Attempted cleanup of heavy oil, Terrebonne Bay Louisiana, by workers of subcontractor for BP.  July 14, 2010.  They are throwing absorbent booms and pads into the mess and are just dragging it out again, over and over.  BP Gulf Oil coverage by photojournalist Gary Braasch and scientist Joan Rothlein

Though the well may be capped (at least we hope it stays that way), the ongoing disaster in the Gulf created by BP’s deep water drilling continues today.  Blue Earth project photographer Gary Braasch remains on the scene in the Gulf reporting on the crisis, even as the mainstream media turns its attention to the latest MTV music awards.

“It is my hope that these images and ideas will be useful to you not only in depicting this largest environmental disaster - but also in helping turn public and political opinion toward a positive change in our energy and climate policy.  My work here will help illustrate the link between the warming atmosphere and the overuse of fossil fuels and risky drilling for more oil.  I am reporting with Joan Rothlein, an environmental health scientist, and will be preparing reports and photos on many aspects of the oil spill that continues to heavily affect the Gulf waters.  The coverage ranges from the 4.9 million barrels of oil that flowed out from the rig site for three months - to the broad effects on and reactions by the people of the Gulf and telling details along the way.”

It’s easy to forget how much we rely on the dedication and professionalism of photojournalists like Gary to keep the public’s eye pointing in the right direction.  Follow his work, including his own posts from the field, and view more new images from his ongoing reporting at World View Of Global Warming.

- Bart J. Cannon, Executive Director

Picture courtesy of Daniel Beltrá / © 2010 Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace; used with permission

The oil spill is an ecological tragedy of enormous proportions.  It’s unclear how BP is going address the situation, and the long term consequences will obviously be severe.  BP has not been forthcoming about the extent of the spill and what is being done to fix it.  There have also been disturbing news reports about efforts to stop photographers and journalists from documenting the spill and its effect.  We took a moment to chat with Daniel Beltrá who returned from photographing the oil spill.

Daniel Beltrá is an award winning photographer, who shoots for Greenpeace, among other organizations.  (Daniel’s “Amazon at Risk” was a Blue Earth sponsored project.)

Blue Earth: So you just got back from 28 days in the gulf, shooting the oil spill - what’s your reaction in a sentence to what you saw?
Daniel:  It’s one of the biggest ecological tragedies in many centuries.  It’s a time bomb.

Blue Earth: What brought you down there to photograph?
Daniel: Greenpeace called me for a four or five day assignment.  28 days later I was still there.  It’s been a difficult assignment to work.  Two weeks into the assignment, I realized it was a challenge to document this properly and that we need to show this to the rest of the world.

Blue Earth: How did you get to a spot from which you were able to photograph?
Daniel: I went out on a plane a lot . . . a donor provided air-time, and this made it possible to capture many of the images.

Blue Earth: Where there any logistical challenges to being able to document the spill?
Daniel: Yes, definitely.  The authorities were really playing the BP game.  There was an exclusion area of 3000 feet, a Temporary Flight Restriction.  90% of what I shot was above 3000 feet which is really challenging.

Blue Earth: What have you seen or photographed that you think the average person who watches on the news does not have a sense of about the spill?
Daniel: Probably the scale of the spill.  From time to time the oil would appear and disappear, and capturing the scale of the spill was difficult.  The use of dispersants was also very scary.  Some 800,000 gallons of a dispersant may have been used, and from what I understand, this type of a dispersant is banned in other countries, like the UK.  Nobody knows what will happen with the dispersant.  For a long time, the game was to hide what was happening . . . when the oil is below the surface, you don’t necessarily see it.

Blue Earth: There were reports of journalists and photographers being prevented by BP and by the authorities from photographing - did you experience any of this?
Daniel: All the time.  It’s a pretty difficult region to access, since it’s a coastal marshland with few points of access.  There were restrictions on air and water travel.  I’ve been chased off the beach, for example in Grand Isle.  The local law enforcement said it was OK to photograph from the beach, but later the Sheriff came and said:  “everyone out.”  When this happened I went to the command center thinking that I could sort it out, but an air force sergeant there said that I would actually have to go to a community center, and coordinate with BP.  At the community center, BP “coordinated” visits - they would basically escort you and call ahead.

