Foreword by Randy Lewis
I was born on the Colville Reservation, at a place called Owhi Lake Flats. That is high desert country — sagebrush, greasewood, rabbitbrush, and everything else endemic to those flats. My people are Wenatchee and Moses-Columbia, Entiat and Methow, Chelan and Okanogan, and between them they account for a good share of this state.
When I think of Washington, what I think of first is the diversity. The geology of it, the geography of it. You can start in coastal rainforest and end up in what I have always called the Atacama of the Pacific Northwest, the Columbia Plateau. Most places do not hold that much inside one set of borders. This one does.
Growing up with my grandparents, we traveled. We were still following the old subsistence round, the way our people had always moved through the year. First foods first. Bitterroot and camas off the prairies. Then down to the rivers for the salmon fisheries. Then up into the high country for the huckleberries, into the berry grounds. Then into the hunting areas our people had used for generations. You learn a country that way. Not off a map — by arriving at the right place at the right time, year after year, because that is where the food is and that is when it comes.
We came over the passes a lot in those years, over to Western Washington. There are more people in the greater Seattle area today than there were in the entire state of Washington when I was a boy. The passes were sparse then. Stevens and Snoqualmie had not been opened up the way they are now, so you still took the old Blewett Highway out of the Wenatchee Valley over into the Kittitas. That road was narrow and it wound, and it was a guarantee to make a kid carsick. Snoqualmie was not much better. But there were no eighteen-wheelers. Semis were near unheard of. The trains still carried the freight east and west, and the highway belonged to whoever happened to be on it.
Coming up out of Leavenworth through Tumwater Canyon was a feast for the eyes. Leavenworth was a logging town then, a rail town. The canyon was verdant — a wall of green, top to bottom. No clear cuts. Nothing scraped off. You could look above the timberline and see mountain goats standing out on the cliffs, and we would challenge each other to spot the most of them and count them off out loud as we came through. That is how wild it was.
That canyon has burned since. Three or four major fires have gone through it, and they stripped the wildness right off of it. Fire has changed a great deal in this state — more than most people account for.
That is part of why these photographs matter to me.
I have a nephew in Europe right now, going on and on about the beauty of Paris, the beauty of the cities. I can never say that. I see cities as powerful. I see them as a benchmark of what people have decided to value. But I don't see beauty in them. I look at them and think, well — big glass icons. That is a man-made thing. That is not beauty.
In nature, the Creator painted with a palette we are seldom able to recreate or capture. Photography is one of the few things that has let us try. I look at John's pictures and I am transported back, and I believe I feel something close to the awe and the respect our first people felt when they looked out at the Creator's paintbrush and saw what it had done.
What I see in these photographs are ecosystems still intact. Wild spaces still wild. And where man has made his inroads, you can see how small those inroads are against everything else that is there. An infinitesimal fraction.
I flew over the Plateau not long ago, out across the channeled scablands, over the Drumheller country. Looking down on it, it dawned on me how small people are — and you have to measure that smallness against how powerful those lands are. They are unconquerable. I think that is why they got the name they did. Scabland is something you cannot reckon with. Farmers tried to work those places. They had a minimum of success in the good years, but there were not enough good years, so they gave up on them. And the land went back to wild almost immediately. That tells you a great deal about country like that. Take the people off of it and it returns to its once-glorious days without asking anyone's permission.
Here is the other thing I appreciate about John's work. It is a reminder that these places are still here. Not somewhere else, not in the past — here, within walking distance of most people in this state. You can step out of a car and be in the wild.
And occasionally get treed by a cougar. Or run into a bear. Or get bit by a rattlesnake. Fun times. It is a little like Australia that way. There are still plenty of things out here that will remind you that you are not the one in charge.
People need that. They need to be posed with it every now and again. You hear about it more all the time now — somebody attacked by a cougar, somebody attacked by a bear, somebody thrown two stories in the air by a bison, somebody stomped into the mud by a moose. It is horrific to think about. It is also a reminder. There are things greater than you here. There are things here that were here before you were, and they deserve their place and their status.
Take any one of them out of the equation and what is left is less. I have come to believe every endemic species ought to be treated as a keystone species, because when one of them goes, something else is lacking. You may not see it right away. But it is lacking.
