Posts Tagged ‘John Muir’

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Monday Blog Blog: Buzztail Blog Shakes And Makes A Difference

March 14th, 2011

California Quarter Image, Reverse Side, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, 2005. First seen on PJ Finn's Buzztail Blog.

What is Monday Blog Blog? See the blog post, “Monday Blog Blog Celebration.”

NEW! Special Update: Buzztail Blog Has Added A New Writer

Greg Russell, author of the photo blog, Alpenglow Images, will lend his blog post writing skills to help PJ Finn develop Buzztail Blog…

Check out Greg Russell’s first Buzztail blog post, “Learning To Stand, Part I.”

What is Conservation Anyway?

Whether we are called conservationists, environmentalists, activists or some other term, a growing number of people both breathe air, drink water and want to maintain the quality of both for future generations. There are a certain faction of people in the United States who swallow the marketing and spin dished at them by big oil and big coal backed media. The spin says that we can continue to take old decayed organic material that we call oil and coal from deep in the earth, run it through refineries, machines and other hot devices, then spew it into the atmosphere indefinitely without any negative consequences. In my opinion, the idea that any negative consequences will be considered a theory until they have proven true, is ludicrous and nothing short of mass-suicide. The people swallowing and perpetuating the propaganda apparently have never ventured out into nature to observe the obvious signs of change all around us in every ecosystem.

Can Landscape Photography And Environmentalism Combine Well?

Meanwhile some photographers do not recognize the connection between landscape photography and the need to help preserve the land. Some photographers have also forgotten that landscape photography helped birth conservation in the 1800s. Nonetheless, many landscape photographers are aware of the tradition they are part of and are also rediscovering that photographs are one of the best tools available for making a difference. Because Global Warming has become so politicized and controversial, as have many other conservation and environmental issues, or for other good reasons, some photographers who are also great activists, choose to keep their photography and conservation efforts separate. My father pioneer landscape photographer Philip Hyde set himself apart by combining conservation and photography way before it was cool, hip and groovy to do so, but many other landscape photographers of note including Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter chose to separate the two endeavors to varying degrees. For more discussion on whether or not to mix conservation and photography see the blog post and comments on, “Wallace Stegner: The Wilderness Idea.”

PJ Finn, Photomontana Blog and Buzztail Blog

One photographer who is also an environmentalist is Paul Johnson, online a.k.a. PJ Finn. PJ Finn runs an insightful photography blog called Photo Montana, as well as a blog for activism, wilderness and environmental news called Buzztail Blog, which incidentally came before the photoblog. Buzztail refers to the noise a rattlesnake makes with its tail as a metaphor for what conservationists and environmentalists do when they report on and draw attention to various environmental issues. For more information about PJ Finn see his bio and the previous Landscape Photography Blogger blog post, “Photomontana Takes On Sacred Cows,” which recommends PJ Finn’s blogging on both blogs. Lately PJ Finn, after a move to Southern California, has rededicated himself to building up his Buzztail blog. Please lend PJ Finn a hand over there, stop by, make a comment, link to his blogs and otherwise offer up a big thanks to him for all of the good work he does.

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Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 10

February 10th, 2011

Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log: June 14-September 14, 1971 by Ardis Hyde

(Ardis, David and Philip Hyde in Their Camper. Continued from the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 9.”)

Part Ten: Layover at Bartlett Cove, Glacier Bay National Monument

Fairweather Range From Elfin Cove, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 1971 by Philip Hyde.

Sunday, July 4, 1971: Sure enough the sun was out when we arose, our first sunshine since the day we traveled from Ketchikan to Wrangle. See the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 4.” This side of the shore was shady and the dirt still cool, though the beach was in the sun. We ate breakfast at our beach kitchen with fire, shivering, but warmed up as we moved around and exercised. It was glorious to look across at Mt. Fairweather and see it all, with snow white summits left and right. We had a leisurely morning with Philip photographing in the Spruce Forest and around Black Pond. David and I puttered around the beach and the forest trail. We napped after lunch. All of us walked up the beach in the late afternoon. Lots of old beach lines were marked by dry blackened rockweed, caches of mussel shells and assorted flotsam. We found a perfect small crab skeleton for David’s “museum collection.” By then the sun was shining fully on our beach kitchen and we didn’t need to revive the fire. I cooked on the Svea stove.

We walked back along the nature trail to Glacier Bay Lodge for an 8:45 pm Park Ranger program of slides on Glacier Bay in general by Park Ranger Tim Setlicka. After the program we made reservations to go on a boat tour to Muir Inlet the next day. We talked with the Park Ranger again on our way back to camp. We then found new neighbors on both sides of us, with three parties total camped in our area. The newest neighbors were wetsuit divers and had already been in the water.

Landscape Photography Blogger Notes:

Why was Philip Hyde in Alaska? The Short Introduction

(More on the role of the photography of Philip Hyde in Alaskan conservation efforts in future blog posts.)

In his book, “Your Land and Mine: Evolution of a Conservationist,” Edgar Wayburn, president of the Sierra Club off and on in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, wrote of his experiences on his first travels in Alaska in 1967:

We soon found ourselves engrossed by conservation issues. Of most obvious concern was the damage caused by mining. About three miles northwest of Camp Denali, (just outside Denali National Park) hydraulic mining at Moose Creek had devastated the landscape. Huge areas of earth had been blasted away and piled high in waste mounds; rain had washed away the tailings onto land downstream. Mining had churned up so much soil that the river, once free running and clear, ran thick with brown mud… (Hydraulic mining) had been outlawed in California, but in Alaska it was allowed to continue full force. Even more pressing than the mines at Kantishna was the National Park Service plan to build a new hotel above Wonder Lake, just inside (Denali National Park’s) northern boundary. And at the eastern entrance to the park, the National Park Service was surveying sites to expand the existing hotel there…. At the time of Alaska’s statehood in 1959, fewer than a million of the state’s 375 million acres were in private hands…. Of the remaining lands, 290 million acres were considered unappropriated, falling under the administration of the Bureau of Land Management. The fate of the vast majority of Alaska had yet to be decided.

In 1967, there were 99 Sierra Club members in Alaska. The only other notable conservation organization in Alaska at the time was the Alaska Conservation Society. Edgar Wayburn and his wife Peggy Wayburn, who also held various leadership roles with the Sierra Club, began to rally people to the cause of wilderness conservation. They proposed an alternative site for the hotel that would not be destructive to the landscape, Mt. Denali views or wildlife ranges. Staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arranged for Peggy and Edgar Wayburn to fly over the Kenai Moose Range, now the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge:

Oil had been discovered on the Kenai Peninsula a decade earlier, and we witnessed evidence of seismic research conducted by oil companies—large stretches of denuded land where the trees had been shaved so the companies could put in their seismic lines and test underground for oil reserves. Cook Inlet, which separates the Kenai Peninsula from the main bulk of Alaska, was dotted with oil rigs and derricks.