Blue Earth: Apart from the ecological damage, what sort of other effects will this have on the area?
Daniel: It will have a huge effect on the way many people make their living in the gulf.

Blue Earth: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us!  Check out Daniel Beltrá’s website, blog, and Facebook page.

Guardian Audio Slideshow:  You can check out Daniel’s audio slideshow at the Guardian.

Greenpeace International Picture Desk:  Greenpeace’s International Picture Desk [Facebook] has a large selection of photographs of the oil spill.

The Big Picture:  The Big Picture from the Boston Globe has an excellent slideshow, including some of Daniel’s images:  “Oil Reaches Louisiana Shores.”

BP Photo Blockage:  For coverage of BP and government efforts to prevent photographers from documenting the spill, check out this article in Mother Jones:  “It’s BP’s Oil,” as well as coverage in Newsweek (”BP’s Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill“), TreeHugger (”BP Contractors and Coast Guard Prevent CBS From Filming Oil Spill Devastation“) and Mother Nature Network (”Coast Guard and BP threaten journalists with arrest for documenting oil spill“).

In addition to Daniel, two other Blue Earth photographers have spoken about the effect of the spill.  Florian Schulz spoke to NPR:  “The Oil Spill: A Conservation Photographer’s Reaction,” and the Seattle PI:  “Photographer: Don’t risk Arctic oil spill.”  Subhankar Banerjee wrote a piece for TomDispatch “BPing the Arctic?,” which received extensive coverage.

- Venkat Balasubramani, Member Blue Earth Board of Directors

Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh  © Asim Rafiqui

Want to follow the day-to-day work in the field of an internationally famous photojournalist?  Blue Earth project photographer Asim Rafiqui is providing regular updates on his latest trip to India.  At his personal blog The Spinning Head, Asim is sharing details on all the situations, sites, spaces that he is exploring as part of his “Idea Of India” project along with maps of his travels though the country.

- Bart J. Cannon, Program Manager

© Lydia Lum

© Lydia Lum

Say the phrase “Ellis Island of the West,” and a certain image comes to mind, doesn’t it?  When Europeans sailed to America and saw the Statue of Liberty, they knew their trip was nearly over.  They considered Ellis Island a dream destination.

But Angel Island, which is a short ferry ride from San Francisco, was not a place that Chinese immigrants looked forward to.

Back in China, the villagers would spend months at a time preparing for the interrogations that they expected at Angel Island.  The answers to the questions would be compared to those of their sponsors in the U.S., who were cross-examined by the officials running the immigration station.  If answers between immigrants and sponsors didn’t match, immigrants could be deported to China.

These questions were nitpicky.  They revolved around the immigrants’ families, villages and lives in China.  For instance:

“How many windows are in your home?”
“What direction does each window face?”
“How many water buffalo does each family on your row own?”
“Describe the route to your grandparents’ graves.”

The overwhelming majority of Chinese who came through Angel Island were boys and young men like my Uncle Raymond who went through this ordeal in hopes of going on to find jobs in San Francisco—laundry, restaurant, herb shop—that would allow them to send money home to their impoverished families and villages.  By “young men,” I mean ages 9 or 10, 12 or 13, for the most part.

I was reminded of how young some of the immigrants were when I visited Angel Island recently for the first time in several years.  To see a child’s clothing or pair of shoes is sobering, to say the least.

Lydia Lum

Lum’s current project with Blue Earth is Angel Island: The Ellis Island of the West.

© Lydia Lum

© Lydia Lum

Greetings!  My esteemed colleague and fellow project extraordinaire John Trotter chronicled some of his recent travels in highly entertaining fashion.  After re-reading them prior to starting this blog entry, I think we should commission a how-to blog on how to blog after John blogs on the BEA blog…

If you’re unfamiliar with Angel Island, often called the Ellis Island of the West, let me introduce you.  It’s a state park in California, near Alcatraz.  For Chinese immigrants such as my late great-uncle Raymond, Angel Island was their first American home if they arrived here between 1910 and 1940.

