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Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/7.1, 30sec, ISO 1000 From us to you, good reader, a New Year wish. The place to be on this recent New Year's Eve, for us and an assortment of friends anyway, was a far off slice of beach on the Sea of Cortés down in ol' Mexico. And we couldn't stop thinking of you. It's a place that's good for kids, clean and empty, and as relaxing or as adventurous as . . .
Place a wager for best description of a desert rain on chapter twelve of Barbara Kingsolver's book The Bean Trees and there's a good chance you'd win. She crescendos over the course of some 800 words just to build up to her description of the subtle and therefore easily dismissed scent that rises in the air before a desert summer rain. It's a remarkable and realistic chapter. So why would I bother writing about it?
The old man you see in this photo arose on a typical sultry Southern summer morning in 2009, put on the coffee pot and waited for it to brew a kettleful in the kitchen of his small-town Louisiana home while he worked up a plan for his day. The house is modest yet so full of joy; for evidence, there's a rather old and yellowing crayon drawing taped to his cabinets that was made by one of his granddaughters who's now 27 and working on her Ph.D. The picture is of two figures in a rowboat with fishing poles. The little girl had written across the bottom of her drawing, "PeePaw is special because he takes me fishing." Once the coffee was brewed, he picked up the pot, filled a mug, left it black and walked it into a dark bedroom in the back of the house . . .
Somewhere along the road to progress, civilized automotive manufacturers decided the "gas light" was a good thing to add to the dashboard. In most cases when that little red orb illuminates, you're supposed to feel some gratitude but you don't, do you? It's really like getting your final warning. Under the best of situations running out of gas is a downright drag, so a little hey-bro-put-somthing-in-the-tank ought to be a nice reminder; instead it's more of a bummer, the jig is up. Well. As far as running out of gas is concerned, this was not the best of situations . . .
After a moment of hushed awe, may the words of many Jeep addicts, critics, connoisseurs, and paramours fall upon your ears with a smile: this thing is downright sexy. For nearly 10 years now, American Expedition Vehicles (AEV), an inventive if not inspiringly diabolical company in based in Montana, has been producing a much-admired franken Jeep they call the Brute. As simple as I can state it, the Brute is a not-so ordinary converted Jeep with a lift, larger tires and modified body with a pickup truck bed behind the two-seater cab. The awesome of a Jeep packaged up with the utility of a truck. AEV also offers a 470-hp (not a typo) Hemi engine conversion making this beast, in the words of the company's president and founder, Dave Harriton, "more AEV than it is Jeep." The problem, aside from the colossal ding to your Swiss bank account, is . . . Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/4.5, 1/100, ISO 100 She found the tree with the right branch, but it took some time to find. As you can see, good, strong branches that are close enough to the ground yet far enough from the tree are few. But that's exactly what you need for a proper rope swing. My wife found the one that worked. I lassoed the branch, tied off the webbing, tied a big figure eight on a bight . . .
Last school year, we hosted and became family with a 16-year old girl from Ukraine who wanted nothing more than to see Grand Canyon. I've written about her a few times already, but because this website increasingly gets more readers every day (and we're grateful for it), I feel like I need to preface this properly. Her name is Ania and she lived with us for almost a year (more). Today, Ania attends a university in Lithuania studying English and business. During her spring semester here, she took a guitar class and a photography class. Truthfully, she taught me a lot about photography. And I taught tried to teach her how to rock a C7 chord, but she resisted trimming her fingernails. Photography class started with the history of image making, so it was weeks before she came home with a pinhole camera and a project to shoot. When the class moved on to 35mm cameras . . .
You need some kind of contraption to get you and the munchkins to the crag. To the break. To the trailhead. To the put-in. Or you just need a machine to get you down a dirt road that'll get you to a sweet spot on the coast of Baja. But vehicles reach into your life far beyond "a thing to get me from A to B." They become an extension of your personality, for better or worse, and I like to think of it as a delicate coalescence of superfluous love affair and absolute necessity. I could be wrong. In the quest for the ultimate adventure vehicle, family or no family, love at first sight is rare. Maybe not impossible, but certainly rare. When we bought this 2005 Nissan Frontier Crew Cab, we also had a 2002 bright red Jeep. So I wasn't sure, really, how I'd get along with this new truck. But we drove it home and went about the business of, oh, slowly tweaking some things to make it suitable for our style of travel while adhering to the old wisdom: "Pay no attention to anything not nailed down."
I'm 35 years old and I've never owned an axe until June of this year. Here's why. Last September, my dad and I road tripped to Moab, Utah and once we were there, he decided he needed to get a new axe to dedicate to his Land Rover. For better or worse, we're kind of like this in our family: a set of tools goes in the garage, another set goes in the truck. It's a concept that will forever evade our eye-rolling wives.
