Winter river

It’s the middle of winter, but the Baptism River still flows under the snow and ice.

We took a little weekend getaway up to Two Harbors and Tettegouche State Park, where I got acquainted with snowshoes. Minnesota has gotten a couple of cold blasts this season, including one in progress as I type this. But Lake Superior is almost completely unbound by ice, unlike last year, and the park’s positively gushing river still peaks through its shell here and there. A window still parts the icicle curtains around High Falls, one of the state’s tallest waterfalls.

Moving water is amazing. It and a couple of feet of snowpack created some beautiful scenes.

Thanks for a nice time, Two Harbors, and thank you for looking.

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2019

Break out the sparklers, it’s the last day of the last year of the decade, and it’s time for a whole lot of us photographers to pull out our best and favorite shots of the year to stick on the refrigerator. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll keep it brief: what a year. I didn’t post as much on here because I wanted to focus on good opportunities, and I think I found them. In fact, I think I pushed my photography the furthest it’s ever gone — in nature, on the street and at work. I’ve gotten to know Minnesota in all of its seasons. I got married and visited three national parks. I made plans and hopes for the next year and the next decade. What a year!

A rally for and protest against President Donald Trump during his visit to Burnsville, Minnesota

A restored prairie in southern Scott County, Minnesota

Wacipi with the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Minnesota

Minneapolis Open Streets on Lyndale Avenue (same for the next photo)

Crown-tipped coral fungus, Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge

Grizzly Falls, Kings Canyon National Park

Thanks, as always, for looking. A happy new year to you.

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To Voyageurs

We visited Voyageurs National Park the wrong way last weekend.

The park, right at the northern border of Minnesota, is more than one-third lake, and nearly all of the land is best accessed by boat — or by ice, once the lake gets there. We didn’t have a boat and had just a few hours, hardly enough to get introduced to a few hundred square miles. But it was my birthday week, and the fall colors were still hanging on, and we won’t be in Minnesota forever, and we had a beautiful Saturday to spend, so we went for it. It’s the wrong approach to truly see this place. But it was beautiful nonetheless.

We hiked the Blind Ash Bay Trail, a nice little loop near a park entrance. Golden aspen and birch leaves, long pine needles and green mosses carpeted the often waterlogged forest floor. There’s still growing to do even in October, including for spiky little plants, like miniature Christmas trees and cacti, that I’d never seen before.

Hopefully we’ll have the chance to get more thoroughly acquainted.

Thanks for looking!

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Kings Canyon

The clouds greeted us on our way to Kings Canyon. The road from Sequoia to the adjacent national park goes over a high ridge where water vapor drifts up and down the hillsides in all directions, including right through where we stood.

From there the road mostly goes down, descending from an overlook of one of the continent’s deepest canyons right to its floor. The gorge is genuinely, shockingly deep, gouged by the Kings River and ancient glaciers into a complex of rough-hewn peaks and cliffs — great walls that enclosed us on all sides except above. It’s a wilder, rougher cousin to Yosemite Valley and perhaps the more spectacular demonstration of frozen and liquid water’s sheer power, in my opinion.

We took the Mist Falls trail from Roads End, a literal-named park service station, deeper into the canyon. The trail is a backpacking thoroughfare, busy with groups going to and from the Sierra wilderness. Our destination was Mist Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in these national parks. The Kings River’s South Fork, the canyon and a textbook U-shaped, glacier-carved side valley kept the journey lively.

That U-shaped valley I mentioned, husband for scale.

The enticingly named Paradise Valley and other beautiful places lie just beyond the falls. Nearly all of the park and its wonders are inaccessible by road. I can only get a taste of these glorious places.