But rather than a welcoming gateway, the Angel Island immigration station was better known as “the Guardian of the Western Gate.”  It was a veritable prison.  Some 175,000 Chinese were detained there and interrogated for days, even months in some cases.  Why?  Because Americans already here were trying to protect jobs they believed were their birthright; they feared competition, that the Chinese would take away jobs.  The idea behind Angel Island was to keep the Chinese out, to discourage them from making the trans-Pacific voyage in the first place.

A broad part of my project involved interviewing and photographing some of the surviving Angel Islanders.  There aren’t many living.  My uncle Raymond passed away a few years ago.  I feel fortunate he shared much of his story with me.

“We had nothing to do at Angel Island except wait,” Uncle Raymond recalled.  “I was so scared.  But my dad had told me this was a part of life.  All Chinese going to America went through this.”

Uncle Raymond was at Angel Island for three months, shoehorned into a 2,700-square-foot room of triple-tiered bunks where he and more than 200 other Chinese immigrants languished.

Can you imagine how crowded that is?  Many of us (although not me) own homes, where, let’s say, a family of 4 might live in 2,000 square feet.  You can see my point, I imagine, when considering a room of 2,700-square feet for 200 people.

I recently returned to Angel Island, which reopened to the public this year after a major phase of a large-scale preservation and restoration project.  Some portions of the barracks where Uncle Raymond and other men stayed now contain props and staging, to try to re-create some sense of what the place might have been like, what it might have felt like to live there day to day, month to month.

As you’ll notice in the images, there’s no semblance of privacy—at all.  Strangers were lumped together, like cattle in a pen.  I didn’t measure the bunks but estimate the “bed” to be about 18 inches wide.  To me, the bed seemed smaller than say, the front door of a house.

The staged set-up also included one of the original bunks.  It’s the rusted one.

Lydia Lum

Lum’s current project with Blue Earth is Angel Island: The Ellis Island of the West.

Double rainbow over Mary’s Lake Campground, shortly after my arrival. © John Trotter

Trail Ridge Road, left, through Rocky Mountain National Park, near its highest point. © John Trotter

Now, where was I in the telling of how I managed to end up on the wrong side of the law?  I can tell you where I am right now, for sure: in my tent at Mary’s Lake Campground, where I ended my day shortly after the angry chatter of a mountain hailstorm against the plastic shell of my helmet and a foreboding fork of lighting just up the road on which I was riding.

Those of you with maps might recognize that I have crossed the Continental Divide today.  Those of you with memories of blog postings long past might recall that I came here on a blustery November day around Thanksgiving with my brother.  But just to prove it’s not always blustery here, I’m going to attach a picture of the rainbow that appeared like a sign, after my arrival here.

And for those interested in the cycling component of this trip, I pedaled through Rocky Mountain National Park on Trail Ridge Road, the highest continuous paved road in the United States, topping out at about 12,183 feet (3, 7153 meters), but easier for me than Berthoud Pass was a week ago, most likely because of my extended stay at high altitude.

OK, before the rest of my laptop battery power drizzles out here in the rainstorm that’s unexpectedly blown up outside, here’s the conclusion to the ranger story:

Trying to be an honest and open guy and I told the ranger, Jim Canetti, that I’d been photographing Covey Potter (the researcher-see previous blog entry) as part of my work on my Colorado River project.  I even made a short plug for the Blue Earth Alliance, which didn’t seem to impress him.  “Do you have a permit as a professional photographer to work in the park?” he asked.

Well, no, I didn’t.  To me, the fact that the river was in the park was incidental and getting a permit to photograph along the same river I’ve been photographing these past years had honestly never entered my mind.  He saw it differently.  “Let’s talk about being a professional photographer,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” I thought.  “Why do you want to get all depressing?”

“You make your living as a photographer?” the ranger asked.

“After a fashion.”

“You’re planning to sell the pictures you’re taking here?” he continued.

“Really, I’m only thinking of them in terms of a book.”

“A book,” he repeated.

