Tag: Friends
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ABOARD THE DELPHIN IN THE AMAZON
While a grad student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I took a course on tropical agriculture and studied under the great Amazonia scholar Dr William Deneven. I was mesmerised by his tales of the Amazon. And so was my classmate, Oliver Coomes, who decided to write his PhD dissertation on the riverine peasants – the ribereños – of a tributary of the Peruvian Amazon known as the Rio Tahuayo. When class wrapped up for the summer Oliver got ready to leave for a year of research in the Amazon. I told…
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VALE WOLFGANG
I thought I knew a thing or two about photography, love and life … until I met Wolfgang Hoffmann. He became my mentor and taught me pretty much everything I know about photography and a fair bit about life and love as well. Wolfgang passed away yesterday from congestive heart failure. I met Wolfgang almost 30 years ago to the day in the summer of 1986. I was a new grad student in the Department of Agricultural Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and ventured down to the dungeons of the…
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AN EAGLE SCOUT
Day 7 of 7: Challenge on Nature Photography. Eagles, Amery, Wisconsin – 1973 For the past six days I have shared my appreciation of nature with you. For my final day in this nature photography challenge I’m going to share a personal story about how I developed that appreciation and my concerns that today’s generation doesn’t share that love of nature. I’ll bend the rules of the challenge a bit. I said at the beginning that I was more interested in writing stories than showing my pics. So I’m not going…
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LONG-TERM GAINS IN THE AMAZON
Reserva Nacional Pacaya-Samiria, Peruvian Amazon – 1989 ‘Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.’ Edward O. Wilson Those of you in my generation growing up in America probably had the same Sunday evening pastime as my family: we would watch the National Geographic specials. I loved that show and would dream of venturing off to far off, exotic lands in search of untouched natural wonders. On one of those evenings I vowed that someday I would travel to the Amazon. But I didn’t…
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VALE VICTOR
Good friends are hard to come by; endearing friends even harder. Victor was one of my greatest endearing friends and his sudden passing today leaves me in a state of total loss. I greatly admired Victor for all of his photographic journeys and adventurous exploits but what made him such a great friend was his gentleness and kindness. It is easy for great people like Victor to get self-absorbed in their own lives and accomplishments but Victor was not like that. He always showed a concern for and interest in others.…
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FROM AMERY TO ADELAIDE: THE CONVERGENCE OF TWO LIVES
Amery is a dinky little town in the far north of Wisconsin. It’s a town of fewer than 3,000 people where pretty much everyone knows everyone else. I spent my formative years there and always consider it to be my home town. I feel very much aligned with life in northern Wisconsin yet life’s twists and turns led me to live in South Australia. If you took a globe and stuck a pin in Amery and tied a string to it and tried to find the furthest habitable place on Earth…
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BOOM BOOM IN PURACE
Puracé National Park, Colombia – 1994 Scanned from Kodak TMax negative film (the last roll of B/W film I ever shot) Colombia was hardly the safest place in the world when Padma and I lived near Cali between 1993-94. On one hand you had the ‘narcotraficantes’ – the drug lords. The Medellin and Cali Cartels were in their heyday. However, the drug lords pretty much just killed each other so as long as you stayed out of the cross fire you’d be safe. A bit more concerning was the FARC, which…
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LOST IN THE SOUK
I used to have a recurring dream of being lost forever while driving in the labyrinth of narrow streets which is the old quarter of Aleppo, Syria. It was one of those dreams where nothing would go right, and you’d wake up sweaty and in a panic. One day my worst nightmare came true. As a rule I always parked my car on the wide boulevard outside of the old quarters, which meant a long walk, but I wasn’t courageous enough to try to drive inside the old quarters to the…
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HANS AND THE SELVA LACANDONA
Yesterday was an exciting day as I became reacquainted with an old travel companion. Thirty two years ago I was trying to sort out some train schedules at the Ciudad Juarez station in northern Mexico as I wanted to travel to the southernmost state of Chiapas. I was 23 and had a couple of months to kill before I was to head off to the Peace Corps and was hungry for some adventure. I had a book called Backpacking in Mexico and Central America. I chose to do the longest and…
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