Gold Butte Backcountry: Devil's Throat

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This past May, I was honored to join a newly-formed band as their lead singer and lyricist. Quiet Giants have now played 4 shows as of last night: in a backyard for a bunch of friends, in a living room for a bunch of strangers, in a coffee shop graced by an array of talented musicians and staunchly-loyal fans, and in a basement restaurant/bar on an actual stage in a town 2 hours from home.

Last night's audience got a kick out of the name of our newest completed song, "Devil's Throat," but what they didn't know was that I wrote the lyrics by a campfire after having visited a giant sinkhole called Devil's Throat deep in the Gold Butte Wilderness area while on a photo excursion with my father in the Mojave Desert. Basically, it's a song about an awesome road trip with my Pops.

Thinking about this caused me to realize I still hadn't gotten around to the daunting task of posting the images from the trip to this particular blog, so I decided to get the ball rolling...

Devil's Throat site map

It was probably formed from underground Lake Mead water and is approx. 90'w x 80'd - and it's still growing. They had to re-fence around part of the original fence that started falling in, and somehow I let Dad convince me to hop said fence for a closer shot. Oh, I held on. You bet I held on.

Cloudscapes II: Higher Ground

On New Year's Day, 2009, I camped with some friends at the Pendola Hot Springs in Los Padres National Forest, just NE of Santa Barbara. After half of the group left the next morning, the rest of us headed back up the mountain for cell phone reception to see if we could stay an extra day... and this is what greeted us! The last 2 images are actually from the next day when we reached the same peak on our way home.

I can't begin to express the significance of this trip, both at the time it occurred and the several months since. I'm just grateful for the ability and opportunity to capture a visual reminder of such a pivotal time in my life.

Cloudscapes I: Beware the Storm

On December 26th, 2008, I hesitantly opted for a solo photo excursion to the Lake Mead Recreation Area about an hour or so East of Las Vegas, rather than join in a group over-nighter in Death Valley with some of my family. The previous few months back in my home of Santa Barbara had been particularly tumultuous and exhausting, and it had occurred to me that perhaps it could be beneficial to revisit some cobweb-covered tendencies and habits - namely, the tendency to get in the car by myself without much more than a direction in mind and the habit of keeping multiple film cameras within reach...

So I turned left at the fork and chased the barometric trouble brewing in the distance. Little did I know how symbolic and comforting these 2 days and the resulting images would become.