I wasn’t trying to appear pitiful by telling him the truth, but maybe doing so had planted the seed of pitying me in the mind underneath that Smokey Bear hat.  As he radioed in the information from my New York driver’s license (like I ever use the thing) I could see him glance at the little wheels on the folding bicycle they’d caught me with, way up at this forlorn ditch camp, with its little American flag tattering in the mountain breeze.  And I could almost hear the story they’d be telling the folks about me after the horses were unsaddled for the day.

To my surprise, the female ranger actually started to ask me some questions about my bike, confessing that the surface improvements on the road into the western end of the park had made her consider buying a road bike to replace the hybrid she’d been riding.  She’d been looking at a Trek, though she preferred a Giant, which was out of stock in her size, of course.

Ranger Canetti returned from where he had been standing next to the ditch camp residence, considering my peculiar situation and announced that he was going to go easy on me.  He would only fine me for riding the bike ($100: $75 fine + $25 processing fee), but was going to ignore the fact that I didn’t have a permit, probably because he figured (rightly) that I’d be very lucky to break even on any pictures I might someday sell from this visit to the national park.  But Blue Earth photographers: be warned.  You’ll want to get that photography permit if you’re going to photograph in one of our nation’s national parks.  Nevertheless, Ranger Canetti added that in a “previous life” he had taught photography himself.  So, you never know.

Once my degree of criminality had been determined, he and the other ranger very helpfully had a look at the map and considered how I might leave the restricted area I’d invaded with my folding bike.  After considering a couple of rather absurd options, involving me walking or carrying the bike several rough miles over routes that were actually designed as trails, they agreed that the public would be best served if I were to exit by the same route I’d entered: on the route that was actually designed as egress for four-wheeled, motorized vehicles.  I promised to get off my bike and walk it, once I reached the pathway through the Holzwarth Historic District (which I did).

I tried to make the most of what had been an otherwise wasted day by photographing the Grand Ditch, as well as the Colorado River, as it flowed through the Kawuneeche Valley far below me.

John Trotter

Trotter’s current project at Blue Earth is No Agua, No Vida: The Thirsty Colorado River Delta.

Damage on Lulu Creek, after a section of the Grand Ditch blew out in 2003, sending a huge mass of debris down the mountainside. © John Trotter

The Grand Ditch © John Trotter

Well, to the handful of you out there in internet land who are following this trip, I apologize for not posting anything here over the past couple of days.  It’s not because nothing has been going on.  Quite the contrary.  I’ve just been working too hard and haven’t had enough time to sit down with my laptop, then sling said laptop over my back and pedal the ten miles down to the Blue Water Bakery Cafe here in Grand Lake, Colorado to hook up to their free wireless and eat a sandwich for dinner.

I came to Grand Lake with all my photo and video gear today to gather some images of this place, which is utterly dependent on the tourism that Colorado River water makes possible by filling Grand Lake itself.  But today has been wet and I’ve twice now been soaked to the skin out there, so I’ve decided to catch up on the last couple of days here on the Blue Water’s own PC.  If you’re a Jimmy Buffett kind of person, then the Blue Water is your kind of place.

I have much to report and not much time with which to work.  First off, I’ve been meaning to comment on the word ‘Grand’ that I’ve been tossing about.  This part of the Colorado River was actually called the Grand River until 1921, when Edward T. Taylor, a congressman from the state of Colorado, was able to get the name ‘Grand’ changed to ‘Colorado’ as a way of locating the headwaters of the West’s most notable river in his home state.  I knew that when I came here and persisted, even though I have long felt, as many others have, that the river’s headwaters could more accurately be located at the beginning of the Green River in Wyoming.  I may yet go there.  But enough of that.  I’m here in Colorado and the headwaters I’ve been photographing around definitely flow down into the river I’ve spent a lot of time these past few years exploring.