In Juneau, Alaska, the U.S. Forest Service had a different perspective. The U.S. Forest Service controlled all the land in Southeast Alaska, a coastal region of rain forests, fjords, islands and peaks as you have read about in previous blog posts in this series: see also, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 6.” Included in this domain, the Tongass National Forest, contained almost 17 million acres, the largest unit of the national forest system, and the Chugach National Forest consisted of over 5 million acres. The Forest Service was not intent on conserving forests, Forest Service leaders in Alaska, as often elsewhere, were committed to stimulating the economy, bringing in business and creating jobs through the pulping and milling of the old growth rain forests they managed. Edgar Wayburn began to research studies that had been done on potential wilderness areas. To his surprise, even after the Wilderness Act of 1964 mandated wilderness studies and they were ongoing throughout the lower forty-eight states, the Forest Service in Alaska had made no wilderness studies, even though they were sitting on by far the largest holdings of wilderness.

On their first trip to Alaska, Peggy and Edgar Wayburn’s last stop was Glacier Bay. Proclamation declared Glacier Bay a national monument in 1925, but its protections were limited and some of Glacier Bay’s most striking features were not included in the national monument. The many fronts of conservation battle in Alaska were developed and valiantly assailed with the help of Philip Hyde and other photographers. However, even with these efforts, Glacier Bay did not become a national park until 1980.

After Executive Director David Brower was forced into resigning from the Sierra Club, the Sierra Club no longer called their books the Exhibit Format Series. They adopted a new look to the books and a different size format. One of the first flagship books of the Sierra Club just after the Exhibit Format Series ended, was called “Alaska: The Great Land” by Mike Miller and Peggy Wayburn with a number of photographers including Philip Hyde as the primary illustrator. Sierra Club members and leaders used this book in the various campaigns to defend Alaska. In 1971, Philip Hyde’s summer photography trip with his family to Alaska, was an opportunity to make photographs of the areas sensitive to each environmental campaign. Philip Hyde also returned to Alaska the following summer in 1972 and also in 1973 and many years off and on afterward. Some of the photographs published in “Alaska: The Great Land” were made on the summer 1971 Denali National Park trip.

(More on the role of the photography of Philip Hyde in Alaskan conservation efforts in future blog posts.)

Continued in the next blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 11.”

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David Brower: Photographer And Environmentalist 1

January 15th, 2011

In Honor Of The One Year Anniversary Of The Launch Of Landscape Photography Blogger…

David Brower: Photographer, Filmmaker And

Father Of Modern Environmentalism Part One

Storm Over The Minarets, Yosemite Sierra High Trip, now the Ansel Adams Wilderness, High Sierra Nevada, California, 1950 by Philip Hyde. One of Philip Hyde's signature images that came from the 1950 Summer High Trip that started and ended in Tuolumne Meadows and explored the North side of Yosemite National Park and the Ritter Range in the Ansel Adams Wilderness.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

David Brower, an excellent photographer and filmmaker in his own right, did more to help popularize and show the political power of landscape photography than any other single person in the 20th Century.

In light of this, in the year 2000 the North American Nature Photography Association at its national convention honored both Philip Hyde and David Brower with lifetime achievement awards. David Brower, as the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club and leader of its most ambitious conservation campaigns, was in large part responsible for helping to establish Philip Hyde as a leading landscape photographer, along with many others including Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter.

Life Magazine called David Brower the “Number one working conservationist.” The New York Times said he was, “The most effective conservation activist in the world…” The Los Angeles Times said he was, “…America’s most charismatic conservationist.” David Brower dropped out of U. C. Berkeley his sophomore year, yet he holds nine honorary degrees. David Brower changed the course of history and the way we view wilderness and the environment, yet today his accomplishments are not particularly well-known. Even though he was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace prize, he is seldom credited for his impact on activism world-wide. Why? Who was this enigmatic figure?

David Brower: High Sierra First Ascents Climber

Born in 1912 and raised in Berkeley, California, David Brower first started climbing boulders in the Sierra Nevada on a car trip to Lake Tahoe at age six. He went on to become a renowned mountaineer of the Sierra Nevada and far beyond. As a young man he was nearly killed by a loose rock while climbing in the Palisades area of the High Sierra. He met legendary mountaineer Norman Clyde, who gave him climbing lessons. Not surprisingly, it was a climber friend, Hervey Voge, who first introduced him to the Sierra Club in 1933.

In 1934, David Brower and Hervey Voge set out on a 10 week climbing trip in the high Sierra from Onion Valley to Tuolumne Meadows. They scaled 62 peaks and made 32 first ascents. In 1939 David Brower and a number of friends, some of whom also were Sierra Club leaders, climbed Shiprock. The previous 12 attempts to climb the volcanic column had failed.

David Brower Invites Philip Hyde To Photograph Sierra Club High Trip

David Brower led Sierra Club High Trips and managed the whole program from 1947 to 1954. Ardis and Philip Hyde met David Brower in Tuolumne Meadows in 1948 when he came through leading a Sierra Club trip. Ansel Adams later more officially introduced David Brower and Philip Hyde and David Brower asked Philip Hyde to join him for a Sierra Club High Trip in the Summer of 1950. That was the High Trip that Philip Hyde made his photograph of “Minarets From Tarn Above Lake Ediza, Sierra Nevada” that Ansel Adams said he liked better than his own. It was also the Summer of “Split Boulder Near Lake Ediza, Sierra Nevada” that saw major exhibitions including the famous San Francisco “Perceptions” show of Group f.64. Several other Philip Hyde signature photographs were born that summer, “Glacial Pavement, Lodgepole Pine, Sierra Nevada” “Storm Over The Minarets, Sierra Nevada” and a number of Tuolumne Meadows.

At the time David Brower was the editor of the University of California Press and had edited the Sierra Club Annual since 1946. The 1951 Sierra Club Annual gave Philip Hyde his first publishing credit with a signature of 12 of his black and white photographs of the High Sierra Nevada from the 1950 Summer High Trip.

The Sierra Club Sends Philip Hyde On The First Photography Assignment For An Environmental Cause

Richard Leonard and David Brower sent Philip Hyde to Dinosaur National Monument in 1951. In 1952 David Brower became the first Executive Director of the Sierra Club. Within one year he had convinced the reluctant Sierra Club Board to expand the scope of the Sierra Club from a California focused defender of the Sierra, to a national, or at least regional organization with battles and interests in Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and expanding to the East Coast. David Brower pushed for the first book produced for an environmental cause, This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country And It’s Magic Rivers.

