dinner, fly with the raven who is master in this land
Wear hope like the meteor whose copper green beacon fills the sky
Falling stars have marked time since the beginning of everything
The Raven sees meteors when no one else is looking
See more of Jakes work at Jacob Eubank Photography Seattle Washington.
Jacob Eubank and the Raven
http://jacobeubankphotography.com/
Filed under: Art, Art News, Art Prints, Culture Economey, Environment, How to survive as a Working Artists, Journalism, Media, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , Change, Death Valley, Photo essay, Poetry