What else has been going on?  Well, I should tell you that yesterday I got busted by a couple of horse-mounted National Park Service rangers.  Perhaps the word “busted” carries connotations of devious criminal behavior, which I’m not going to cop to.  But to clarify what happened, I have to go back to my previous day, spent with Covey Potter, a graduate student at Colorado State University.  We’d met up at the campground and he’d agreed to take me out along the Colorado River, where he was sinking some monitoring wells (basically 1.5″ pvc pipes with simple electronics inside) as part of a project to restore an area near the defunct mining town of Lulu City, which was decimated when a section of the Grand Ditch (that word ‘Grand’ again… it actually was originally called the Grand River Ditch), high above on a mountainside, blew out in 2003.  Covey says that roughly 9,000 dumptruck loads of debris came rushing down the hill, wiping out about 20,000 trees along the way.  The Grand Ditch is considered the very first diversion of Colorado River waters, as it captures mountain runoff along its 8-mile length before it even reaches the river, sending it across the Continental Divide and down to agriculture on the drier eastern side of the Rocky Mountains.  It’s a perfect example of the importance of the seniority of water rights in the West, as the ditch began delivering that water in 1890, 25 years before the founding of Rocky Mountain National Park itself.

Nevertheless, the National Park Service decided to sue the Water Supply and Service Company, which owns the ditch, for damages and won a $9 million settlement for restoration.  Covey showed me the affected area a couple of days ago and I would have attached photos I took of Lulu Creek tumbling its way over the six-year-old mountain of boulders and assorted debris, but as I said, I’m not on my own laptop.  Maybe later.  Suffice it to say that he and his cohorts have a huge job on their hands and though he described a rough plan of action to me, I have no idea how they’re going to accomplish it.  I’ll be very interested to see how it all goes.

During our day hiking around in the wilderness, Covey encouraged me to go up and see the Grand Ditch for myself and meet the two men whose job it is to make sure that water flows along it without interruption.  Covey, quite the mountain biker himself, seemed duly impressed that I’d ridden my way up here with all my gear from Denver and felt that the best way for me to go up to the ditch was to push my bike up a steep, extremely rocky two-mile road.  Once I reached the ditch, he said, I’d have a very level, regularly graded road to ride, which was the road that the ditch guys themselves cruised along in their pickups during their inspections.  He felt that I’d enjoy meeting the guys and that I’d be able to see a lot of the ditch by bicycle on the way.

We’re just about back to the horse mounted rangers, I promise…

The next morning, Covey went out to check his wells and I set off for the ditch.  He gave me instructions to get to the ditch road, which went through the Holzwarth Historic Site, a defunct dude ranch.  At the entrance to the site I was met by an elderly NPS volunteer, who pointed out the sign, forbidding bicycles along the trail (actually a wide, flat path).  I asked him what harm would be done if I walked the bike along the trail and he just shook his head and told me that it wasn’t allowed and it was not his to question why.  I told him that a Park Service employee had told me I could take it through there (Covey is partially employed by the Park Service in his research) and went ahead.  The encounter left me with a funny feeling, unexpected as it was, though I had no problems besides some rain all the way up to the ditch camp.

When I got there, I saw a sign on the door that the guys were gone, working “down ditch.”  I pulled out the video camera and made a minute of footage of a ragged little American flag flapping in the wind next to the ditch, then turned the camera on the ditch itself, as it flowed down toward the other side of the Divide.  That’s when I saw the two rangers on their horses, riding in my direction.  I even filmed them for 15 or 20 seconds, then stopped to change lenses on my Mamiya to photograph their arrival.  I’d just got the camera ready when they rode up, but could immediately tell from their faces that they were in no mood to be amiable.  They were a man and a woman.

“Is that your bicycle?” asked the man.

When I said it was, he asked how I’d arrived with it here, so I told him.  “I don’t believe you!” he said and climbed off his horse.

I knew I was in trouble then.  He explained to me that the roads I’d been on were considered trails by the park and that since bicycles were not allowed on trails, I was in violation of the law.  I told him that I’d been encouraged by a researcher to come up there in that way and he angrily told me, “He has no authority to tell you that!”

And alas, my time here at the cafe is up and I have to go without finishing the story.  But isn’t that how Dickens himself used to do it when his novels were being serialized in the newspapers?  Well, I’m no Dickens, but I promise to give you the conclusion to the story when I next have an opportunity to write, which might be a couple of days from now.  Tomorrow morning I have to ride over Trail Ridge Road (the second highest paved road in the lower 48 states) to the other side of the park and then down to Denver.  I’ve got to get back to New York, as I’ve only been there four days since the end of May.