This Is Dinosaur eventually landed on every desk in Congress and other Washington leaders with the goal of convincing them it was a place too beautiful to destroy. The two dams proposed in Dinosaur would flood 97 out of 106 river miles inside the national monument. David Brower and a growing coalition in the Sierra Club and outside made up of various environmental groups, developed to defend this invasion of the National Park System.

David Brower and the coalition of environmental groups behind him took the position that as long as Glen Canyon Dam would be built anyway, building the dam higher would result in a reservoir that would hold enough extra water to exceed the capacity of both of the proposed Dinosaur National Monument dams. A higher Glen Canyon Dam would thus render the Dinosaur dams unnecessary. David Brower proved in Congressional testimony, using 9th Grade math not only that the higher Glen Canyon Dam would store more water, but that it would also evaporate less additional water. At the time time few people outside of the locals had ever seen Glen Canyon.

David Brower, Ansel Adams And Nancy Newhall Launch Conservation Photography History

In 1960, David Brower, Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall made a significant contribution to photography of the natural scene or landscape photography as it is now called. They re-invented and popularized the large coffee table photography book. This Is The American Earth with text by Nancy Newhall and photographs by Ansel Adams and some of his friends including Philip Hyde, was a song to nature writ large. America embraced This Is The American Earth and others in the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series.

Another major advance came to photography in 1962, also brought to you by David Brower. He introduced color to landscape photography through Philip Hyde and Eliot Porter and the Sierra Club Books Exhibit Format Series in 1962, the same year Rachel Carson published Silent Spring. Eliot Porter illustrated the gorgeous and artistic In Wildness Is The Preservation Of The Earth with quotes by Henry David Thoreau. Philip Hyde illustrated Island In Time: Point Reyes Peninsula, more of a rushed documentary project to help make Point Reyes National Seashore.

Photographers And Other Creatives Sent To Save The Grand Canyon

By 1964, again making a historical advance for photography, David Brower organized a river trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon National Park. With Martin Litton as river guide, filmmaker and photographer, photographer Eliot Porter, photographer Philip Hyde, writer Francois Leydet and a number of other Sierra Club board members and artists of various types, the trip promised to be creative. Martin Litton brought the group to the proposed dam sites in the Grand Canyon, to Vasey’s Paradise, to Redwall Cavern, through hair raising and often capsize causing rapids for the purpose of making a book that would be called Time and The River Flowing: Grand Canyon. The book that would be part of the campaign to stop the Grand Canyon from being dammed. David Brower remarked at the time:

The dams the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation plans to build in Marble Gorge and Bridge Canyon, within the Grand Canyon proper, would destroy not only the living river but also the unique life forms that through the ages have come to depend upon the river’s life. The major part of the canyon walls would still be there, but the pulsing heart of the place would be stopped. A chain of destructive forces would be begun in what by law was set apart as part of the National Park System, to be preserved unimpaired for all America’s future.

And needlessly. Looked at hard, these dams are nothing more than hydroelectric power devices to produce electricity and dollars from its sale to pay for projects that ought to be financed by less costly means. The dams would make no water available that is not available already. Indeed they would waste enough to supply a major city and impair the quality of the too little that is left: water already too saline is made more so by evaporation, to the peril of downstream users, especially of neighbors in Mexico. All this on a river that already has more dams than it has water to fill them.

Philip Hyde and David Brower also worked together on many other campaigns with the help of many other environmental activists. Philip Hyde made photographs for David Brower led campaigns for the Oregon and Washington Cascade Mountains, Kings Canyon, Redwood National Park, the Wind River Range, Navajo Tribal Parks, Alaska and many other smaller skirmishes. To read about one of Ardis and Philip Hyde’s travel adventures on behalf of David Brower and the Sierra Club see the blog post, “The Making Of ‘Rainbow Bridge From The Upstream Side.’” Future Blog Posts will share more stories and other points of interest of David Brower’s life and work in conservation…

The river trip through Glen Canyon on the Colorado River proved to be one of the most historically significant events that David Brower and Philip Hyde experienced together twice, once in 1962 and once in 1964 after the gates of Glen Canyon Dam closed and “Lake” Powell began to fill. To read Philip Hyde’s tribute to Glen Canyon see the blog post, “Glen Canyon Lament By Philip Hyde 1.”

References:

For Earth’s Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower by David Brower

Work in Progress by David Brower

Wikipedia article on David Brower

Wildness Within Website

The History of the Sierra Club 1892-1970 by Michael Cohen

Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature by Tom Turner

(Continued In Another Blog Post…)

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Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 9

January 12th, 2011

Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log: June 14-September 14, 1971 by Ardis Hyde

(Ardis, David and Philip Hyde in Their Camper. Continued from the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 8.”)

Part Nine: Layover at Reid Inlet, Glacier Bay National Monument

 

Rocky Promontory, Early Morning, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, 1971 by Philip Hyde.

Friday, July 2, 1971: We heard the patter of rain all night and it was still raining when we left the tent late, Philip at 8:00 am and David and I at 9:00 am. Philip and I built a fire in the cabin, which heated up fast. We sat at the tiny table by the window for breakfast. Then with all of our rain suits over warm undergarments we started out for Reid Glacier at the upper end of Reid Inlet, following the water’s edge.

The going was very slow and painful to rubber booted feet over loose rocks and through runoff streams. At each crossing, David wanted to step in the deepest water. We went back to our system of ferrying him across to prevent him doing this and getting his feet soaked. The rock weed showed up brilliant orange as the tide receded. Stranded icebergs made good photographic subjects. Philip had his 4X5 view camera, I carried his 35 mm. It took 2 ½ hours to from 11 am to 1:30 pm to reach the high domed point of land near the glacier where we stopped for lunch. We saw a National Geographic Society marker here with a note that Reid Glacier is under study. Diane and Dave Bohne’s names were in the register. Looking toward the mouth of Reid Inlet, we saw a small craft in Glacier Bay nearing the inlet. We guessed it to be a National Park Service patrol boat. They didn’t land or pay any attention to our waving or signals. After just entering Reid Inlet, they headed back out again.

After lunch we walked right up to the glacier face and above it on a snow slope. It rained off and on all day. The cloud ceiling was very low and we never heard a single airplane go over. We turned back for the long walk home. We had to eat dinner inside the cabin tonight, as the rain was too frequent to eat outside. After dinner David went right to bed. I walked around bird watching. I made my way out to the water where I could identify Harlequin ducks. On my way back the gulls swooped on my. It is an intimidating experience. They give a fierce war cry as they dive very close. Suddenly I was being sprayed with a thin water jet from behind. To my surprise it was a gull shooting the water stream at me and hitting a bullseye. While Philip wiped off the water, I spotted the perpetrating female gull on her nest not too far from where I had been. David had talked about this happening to him the first day we were here, but we thought he was making it up. The rain increased again and we retreated to bed. It rained off and on during the night.

