| When I was six
years old, I read a book that changed my life. In it,
the author described a fierce and forbidding land, so thick
with bugs you could barely breath and with bone-chilling
temperatures that made you forget your own name. Yet
somehow this rugged wilderness lured you on regardless, for it
was a land of magic and wonderment, so wild and rare that it
made dreamers out of men and women alike.
Twenty seven years later,
the 'Call of the Wild' still instilled in my soul, I embarked
upon the same path, albeit via a different route, as my
favourite childhood author, Jack London. I went to
photograph, to explore, and to experience, but most of all I
went because I knew I had to -- a book had told me so.
It's a land of legends larger
than life. It's where the world's radios were tuned to in the blizzardy winter of '32 as Albert Johnson,
the 'Mad Trapper', made his last stand against the mounties in
the shadow of the Arctic Circle, bringing the largest manhunt
in Canadian history to a violent and bloody conclusion.
It's where villainous Soapy Smith finally met his maker on the
Skagway docks in the infamous shootout that created a hero of
the man who's now buried beside him, the one who cried out,
"Boys, I'm hurt bad, but by god I got him, by god, I got
him!" And it's where three unsuspecting men
stumbled upon a piece of rock the size of a thumbnail, yet so
significant it changed the world in 1898.
Skookum Jim, George Carmack and Tagish Charley knew exactly
what they'd found, and their tiny Klondike gold nugget spawned
the greatest gold rush the planet has ever known.For
me, the Yukon, Alaska and the north was everything I had ever
dreamed of and more. It was more spectacular than I had
imagined, more magical, more wonderful. I loved it
as a photographer, but even more so, I loved it as someone who
loves wildlife and wild open spaces and the ghosts of Klondike
past.
I met my very own trapper,
Trapper Ivan. I saw grizzlies by the dozens. I
tagged along with two Inuvaluit caribou hunters in search of
the great herds. I petted the three-legged dog Hank, the
most famous dog in Chicken, Alaska. I bought fool's
gold. I stepped onto the Chilkoot Trail. And I
danced under the Midnight Sun.
But best of all? I drank
history's golden trails for breakfast, ate wild beasts for
lunch and swallowed whole the night sky of dancing lights for
dinner.
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Summer 2002 - I
Summer 2002 - II
Wildlife 2002
2003 Images
Coming Soon!
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