Thanks for reading and I hope I haven’t rambled too much for you.

John Trotter

Lake Granby © John Trotter

Timber Creek Campground-Rocky Mountain National Park
© John Trotter

The screen on the laptop computer resting on my knees, where I am sitting up in my sleeping; bag tells me that it is now 5:04 am.  But I’m sure that fact is absolutely immaterial to the solitary house wren chirping purposefully away nearby in the slowly gathering light that is beginning to permeate the walls of this tent.  I’ve been awake longer than the bird: long enough to have experienced the pre-dawn of this new day when the sound of it still meant only the gentlest breeze whispering through the branches of the beetle-eaten lodge pole pine forest across the road.

But since I’ve powered up this Mac fourteen minutes ago, already a second vehicle has rattled by on Trail Ridge Road, scraped down to gravel for re-paving and soon to be what it was when I rode in on it yesterday afternoon: a morass of idling vacation vehicles and heavy trucks, laden with asphalt from some aggregate plant outside the National Park.  Little did I know when those trucks began to pass my left shoulder after I pedaled onto Trail Ridge off U.S. Highway 40 that my evening’s destination would be directly adjacent to the current epicenter of road re-surfacing activity in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I should pause to note the presence of a herd of elk at the edge my campsite, whose browsing I interrupted when I paused from my typing moments ago to step into the brisk mountain air.  All nine of them raised their heads in my direction, chewing on whatever tender grass they’d just found, then calmly moved a little farther away in unison.

The day’s third vehicle has now passed.

After I’d arrived, found this campsite and set up my tent, I remarked to a woman in a site nearby about the dearth of trees here, as almost all of them had been felled and bulldozed into large, utterly dead, umber piles throughout the campground.  She said she thought that the park service had cut them all down as a public safety measure last year, after the trees, all lodge pole pines, had succumbed to the bark beetle infestation.  Or was it the year before?  Anyway, they had once defined why anyone would feel the urge to spend a night in this meadow and their absence now made this place look a bit ridiculous and random and us campers a bit like refugees, with no better place to lay our heads.

And as serendipity would have it, Kristin (Kristen?), the woman I spoke to, is a PhD student from Colorado State University, who is trying to determine how to save the willows nearby, which are losing the battle with resident moose population, as well as from a fungus, which until a couple of months ago, she said, has only been known to attack aspens.

Willows, of course, are found primarily in riparian areas and the riparian area adjacent to this very campground is the Colorado River’s.  And so, just like that, as has happened many times before since beginning work on this project, I’ve stumbled upon another pathway into a part of the river I’ve yet to explore.  To tell the story of something so large, which makes its course across so much varied territory, I’ve found that it is necessary to tell many smaller stories along the way.

I’m attaching a picture of Lake Granby about fifteen miles below here, which I passed en route: Colorado River water behind a dam.  And just so you’ll see evidence of the pine bark beetle devastation I’ve been describing for the past two days: a picture of my campsite here in Rocky Mountain National Park.

John Trotter

Trotter’s current project at Blue Earth is No Agua, No Vida: The Thirsty Colorado River Delta.

© John Trotter

I’d hoped to get on the road early Tuesday, knowing that I’d have a long, grinding climb over Berthoud Pass.  Last night, I even had designs on making it to Granby.  But as tired as I was, I slept terribly in my tent at the Indian Spring campground and by morning I felt as though I’d been awake more than I’d been asleep.  Any cyclist riding the Tour de France could count on being shelled by the competition after such a night.

Nevertheless, I rolled out of my sleeping bag, got on my bike and rode down Main Street in Idaho Falls for some coffee and a little breakfast.  But it was after 9am before I hit the road and I lamented the loss my best laid plans from the night before.  And I hadn’t been riding for an hour before I ran across a Starbucks, with wireless internet access, where I stopped to check my email and update this blog.