Saturday, July 3, 1971: There was no rain in the morning. So we got up earlier. We had breakfast in the cabin and finished by 9 am. It was time for me to write in the travel log. David played nearby and Philip took off with his 4X5 view camera up the side hill of the inlet after the views. Before Philip set off, we all watched the Mariposa steam past Reid Inlet toward Johns Hopkins Inlet. The Mariposa looked unusually large out on the water from water level. Two hours and 40 minutes later we watched it return. By then we had climbed above the side wall above and the ship looked much smaller from there. Philip went on about an hour ahead of David and I, to photograph with his 4X5 view camera up on the first step I described in an earlier log entry. David and I followed after eating some lunch and brought Philip his. We found him up the slope from the first step, surrounded by budding willows. As we climbed a little fledging chick came tumbling down across our path, while the mother Fox Sparrow fluttered nearby. David and I napped and waited for Philip. As we all descended David flushed another Fox Sparrow on her nest of eggs. The weather and visibility were improving. There was no question that Guildersleeve, our pilot, would be able to come for us as planned. We had an early dinner, our last in the cabin, struck the tent and were all ready to leave.

Our pilot showed up right on time. We decided with the cloud ceiling as high as it was that we would take some extra flying time to see more of Glacier Bay. Anticipating to see where this might be, we were delayed by the need to make two trips to bring all our duffel to the plane. Philip made a photograph of David there before we left. We flew over Johns Hopkins Glacier, Lamplugh Glacier and a number of others.

As we arrived back at the lodge dock, the sun began to shine in this area as it had in some others on our flight. At first the sun was faint, but it came on stronger until we had a real sunset with colors and a show that continued for several hours. We made the long haul from the dock to the campground down the beach about ¾ mile. The space for a tent was in the bordering spruce forest on moss. The National Park Service provided a bear proof box hoisted by pulley into the trees. It was not only provided, but apparently needed as we saw fresh bear tracks on the road. There was a kitchen and fireplace in an open space just outside the forest and above the beach.

We raised the tent and put David to bed. We walked to the Inn and visited until 11 pm. I had to shade my eyes from the sunset glare pouring in the windows. Our conversation was with Robert Howe, Park Superintendent and Howard Freiss, the Hotel Manager. We met Jack Calvin with his party of 10 Sierra Club group on two boat trips in the area and to the South to Chichagoff Island, a proposed wilderness area. We went to bed around midnight. We realized we did not bring a flashlight on this part of the trip, but we never missed it.

Birds Seen At Reid Inlet:

Oyster Catcher
Canada Geese
Harlequin duck
White winged Scoter
Semipalmated Plover
Herring Gull – nesting
Herring Tern – young and adults
Golden Crowned Sparrow
Fox Sparrow – with fledgling and another on a nest of four eggs
Snow Bunting
Barn Swallows on nests
Black Guillemot
Yellow Warbler

Book: Wild Flowers of Alaska by Christine Heller

Flowers at Reid Inlet:

Dryas Drummondi
Roses
Soapberry
Russet shrub leafing out

Continued in the blog post, “Denali National Park, Alaska Travel Log 10.”

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New Releases Time & Prints Running Out

November 17th, 2010

All 2010 New Release Specials Will Increase To Regular Prices On January 1, 2011…

Below see also the story of the making of “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada High Country, California, 1970″…

Base Of Havasu Falls, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Arizona, 1968 by Philip Hyde. In 2010, we printed this image for the first time since the late 1960s. It took over a dozen hours of restoration work taking red-orange splotches out of the water all over the raw tango drum scan. The damage is caused by ongoing degradation of the early Kodak Ektachrome E-3 film that can only be halted or nearly halted by a very expensive particular method of deep freezing.

There is still time for Holiday shopping. However, the photographer authorized archival fine art digital prints by Carr Clifton and David Leland Hyde are also running out. Only two archival digital prints are left at the New Release Price of each of these photographs:

“Base Of Havasu Falls, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Arizona, 1968”

(See at left and full screen Click Here.)

“Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, California, 1970”

(See below and full screen Click Here.)

Four new releases for 2010 were lowered to special sale pricing on June 28, 2010, effective through the end of the year. For details, figures and number of prints available through the special see the blog post, “New Releases Now At Special Introductory Pricing.” After the New Releases go up to regular prices after five of each image sell or January 1, 2011, which ever comes first, the New Releases will go up every time 10 prints sell just like all of the other Special Edition archival fine art digital prints. For more on archival digital prints go to About Archival Digital Prints or go to PhilipHyde.com and About Archival Digital Prints under the INFO tab.

The Story Behind “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness”

This photograph was never printed or published before 2010. My father Philip Hyde made the photograph on August 15, 1970 on his 49th birthday with a Hasselblad 2 1/4″ camera. The Pioneer Basin High Sierra Pack Trip started on Sunday, August 9, my mother Ardis Hyde’s 45th birthday, just two weeks before my fifth birthday. My father earned his place on the trip by making photographs for the Sierra Club. Mom paid for her trip by working on the kitchen crew. In my mother’s words:

Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada High Country, California, 1970 by Philip Hyde. Never published or printed until 2010.

The Commissary woke up before 6:00 am. We served breakfast and then moved gear and cars over to the Pack Station where we left them. Philip got a ride to Mosquito Flat Campground while David and I waited for our horses. They put David on a child’s saddle with stirrups that his feet reached to and fit in. David’s horse was named “Friday”and mine was “Pugusee” meaning fish in Paiute…. We were 11 guest riders led into the high country by a cowgirl at each end of the string… We passed Philip on foot well up the climb to Morgan Pass. Flowers appeared everywhere along the path until we reached timberline. The Pass was at 12,643 feet elevation and well above any trees. On the way up we looked down into Little Lakes Valley, a long string of lakes, and up the head of that valley to Bear Creek Spire. Flanking the East wall of the glacial valley rose Mt. Morgan and Morgan Pass… Our route seemed to be skirting a contour around Mt. Starr and over Mono Pass. It was like a high altitude desert. Below the granite peaks the soil consisted of all course granite sand with no flowers visible except one small hidden garden of columbine among some boulders…. Scarcely any snow on the pass…steep decent to Golden Creek and into timber again. When we arrived at Pioneer Basin base camp, Philip had already made it before us, as we had stopped for lunch and on several other occasions. Mountaineer Norman Clyde, age 85, had arrived in camp also ahead of the pack train with other hiking guests and the staff to set up…

The travel log described the base camp, day hikes, day packs to satellite campsites, all among mountain meadows, streams, granite boulders and walls, wildflowers, waterfalls, me playing with sticks and rocks, in the streams and tarns and with the other children on the trip. On Saturday, August 15, Dad’s birthday, we had stayed in base camp with about eight other travelers. My mother continued:

After a leisurely breakfast and late start we decided to walk around the East side of Pioneer Basin. Philip took his Hasselblad only and planned to photograph until the late afternoon and then start back. Philip’s first pictures were flowers at a stream’s edge in a meadow where David picked a dead fish carcass out of the stream and cherished it a long while before throwing it back in. It didn’t seem to smell at first but his hands did. He said he would not do that again. We climbed a little and came to a beautiful little tarn with trees, reflections and a grassy edge. Everywhere wafted the scent of Lupin and housewort growing together. After Philip made a photograph with distant mountains in the background, David undressed except for his shirt and played in the water. Clouds began to obscure the sun and a breeze made it cool. David and Philip played a game of throwing rocks in the water. David would throw a rock in and then Philip would quickly without being seen echo David’s rock. David loved it of course and kept it going. We ate an early lunch and Philip left to climb to another larger lake above. David and I napped as the sun came back out and it got much warmer. Nice views with lakes or tarns in foreground and peaks heading the Recesses beyond. Philip said he heard and then saw quail above. I think that is what I saw at our little lunch lake too.

Dad made the photograph from the lower small tarn with the Lupin and housewort blooming,  and with the reflections and small trees. The stories behind the other Special Releases in blog posts to come…

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Lake Tenaya and Yosemite National Park

October 27th, 2010

Lake Tenaya, John Muir and Yosemite National Park Introduce Philip Hyde To Wilderness

All the merry dwellers of the trees and streams, and the myriad swarms of the air, called into life by the sunbeam of a summer morning, go home through death, wings folded perhaps in the last red rays of sunset of the day when they were first tried. Trees towering in the sky, braving storms, for centuries, flowers turning faces to the light for a single day or an hour, having enjoyed their share of life’s feast–all alike pass on and away under the law of death and love. Yet all are our brothers and they enjoy life as we do, share heaven’s blessings with us, die and are buried in hallowed ground, come with us out of eternity and return into eternity.  — John Muir

Early Morning, Lake Tenaya, Yosemite National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, 1975 by Philip Hyde.

(See the photograph full screen Click Here.)

Philip Hyde had a long association with Yosemite National Park, many years before meeting Ansel Adams and Virginia Best Adams of Best’s Studio in Yosemite Valley and a long association with Yosemite after meeting Ansel Adams. Philip Hyde first visited Yosemite National Park with the Boy Scouts on a 1938 Sierra Nevada high country backpack. He returned the following year with the Boy Scouts for another backpack, and nearly every year thereafter, most often with his father Leland Hyde and his brother David Lee Hyde. All the while he carried a soiled and worn copy of John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir. To read more on how John Muir’s writings inspired Philip Hyde see the blog post, “New Portfolio: Yosemite And Sierra Black and White Prints.”

Philip Hyde’s Early Black And White Landscape Photographs

Philip Hyde made a photograph in 1942 of “Shadow Creek, Minarets Wilderness, Sierra Nevada” on a backpack trip with his father and brother into the Minarets Wilderness, now the Ansel Adams Wilderness. This photograph and others made before World War II in the Sierra Nevada back country, Philip Hyde considered his first fine art quality wilderness photographs, though he did make superb photographs of some trackless wild areas of Sugar Bowl Ski Area in the winter of 1940. A few of these early 1940s photographs are on exhibition for the first time since before World War II, as part of Philip Hyde’s Mountain Landscapes at the Camera Obscura Gallery (post-War digital images from the show are on the Camera Obscura website), currently showing through November 13, 2010. For more details see also the blog post, “Vintage And Digital Prints Together In One Exhibition.”

As described in the blog post, “Photography’s Golden Era 6,” Philip Hyde first met Ansel Adams in the 1946 Summer Session of the California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute, after serving in the Army Air Corp. For Summer Break 1949, between photography school courses, Ansel Adams helped Ardis and Philip Hyde land the caretakers job at the Sierra Club Parson’s Lodge and McCauley Cabin in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park. Read more about the Hydes in Tuolumne Meadows on Philip Hyde’s Sierra Club History pages. Philip Hyde created some of his best black and white landscape photography during the Summer of 1949 and the next summer on a Sierra Club High Trip led by David Brower that started in the back country of Yosemite National Park, headed north through the Minarets Wilderness and circled back to Tuolumne Meadows. For many years Philip Hyde kept up his association and correspondence with Virginia and Ansel Adams, from time to time visiting them at their home in Carmel.

Philip Hyde Teaches At The Ansel Adams Workshops In Yosemite Valley

In 1968, Ansel Adams invited Philip Hyde to sit in on a workshop at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite Valley. Within the next few years, Philip Hyde began to teach the Ansel Adams June Workshop with Ansel Adams and eventually co-led the Color Workshop for years with William Garnett, Wally MacGalliard, Steve Crouch, David Cavagnaro and others. Philip Hyde also taught the Ansel Adams Landscape Workshop with John Sexton, Stu Levy, Joan Myers and others. The Sierra Photographic Center based in El Portal, California just outside the park, also hosted workshops in Yosemite National Park that Philip Hyde taught, as did the Yosemite Institute and the University of California Extension with such teachers as Philip Hyde, Wynn Bullock, Al Weber, Huntington Witherill, Pirkle Jones, Dave Bohn, Steve Crouch, Art Bacon, Bob Kolbrenner and others. For an introduction and list of the workshops Philip Hyde taught in other places besides Yosemite National Park, see the blog post, “Photography Workshops Taught By Philip Hyde.” In the mid 1970s Best’s Studio was renamed the Ansel Adams Gallery and Ansel’s son, Michael and his wife Jeanne Adams took over the business from his mother Virginia Best Adams. Virginia’s father, Harry Best, originally opened his “studio” to sell his paintings in a tent in 1902. The Ansel Adams Gallery Workshops continued and Philip Hyde with them into the 1980s when he made a number of his best color landscape photographs in Yosemite National Park, before or after teaching workshops, while still lugging around his 4X5 Baby Deardorff View Camera in his 60s.

Ardis And Philip Hyde’s Last Yosemite Sierra Nevada High Country Trip

Ardis and Philip Hyde made their last Sierra Nevada pack trip into the Yosemite High Country July 24 – August 3, 1991, six days before her 66th birthday and 12 days before his 70th birthday. They hiked 6.7 miles the first day from the Dog Lake Trailhead on the Vogelsang Trail to Vogelsang High Sierra Camp. Vogelsang offered “luxurious” tent deck cabins and a common building. Ardis Hyde wrote in her travel log, “Pack trains and numerous hikers going in both directions. The path is a groove but the going is easy and the altitude not noticeable at our slow pace.” They stayed at Vogelsang High Sierra Camp four nights and made side trips while Philip Hyde photographed. The flowers Ardis Hyde identified around Vogelsang were mountain pretty face, alpine hulsea, mountain jewel flower, soft arnica, Gordon’s ivesia, mountain wallflower and ball head sandwort. They also saw an adult Golden Eagle and an immature Golden Eagle. More details of this pack trip in future blog posts. The hike to Merced Lake Camp was 7.6 miles, where they also stayed four nights and then hit the trail at 6:30 am for the long “mostly up” 10 mile hike to Sunrise Camp where they camped for two nights before hiking out to Tuolumne Meadows to end their pack trip and a life-long exploration of the Sierra Nevada High Country and a love of mountain wilderness, particularly in Yosemite National Park.