It's not too frequent that I take a fellas-only trip, and that's either a bummer or something my doctor would applaud. For instance, three days of living on hotdogs, cheeze puffs, and mediocre-at-best canned light beer (vented wide mouth!) doesn't do a body good. I'm not letting out any deep secrets about trips with the boys. That's the menu - likely all across the land, give or take an ingredient. Everyone knows it's an unusual dude who cooks in favor of nutritional value, balance, and class when there are no lovely blondes, brunettes, or red heads nearby to impress.
Anyone who's pulled off a long term camping road trip with the family understands that it's not always high on stoke and low on tantrums. Thankfully, the most thrilling parts of a trip actually come decidedly as the answer to a problem. Believing we had more choices and time than possible, last summer in Baja we tinkered around far too long one day before looking for a beach to camp on. That's kind of typical in the Stephens Family, which is probably why our friends get headaches when we invite them on a trip with us. A few days before, a pair of surfers grabbed us by the shoulders and peered square into our eyes and declared "You like fish tacos, bra? Let me tell you where the best fish tacos in Baja are . . ." Not a week goes by that I don't get an email from someone asking about photography. Shamefully, it's a difficult task to coach people on photo tips with the written word as my only tool. It's even more awkward when I'm asked, "What kind of camera do you have?" because it feels like that's someone's way of digging to the depths to find the treasure of nabbing some great photos. And what I end up doing is saying something like, "I shoot with a Canon 5D, not the Mark II, but an obsolete version that few would be willing to accept for free. But here's what really helps me . . ." and they get some version of the following. The web isn't short of photo tips, so why should I bother? Because I feel that it's only polite to answer the questions. And I didn't invent the following tricks, someone taught them to me. Learning together is what this website is all about. So without any more fuss, these are three photo tips out of like 5,000 that I think are pretty helpful when it comes to snapping shots of the kids outside.
Instructions inside pit toilet at Spider Rock Campground, Canyon de Chelly. I earned 300 points during my stay. I'm hoping to earn more points next time so I can get a slinky. The inside of this pit toilet had more, too. One sign probes your soul with the proverb, "How you treat the toilet is how we know what you think of yourself in general." And another note taped to the wall reads like a poem, and I'm especially thankful for the title: Untitled You don't get to experience gems like this by staying at home. Thanks for the laughs, Spider Rock Campground: website
You might think that the major difficulties in undertaking a weekend adventure travel trip with the family have to do with:
Put that in your reality TV pipe and smoke it. Then again, sheez, if it sounds so horrendous, why do it at all? There's an explanation somewhere. I assume I'll find it one day.
Look, I know you don't want to pony up 80 bucks for a little tripod, but let me explain. These days it's increasingly difficult to sort out when you're just paying for panache or scoring something that actually solves a problem. I've been around the block with small backpack-worthy tripods. I tried in vain to make work not one, not two, but three different $10 mini-tripods over the years. Guess what? They all drove me nuts. Should I say more? Is it all that surprising that low-priced mediocre gear turned out to be a disappointment? Doubtful. I kept trying, though. Ten bucks here, ten bucks there, all the while claiming, "All I want is a little tripod to take the occasional self portrait while we're on a hike or something." Save yourself the grief, take a ride on my experience, and just get a Joby Gorillapod. I know, it looks like a silly gimmick, but it's far from it.
There's no lingerie here because I happen to believe that many of the offerings in outdoor clothing have a more sophisticated way of suggesting the woman in your life is beautiful and irresistible. Read on, read on.
So I'm ready to take the campfire experience to the next level: playing guitar and singing songs. You know why? Because a guy with a guitar and a campfire is always the coolest guy in the world. Here's the list I'm thinking about. Tell me, which ones am I forgetting? Which ones do you disagree with?
What I love most about gear and equipment is not the gear and equipment - I love the gear and equipment that has some style and that lasts a long time. I'm not much of a sucker for the latest thing (That's you, Vibram Five Fingers). I'm a sucker for time tested stuff that's reliable, trustworthy. I'm at that age in which I realize I'm quite finished with buying things based on looks and price because I'm tired of being disappointed in my money spent - and, if I must say it, I'd like to feel like I have a sense of class and style. Form follows function right to the winner's circle. Example: while you'll still hear lines in songs about 1968 Mustangs, in 40 years we will likely never hear another peep about the Chevrolet Chevette except in a punch line. This is why I wholly approve of Art of Manliness' Holiday Gift Guide. They say, "We try to hunt down and share the kind of products an Art of Manliness Man would want to find under the Christmas tree: manly, useful, and classic. The sort of stuff you’d find in Grandpa’s house." So, I've picked out my top 5 from the Art of Manliness list. What do you think?
What's more cliché than a weekend at Grand Canyon? That's a trick question. I think I can boil down Grand Canyon visitors to two types: those who say, "Wow" and those who say, "What's the big deal? It's just hole in the ground." Wait! Hold your slimy, rotten tomatoes for a more opportune target than your computer monitor. But yeah, I totally agree. Check out this gallery of photos from the Grand Canyon.
Here's to good times, a full life, happy families, and especially you. Thanks for reading this blog.{jcomments off} |