Before noon, I left the Interstate 70 access roads I’d been following and turned onto U.S. Highway 40 and the approach to Berthoud Pass in earnest.  As I settled into the climb, I saw a gash of brown trees scarring a mountain to my left and realized that I was riding into the elevation where the Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) were laying waste to the alpine evergreen forest across the Western United States.  The higher I rode, the more the mountainsides reminded me of piles of discarded Christmas trees in February.

This vast scourge across an entire region is yet another symptom of global warming.  The larvae deposited in the bark of pine trees by adult beetles have not been frozen to death during winters that are trending warmer in the higher altitudes.  As the pine forests are already stressed by the protracted drought that has gripped the West for a decade, the perfect storm has arrived.  Millions of acres of pines are dying or dead and we may very soon not recognize a part of our country that has long fired our collective imagination and shaped our identity.

But mostly today, I’ve been focused on moving myself closer to the Colorado River headwaters and frankly, the suitcase trailer I’m towing up these mountains behind my folding Bike Friday is overloaded with camping and photography gear.  Turning the pedals, even in my very lowest gear, is hard labor.  For the curious, I’m hauling: Two Mamiya 7 cameras, with three lenses; two flashes (one of which is a backup); a Sekonic meter; about 50 rolls of Tri-X 220 film; an old Leitz Tiltall monopod; a Canon Vixia HV30 video camera, with a Sennheiser mic and four tapes; an Edirol R9 digital audio recorder and of course, the 15” MacBook Pro on which I write these words.  The laptop alone must weigh over six pounds.

I’m sitting tonight in a lightweight one person tent on a featherweight ¾ length sleeping pad, with only a wisp of a sleeping bag to keep out the chill of the mountain night (I’m generally a warm sleeper, but I’m not as hardy as a pine bark beetle).  I guess I’ll know in the morning if leaving the heavier sleeping bag at home was worth it.

At the top of Berthoud Pass is a sign marking the Continental Divide.  East of there, all the rivers flow to the mighty Mississippi.  To the west, everything flows into the Colorado.

John Trotter

© John Trotter

I had a friend back in Sacramento who told me that she’d decided to choose gravity as her religion because gravity was something everybody could believe in.

Here in Idaho Springs, Colorado, an old mining town along tumbling Clear Creek and rumbling Interstate 70, my appreciation of gravity has been refreshed by pedaling up here yesterday from Denver, pulling my gear behind me in my trailer.  Moving a one-ton automobile up the same stretch with the air conditioning and the radio blasting, courtesy of some ancient fossilized forest, we tend to disconnect from what gravity really means in our lives.

The beginning of the industrial revolution was powered by gravity and evidence can still be seen in old New England mill towns, sited along rivers where falling water turned the early wheels of industry.  Here in Idaho Springs, the now-dormant Argo Gold Mine turned its processing mill, producing electricity with Clear Creek, which falls a long way down the Rockies before it flows through here.  But I’m still on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains and the water in Clear Creek will eventually end up in the Mississippi.  I have more climbing ahead of me today before I’m in the Colorado River watershed.

And I’d better get to it.

John Trotter

Trotter’s current project at Blue Earth is No Agua, No Vida: The Thirsty Colorado River Delta.

Aboard the Amtrak California Zephyr eastbound out of Sacramento the Sierra Nevada Mountains have suddenly disappeared from view, as we have now entered one of them. One minute… two minutes… a pair of middle-aged women inch cautiously past my seat in the subterranean darkness. “Are we still in a tunnel or is this a blackout?” asks one to the other, who responds with nicotine-stained laughter.

After almost five minutes, we emerge from beneath the mountain next to a long, alpine lake. I learn that it is, in fact, Donner Lake and realize that the mountain we’ve just passed through is the same one that trapped the now famous party of emigrants for the entire long, hungry winter of 1844. And as it has for many years, that geographic designation reminds me of my old friend Martin, a brilliant sportswriter from my first newspaper job, who liked to leave the unlucky group’s name with restaurant hostesses whenever he was told that there would be a wait for a table, just so that later, he could hear them call out, “Donner… the Donner party… your table is ready.”

