Summer Cam

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At Home & Abroad from John W. Wall on Vimeo.

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Bear Cam

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"All the truly living, at least once, are born again."

--Ta-Nehisi Coates from The Beautiful Struggle

The live web cams from Brooks Falls are mesmerizing.

A sockeye salmon swims up from Bristol Bay to spawn in the Brooks River, a short run of water that drains Brooks Lake into NakNek Lake, but it's caught by a grizzly bear and never gets past the falls. Padding through the water with the determined fish still flapping its tail from between its teeth, the griz reaches an island of sand and pebbles. The bear sets down the salmon and, keeping one paw on its head, strips off sheets of skin and chews off chunks of flesh, tossing the pieces into its mouth to be swallowed.

The fish kicks in silence. The bear bites again. Skin peels off, the body of the fish is ripped apart by unstoppable jaws, but it somehow continues to flop on the ground under that giant paw. Even if the salmon somehow escaped at this point, what good would it do? Its drive to spawn is so powerful that even half-eaten, its will to press on upriver is undiminished.

The mercy of death finally comes to the salmon, and the bear turns back into the rushing river to catch its next meal. One of its cubs, still too green to catch its own fish, walks to the small pile of remains and eats what's left while attending gulls swoop in, hoping some little piece will float their way.

The bear feeds on the salmon without mercy. It is easier to see things from the bear's perspective than from the salmon's. To watch from the salmon's perspective is too awful to contemplate. We want to turn away, turn off our empathy before the fact of the salmon's violent death sinks in too far, becomes indelible. But to become among the truly living, we have to surrender to the larger story and experience what we thought was too awful to bear. If we can set just one foot through that door, we will see that it wasn't too awful to bear. Indeed, we will enter a new world, rich with possibility.

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Summer Fog

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I started hiking this morning on a thin dirt trail on the windward side of Bolinas Ridge. Visibility was probably around 100 feet, and the trail was covered by a golden-brown archway of knee- to hip-high grasses -- all of them heavily burdened with dew. My legs, shorts, and shoes and socks became completely soaked in very short order, and I had a long way to go. I stopped to take stock while a cold wind blew and reluctantly decided that to continue, to insist on reaching my intended destination, was untenable.

I was glad I hadn't brought my wife up to hike the route I did last week -- Pantoll to Stinson Beach via the Matt Davis Trail, then back up via Steep Ravine. It was foggy last week, but it was a relatively dry fog, with no dew-soaked grass or dripping forests. In fact, the morning light had been beautiful at a particular point along the trail, and my plan this morning had been to hike out to the same spot with my camera.

I've been taking a bit of a break from blogging and other online activities and have been making a few prints to better enjoy the fruit of my labor. I've made a few 8x12 and 16x24 metal prints, four 24x36 glossy prints mounted on gator board, and a 20x80 glossy panorama that I simply tacked to the wall. They all look great, if I do say so myself.

Something weird has been going on with the blog since around the beginning of summer. I'm not a stat-hound or anything, but I've noticed over the years that I tend to get around 30-50 pageviews a day. All of a sudden I'm getting 1,000 to 1,200 pageviews a day, and it's been going on like this for weeks.

Lots of bicyclists on the mountain this morning, and they were getting a nice little soaking as they passed beneath the redwoods on Bolinas Ridge. Reminded me that the Tour de France riders are about to climb into Switzerland. My camera and I got pretty soaked while I made a few compositions in the rainy forest. I headed home with my shoes and socks still soaked, about four hours after they first got that way.

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