Falling In Love With The Wilderness Of The Sierra Nevada

This life-long love affair with mountains and Yosemite National Park began for Philip Hyde in 1938 at age 16. The next year at age 17, for the second time he rode in the back of an open truck from San Francisco across California’s Great Central Valley with his Boy Scout friends, “through the foothills of the Sierra into the deep canyon of the Merced River,” as he described it in “Notes On A Life Of Photography” in “The Range of Light”:

This time we headed for Lake Tenaya over the old Tioga Road–that magnificent, unexcelled display road–narrow, twisty, bumpy, steep. We couldn’t go fast; the road’s low standard prevented it–so naturally we saw more of the country, some of the finest in the Sierra Nevada. At Tenaya we had the lake and the wonderful granite sand beach at the east end to ourselves. A camper could borrow one of the camp’s canoes, which I did one night, paddling alone out on the silent, dark lake. I remember sitting for long minutes, my head cocked back so I could see, entranced by the millions of pin-points of light–a city kid whose only views of the night sky had been through fog or haze and light-flared dense city air. That was my first brush with the immensity, silence and solitude of wilderness.

The next blog post will be number 100 for Landscape Photography Blogger. We will honor the occasion with the first part of “A Lament For Glen Canyon” by Philip Hyde, originally published in The Living Wilderness.

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Philip Hyde’s Tribute To John Muir

October 6th, 2010

Artist’s Share Vision: Philip Hyde’s Tribute To John Muir

Note: This article originally titled Artist’s Share Vision by Jane Braxton Little appeared in the Feather River Bulletin, Wednesday, May 5, 1993. Jane and Jon Little are long-time friends of the Hydes. Since this article, Jane Braxton Little started writing for the Sacramento Bee and magazines such as Audubon, American Forests, Scientific American, Nature Conservancy, Sierra, Native Peoples and many others. She is now a full-time freelance writer who travels world-wide on environmental stories. The Range of Light is out of print but readily available through used booksellers. See The Range of Light on Amazon.

Artist’s Share Vision by Jane Braxton Little

Philip Hyde’s Tribute to John Muir

Pollen, Shadows, Lake Tenaya, Yosemite National Park, Sierra Nevada, California, 1974 by Philip Hyde. Widely exhibited and published including in "The Range of Light" with quotes by John Muir.

(To see the photograph full-screen Click Here.)

If John Muir were alive today his best friend might be Philip Hyde. Both artists, they share a common vision of life and an awe of the Sierra Nevada.

Now, in The Range of Light, they share as partners the publication of a book. Hyde’s most recent volume of photographs, with selections from Muir’s writing, was intended more as a tribute to and appreciation of John Muir than a show of friendship, said the photographer.

“I came across Muir when I first went out into the Sierra as a kid. He put my thoughts as well as they could be put, and he helped me determine my life’s work,” Hyde said.

They never met, of course. Hyde was born in 1921 and Muir died in 1914. But from his childhood discovery of the pioneering environmentalist throughout his life as a photographer, Hyde nurtured the sense of kinship.

Although Muir is known as a geologist and a naturalist, Hyde thinks of him as an artist.

“He had the spirit of an artist. He was driven by experience. I’m not an intellectual and neither is Muir. In almost every word Muir is appealing to the sense and spirit of things,” Hyde said.

Like Muir, Hyde’s career began in the Sierra Nevada. His first backpacking trip was with a group of Boy Scouts to Yosemite. It was also his first trip with a camera, a Kodak Readyset 120 he borrowed from his sister, Hyde says in his “Notes On A Life Of Photography” in The Range of Light.

As he became one of the nation’s most prominent landscape photographers, Hyde’s explorations led him beyond the high Sierra to beauty spots throughout the West. But like Muir, he always found himself returning to the Sierra, their mutual spiritual home.

For The Range of Light, Hyde pored through Muir’s vast body of published work, searching for the best blend of words and photographs to portray the sense of the majesty of the Sierra Nevada they share.

“I worked hard on getting the appropriate photograph with the appropriate Muir quotation. That was the nicest part of the whole project—reading all of the Muir I could get and picking out the right pieces,” said Hyde.

The result is a magnificent, 102-page volume of Hyde’s black-and-white as well as color photographs, each one accompanied by a few evocative words from Muir. The combination delivers a personal, often private passion for the mountains Muir called “The Range of Light.”

Despite its crimson sunsets over Mono Lake and verdant green mornings at Lake Tenaya, the book is not without clouds. Like Muir a half-century before him, Hyde warns of a crisis threatening the Sierra.

“Our culture, our institutions, our managers have not been wise stewards of the Sierra’s resources—the air, water, soil, and the creatures and plants, especially trees, on whose health nearly all the rest of the resources depend. Our so-called civilization has plundered these resources to such an extent in the Sierra… that man may be the most ‘endangered species’ of all,” Hyde writes in a reflective personal essay in The Range of Light.

Although his photographs radiate the joy of natural beauty, he is not optimistic about the future.

“Protection of nature is no longer just a matter of preserving the wellsprings of inspiration; it may well become a matter of life or death for the species who fancies himself the master of nature, but has not yet learned to master himself and his own passions,” Hyde said.

Still, his artistic vision and Muir’s boundless enthusiasm for the Sierra have produced an inspiration for backpackers and arm-chair travelers alike.

Trying to translate wilderness is just a silly thing to do,” Hyde said. “But a lot of feelings associated with nature that are part of my experience were part of Muir’s experience. That bond makes some of these juxtapositions work. It’s a good intuitive fit. Of course, I had an advantage because he wasn’t around,” said Hyde.

For another well-written tribute to Philip Hyde read the blog post, “Celebrating Wilderness By Bill Neill.” For more on Philip Hyde’s process in making and selecting landscape photography of the Sierra Nevada see the blog post, “New Portfolio: Yosemite And Sierra Black And White Prints.” To read more on how Philip Hyde first visited and fell in love with Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada, read the blog post, “Lake Tenaya And Yosemite National Park.”