So I want to thank John. For finding these places. For capturing them. For nailing them into that posture, that moment in time, and holding them there so the rest of us can look.
Turn the pages slowly. This is a big country, and it has been here a long while.
Randy Lewis
When I think of Washington, what I think of first is the diversity. The geology of it, the geography of it. You can start in coastal rainforest and end up in what I have always called the Atacama of the Pacific Northwest, the Columbia Plateau. Most places do not hold that much inside one set of borders. This one does.
Growing up with my grandparents, we traveled. We were still following the old subsistence round, the way our people had always moved through the year. First foods first. Bitterroot and camas off the prairies. Then down to the rivers for the salmon fisheries. Then up into the high country for the huckleberries, into the berry grounds. Then into the hunting areas our people had used for generations. You learn a country that way. Not off a map — by arriving at the right place at the right time, year after year, because that is where the food is and that is when it comes.
We came over the passes a lot in those years, over to Western Washington. There are more people in the greater Seattle area today than there were in the entire state of Washington when I was a boy. The passes were sparse then. Stevens and Snoqualmie had not been opened up the way they are now, so you still took the old Blewett Highway out of the Wenatchee Valley over into the Kittitas. That road was narrow and it wound, and it was a guarantee to make a kid carsick. Snoqualmie was not much better. But there were no eighteen-wheelers. Semis were near unheard of. The trains still carried the freight east and west, and the highway belonged to whoever happened to be on it.
Coming up out of Leavenworth through Tumwater Canyon was a feast for the eyes. Leavenworth was a logging town then, a rail town. The canyon was verdant — a wall of green, top to bottom. No clear cuts. Nothing scraped off. You could look above the timberline and see mountain goats standing out on the cliffs, and we would challenge each other to spot the most of them and count them off out loud as we came through. That is how wild it was.
That canyon has burned since. Three or four major fires have gone through it, and they stripped the wildness right off of it. Fire has changed a great deal in this state — more than most people account for.
That is part of why these photographs matter to me.
I have a nephew in Europe right now, going on and on about the beauty of Paris, the beauty of the cities. I can never say that. I see cities as powerful. I see them as a benchmark of what people have decided to value. But I don't see beauty in them. I look at them and think, well — big glass icons. That is a man-made thing. That is not beauty.
In nature, the Creator painted with a palette we are seldom able to recreate or capture. Photography is one of the few things that has let us try. I look at John's pictures and I am transported back, and I believe I feel something close to the awe and the respect our first people felt when they looked out at the Creator's paintbrush and saw what it had done.
What I see in these photographs are ecosystems still intact. Wild spaces still wild. And where man has made his inroads, you can see how small those inroads are against everything else that is there. An infinitesimal fraction.
I flew over the Plateau not long ago, out across the channeled scablands, over the Drumheller country. Looking down on it, it dawned on me how small people are — and you have to measure that smallness against how powerful those lands are. They are unconquerable. I think that is why they got the name they did. Scabland is something you cannot reckon with. Farmers tried to work those places. They had a minimum of success in the good years, but there were not enough good years, so they gave up on them. And the land went back to wild almost immediately. That tells you a great deal about country like that. Take the people off of it and it returns to its once-glorious days without asking anyone's permission.
Here is the other thing I appreciate about John's work. It is a reminder that these places are still here. Not somewhere else, not in the past — here, within walking distance of most people in this state. You can step out of a car and be in the wild.
And occasionally get treed by a cougar. Or run into a bear. Or get bit by a rattlesnake. Fun times. It is a little like Australia that way. There are still plenty of things out here that will remind you that you are not the one in charge.
People need that. They need to be posed with it every now and again. You hear about it more all the time now — somebody attacked by a cougar, somebody attacked by a bear, somebody thrown two stories in the air by a bison, somebody stomped into the mud by a moose. It is horrific to think about. It is also a reminder. There are things greater than you here. There are things here that were here before you were, and they deserve their place and their status.
Take any one of them out of the equation and what is left is less. I have come to believe every endemic species ought to be treated as a keystone species, because when one of them goes, something else is lacking. You may not see it right away. But it is lacking.
So I want to thank John. For finding these places. For capturing them. For nailing them into that posture, that moment in time, and holding them there so the rest of us can look.
Turn the pages slowly. This is a big country, and it has been here a long while.
Randy Lewis
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