Seeing Donner Lake reminds me that in California, as it is in much of the intermountain West, the vast majority of the water being used is coming out of the mountains as stored snow melt. As our planet continues to warm up, snow pack in those mountains should inevitably decrease and the systems constructed for water delivery, like the ones along the Colorado River, where I’m going, will not be able to function as they were designed to.

The next time I write will likely be from the Rocky Mountains themselves. Time now to enjoy a nice, microwaved Amtrak veggie burger.

John Trotter

The Colorado River Aqueduct passes through the desert of Southern California east of Joshua Tree National Park. © John Trotter

For anyone out there interested in the working process of a Blue Earth photographer, I’ve decided to blog as often as possible about my current trip for my ongoing Colorado River project.  From wherever I can find internet access out in the field, I’ll send updates to my esteemed colleague Bart J. Cannon, at Mission Control in the great Pacific Northwest, and he’ll post them here for you (since you’re are in fact reading this) to see.  We each work in our own ways and we each describe those ways uniquely, as well.  I guess I don’t exactly want to demystify the undertaking for you because it would be a shame to eliminate all of the inherent magic that photography has always offered us, but I’ll try my best to make it interesting.

What are the origins of this trip?

When I decided to attend the July 11 opening of a two-person exhibition I was a part of at the Viewpoint Photographic Art Center in Sacramento, California, it was a natural opportunity to double up and work on my Colorado River project, since I was already going to be in the West.  Originally, I’d intended to re-visit San Diego and other cities nearby that are heavily dependent on the river for their survival.  But a proposal from a French magazine to photograph in Monument Valley that materialized in mid-June made me decide to photograph my way up the river from Lake Powell instead.  And though sadly, the job fell through in the end, I’d made too many plans in that direction and have resolved to follow through with them.

So, I’m taking the Amtrak California Zephyr to Denver, where I’ve got a couple of cousins and thus a free place to stay.  From there I’m going to re-visit the Colorado River headwaters in Rocky Mountain National Park, where I’d spent a few hours kicking around with my father late last year in the snow.

Did I mention that I’m going to be working from my bicycle?  It’s true.  It won’t be the first time.  Last fall I spent a week each in San Diego and Las Vegas, car-free, carrying my Mamiya 7, a couple of lenses and a bunch of film in my Lowe Pro sling bag all day long.  Why?  I guess I prefer to ask, why not?  I’ve been a cyclist most of my life, even racing on a French amateur team in my late teens and riding across the United States alone in my mid-30’s.  As the evidence of carbon-induced global warming and petroleum production collapse only continue to become more compelling I’ve begun to feel that it’s somewhat disingenuous to flit around the world with very carbon intensive propulsion to photograph the results of flitting around the world with very carbon intensive propulsion.

So, I take the train or the bus (preferably public transportation) or my bike, whenever possible instead of an airplane or a car.  I ride a Bike Friday a very ingenious folder, built in Eugene, Oregon, which fits into a Samsonite suitcase, for which I’ve never paid an oversize charge when I have had to fly with it.  Once I get where I’m going, I unfold it from the case, then pop a couple of small wheels onto an axle that attaches very quickly to the bottom of the suitcase to turn it into a trailer.  Shocked, unsuspecting bystanders have watched me do this as though I were some movie villain screwing a few disparate pipes together into a sniper rifle.  And then, to their continued surprise, I attach the suitcase/trailer to the bike, throw my other bag inside it and ride away from the airport/train station.  People: believe me - get rid of the gym membership because this is the future.  I’ve more than paid for the bike with the money I haven’t spent on rental cars.

And the thing is, I can see a lot better from a bike than I can from a car.

You might enjoy a photo Kevin German took of me assembling the bike in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The reason it took a half hour to put everything together while he was watching was because I’d left a R-pin for attaching a trailer wheel at my previous destination and took a few minutes to improvise my key ring as a temporary replacement.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, check back.  I’ll let you know how the trip unfolds and though I’ve been shooting this project in film since its beginning, I’ll try to upload some snapshots from my compact digital Ricoh, as well.

All the best to you,

John Trotter

Trotter’s current project at Blue Earth is No Agua, No Vida: The Thirsty Colorado River Delta.