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Celebrating Wilderness By William Neill

August 26th, 2010

Celebrating Wilderness by William Neill

Landscape Photography Bloggers’ First Guest Post

Written by William Neill 4/1/06 For July 2006 Issue of Outdoor Photographer. Read more at OutdoorPhotographer.com and visit WilliamNeill.com or William Neill’s Photo Blog at WilliamNeill.com/blog/

Landscape Photography Blogger Note: Coincidentally Guy Tal posted a tribute to William Neill on his blog called, “Inspiration: William Neill’s Yosemite Volume One” the same week as this post. I am grateful to William Neill for my first guest post.

Celebrating Wilderness by William Neill

Sunset From Mt. Hoffman, Yosemite National Park, California, 2006 by William Neill.

On March 30, 2006, Philip Hyde passed away at the age of 84.  The community of photographers and nature lovers lost a true friend and pioneer. (See the June 2006 issue of Outdoor Photographer, A Voice for the Wild).  I count myself as being very blessed for having known him.

Many years before meeting Philip back in the early 1980s, I discovered his work in the Sierra Club’s famous “Exhibit-Format Series” of books.  His images opened my eyes, along with those of thousands of other photographers and wilderness enthusiasts, to the beautiful and endangered landscapes he had explored.  He helped us see the great potential use landscape photographs could have for environmental protection.  Philip’s images spoke to me quietly yet forcefully of wild nature’s value, and showed me the impact hard work, dedication and selflessness can have.

Philip’s sphere of influence has expanded outward far and wide, quietly and profoundly.  Hyde was the workhorse for the Sierra Club book series, providing images for nearly every battle of theirs in the 1960s and 1970s.  When David Brower, the director of the Club and creator of the book series, needed images to help preserve an endangered landscape, Philip and camera went to work.  Books in which his photographs are instrumental include The Last Redwoods, Slickrock, Island in Time: The Point Reyes Peninsula, Time and The River Flowing, Navajo Wildlands, The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Wildlands, and This Is Dinosaur: Echo Park Country and Its Magic Rivers.

I have little doubt that every published nature photographer of my generation has been inspired by Philip’s efforts.  The large number of photographers, professional or not, working today to use their imagery to help preserve wild places, both locally and on national issues, owe Philip a great debt.

When I looked at those Sierra Club books as a college student, my wildest dream was to use my images in such books and other forums to further the cause of conservation, and to make photographs for a living.  The success of the Sierra Club books not only gave a great boost to its own membership, but also showed publishers that such books had commercial value, thus spawning the publication of thousands of books modeled after them.  The resulting nature book industry allowed many photographers to develop careers, and brought to light many issues of preservation.  Even those not familiar with the full extent of Hyde’s accomplishments can trace their roots to his efforts.

Beyond his environmental contributions, Hyde has earned an honored place for his art.  His photographs have a quality of serene reality.  His choice of camera is a 4×5 for revealing the landscape in sharp detail.  The color is not amplified.  The light he preferred was understated, and he did not favor the “magic hour” that seduces most of us.  He has a disdain for the redundant sunset motif.  He chose Ektachrome film, over Kodachrome or Fujichrome, for its more neutral reproduction of nature’s colors.  In similar fashion, Philip’s compositions and use of lenses are simple and direct.  Rarely do you see a photograph where camera position or lens exaggerates any aspect of a landscape.

Commenting on his evolution from being a black and white photographer to predominantly using color, Philip wrote in his book The Range of Light, “Black-and-white lends itself to manipulation that can dramatize a subject.  Color tends to record what is seen, so it is no coincidence that I use color for that purpose.  I don’t feel nature needs to be dramatized: it is dramatic enough! …Color photographs that…rely too much on the shock value of color alone will not sustain interest.”

Philip’s approach, which seems at first to show the landscape in ordinary descriptive terms, is his attempt to make us realize nature’s profound beauty is always there for us to see, not just during a monumental performance of light or color.  There is selflessness to this approach.  In his images, his own importance recedes in the face of nature’s beauty and need for protection.  He once wrote to me, “There is no limit to what a man can do so long as he does not care who gets the credit.”

Many years ago, I hiked up Mt. Hoffman in Yosemite.  I walked slowly upward, alone in my thoughts. I carried all my 4×5 gear to the summit, planning to photograph the sunset and then hike down in the twilight.  At the top, the views of Yosemite’s wilderness stretch out all around.  There was virtually no sign of human life below.  The sunset light warmed the surrounding peaks, and the Sierra Nevada displayed why it is called The Range of Light!  The serenity I felt was powerful.

Thanks to far-sighted pioneers, this rare form of sanctuary exists for millions to enjoy.  The initial preservation of Yosemite by President Lincoln in 1864 and subsequent the formation of the National Park System, the inspiring words and energetic crusading of John Muir, the monumental photographs of Yosemite by Ansel Adams have all contributed to the cause of wilderness preservation.

At times like this, when a great person in our field or our life is lost, we might wonder who could ever replace them?  It is an important time to stop and remember the impact each one of us can have.  John Muir saw threats to the wildness of Yosemite, and fought to preserve it.  Ansel Adams felt deeply moved by the beauty of Yosemite and the Sierra that Muir helped preserve, and used his photographs to fight further for wilderness preservation.  Philip Hyde, learning from the example of Muir, Adams and David Brower, worked tirelessly to photograph threatened landscapes. Many photographers have followed Hyde’s example.  As a ripple expanding outward in a circle, more will follow those who have followed him.  We must all acknowledge our mentors, and I am proud to count Philip Hyde as one of mine.  We honor their legacy by following their example.  Let the circle be unbroken. — William Neill

I am interested primarily in what Emerson called “the integrity of natural objects.”  They express wholeness and individuality, and it is this sense of place that is the foundation of my work.  My life in photography has been taken up in exploring natural places for their beauty and uniqueness.  It has been a labor of love, and nature has provided me the perfect object. — Philip Hyde

William Neill’s Note:  The North American Nature Photography Association offers a grant in honor of Philip Hyde.  See http://www.nanpafoundation.org/hyde_grant.html for more info and for applications.

______________________

To sign up for newsletter updates, including info about his BetterPhoto.com online workshops, please see William Neill’s web page at WilliamNeill.com. For more about wilderness see the blog post, “Wallace Stegner: The Wilderness Idea.” For the story on how I learned more about my father’s work see the blog post, “Memories Of Finally Working With Dad.”

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New Releases Now At Special Introductory Pricing

June 28th, 2010

 

Big News!

For A Limited Time Four NEW RELEASES of Archival Fine Art Digital Prints Will Be at Special Introductory Prices:

1.  “Waiting For The Train, Oaxaca Train Station, Oaxaca, Mexico”
Never before published or exhibited. World Premier at Mountain Light Gallery. (See the photograph full page, CLICK HERE.)

Base Of Havasu Falls, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Grand Canyon, Arizona, 1968 by Philip Hyde.

Also, for more information about the process of bringing these photographs into the digital age, scanning, processing and making archival fine art digital prints see the blog post, “About Archival Fine Art Digital Prints,” and the blog post, “New Philip Hyde Releases At Mountain Light Gallery Exhibition.” For more information on the exhibition see the blog post, “Photography Of Philip Hyde At Mountain Light Gallery.”


2.  “Pioneer Basin, Fourth Recess, John Muir Wilderness, Sierra Nevada, California”
Never before published or exhibited. World Premier at Mountain Light Gallery. To read the story behind this photograph see the blog post, “New Releases Time & Prints Running Out.” (See the photograph full page, CLICK HERE.)


3.  “Base of Havasu Falls, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Grand Canyon, Arizona”
Widely published and exhibited but not for over 30 years. Contemporary Premier at Mountain Light Gallery. Added to website today. (See the photograph full page, CLICK HERE.)


4.  “Mt. Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascades, Oregon”
Published over 50 years ago but never exhibited. World Premier at Mountain Light Gallery. Added to website today. (See the photograph full page, CLICK HERE.)

Mt. Jefferson, Jefferson Wilderness Area, Oregon Cascade Mountains, Oregon, 1959 by Philip Hyde. Sent by David Brower to photograph this wilderness area for a potential campaign to establish a National Park. However, the idea of a National Park in the Oregon Cascades never gained significant support.

The special pricing will last until five (5) prints are sold of the image offered, or until the end of 2010, whichever comes first. Once five prints sell or 2010 ends, the prints will revert to the regular pricing.

For Print Acquisitions Please Go To Contact Page Or Order Prints Inside New Releases Portfolio and click on information at the bottom of the page.

 

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Ralph Waldo Emerson On Henry David Thoreau

June 22nd, 2010

Part Of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1862 Eulogy And Tribute To Henry David Thoreau

From Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson Edited by Stephen E. Whicher

“I make my pride in making my dinner cost little.”

Ardis and Philip Hyde in Front of the McCaulay Homestead Cabin in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, California, Summer 1949 by John Rogers, CSFA Classmate of Philip Hyde's. Ansel Adams helped Ardis and Philip Hyde land this job as summer caretakers of the Sierra Club Parson's Lodge. It was their first cabin in the wilderness but not their last. There were several more until finally eight years later, Ardis and Philip Hyde built their own home in wilderness more remote than Tuolumne Meadows. This became their lifetime "Walden." Besides John Muir, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were Philip Hyde's best loved literary heroes.

Henry David Thoreau, though he was graduated at Harvard College in 1837, declined to give up his large ambition of knowledge and action for any narrow craft or profession, aiming at a much more comprehensive calling, the art of living well.

Never idle or self-indulgent, he preferred, when he wanted money, earning it by some piece of manual labor agreeable to him, as building a boat or a fence, planting, grafting, surveying or other short work, to any long engagements.  With his hardy habits and few wants, his skill in wood-craft, and his powerful arithmetic, he was very competent to live in any part of the world. It would cost him less time to supply his wants than another.

Henry David Thoreau was a born protestant, and few lives contain so many renunciations. He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun. He chose, wisely no doubt for himself, to be the bachelor of thought and Nature. He had no talent for wealth, and knew how to be poor without the least hint of squalor or inelegance. He declined invitations to dinner-parties, because there each was in every one’s way, and he could not meet the individuals to any purpose. “They make their pride,” he said, “in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making my dinner cost little.”

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself.

He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself. In his travels, he used the railroad only to get over so much country as was unimportant to the present purpose, walking hundreds of miles, avoiding taverns, buying a lodging in farmers’ and fishermen’s houses, as cheaper, and more agreeable to him, and because there he could better find the men and the information he wanted.

Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts or grapes.

He was a speaker and actor of the truth, born such, and was ever running into dramatic situations from this cause. In any circumstances it interested all bystanders to know what part Henry David Thoreau would take, and what he would say; and he did not disappoint expectation, but used an original judgment on each emergency. In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted the advantages of that solitude, he abandoned it. In 1847, not approving some uses to which the public expenditure was applied, he refused to pay his town tax, and was put in jail. A friend paid the tax for him, and he was released. The like annoyance was threatened the next year. But as his friend paid the tax, notwithstanding his protest, I believe he ceased to resist. No opposition or ridicule had any weight with him. He coldly and fully stated his opinion without affecting to believe that it was the opinion of the company. It was of no consequence if every one present held the opposite opinion.

No truer American existed than Henry David Thoreau.

No truer American existed than Henry David Thoreau. His preference of his country and condition was genuine, and his aversation from English and European manners and tastes almost reached contempt. He listened impatiently to news or bonmots gleaned from London circles; and though he tried to be civil, these anecdotes fatigued him. The men were all imitating each other, and on a small mold. Why can they not live as far apart as possible, and each be a man by himself? What he sought was the most energetic nature; and he wished to go to Oregon, not to London. “In every part of Great Britain,” he wrote in his diary, “are discovered traces of the Romans, their funeral urns, their camps, their roads, their dwellings. But New England, at least, is not based on any Roman ruins. We have not to lay the foundation of our houses on the ashes of a former civilization.”

But idealist as he was, standing for abolition of slavery, abolition of tariffs, almost abolition of government, it is needless to say he found himself not only unrepresented in actual politics, but almost equally opposed to every class of reformers. If he brought you yesterday a new proposition, he would bring you today another not less revolutionary. A very industrious man, and setting, like all highly organized men, a high value on his time, he seemed the only man of leisure in town, always ready for any excursion that promised well, or for conversation prolonged into late hours.

His robust common sense, armed with stout hands, keen perceptions and strong will, cannot yet account for the superiority which shone in his simple and hidden life. I must add the cardinal fact, that there was an excellent wisdom in him, proper to a rare class of men, which showed him the material world as a means and symbol. This discovery, which sometimes yields to poets a certain casual and interrupted light, serving for the ornament of their writing, was in him an unsleeping insight; and whatever faults or obstructions of temperament might cloud it, he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.

Henry David Thoreau dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea. The river on whose banks he was born and died he knew from its springs to its confluence with the Merrimack. He had made summer and winter observations on it for many years, and at every hour of the day and night. Every fact which occurs in the bed, on the banks or in the air over it, the fish, and their spawning and nests, their manners, their food; the shad-flies which fill the air on a certain evening once a year, and which are snapped at by the fish so ravenously that many of these die of repletion; the conical heaps of small stones on the river shallows, the huge nests of small fish; the birds which frequent the stream, heron, duck, sheldrake, loon, osprey; the snake, muskrat, otter, woodchuck and fox, on the banks; the turtle, frog, hyla and cricket, which make the banks vocal—were all known to him.

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