241) The Island

Will's grandfather has a lot of property in rural Wisconsin, which includes an island. When we were in high school we used to go up there drive around a John Deere Gator or VW Thing, go fishing, shoot cans or old car parts, and then go camping on the island. It was a really great place to explore and have fun. The land has it all, lake front, fields, marsh, woods, etc.



I hadn't been up there for years, and just found out that Will's grandfather is trying to sell the land. So Will has been spending some time up there recently, and since I just got back to WI, we decided to head out there (before I head out of WI again).





So a couple of us headed out there on Labor Day weekend, and had a really great time. It was nice to be back up there, especially with the knowledge that I might not be able to get up there many or any more times. Kind of luckily, I left all my camping equipment in CO, so I had to sleep on the ground, which left me cold and uncomfortable enough to wake up before the sun rose. This was lucky because it was a beautiful sunrise and I got to take some pictures and just enjoy the scene.

240) Evergreen

These are some shots from around the house I was living at in Evergreen.

239) Sand Dunes Film

Shots from a color film roll (Agfa Vista 100) with my Contax G1. I took about 3 rolls of black and white film, but it is harder than one might think (and more expensive) to get b+w film processed these days.

238) Silhouettes Project

One of the skill tracts at the camp was fine arts. I co-taught fine arts the last week of camp, and came up with some photography projects, my favorite project being silhouettes.

237) The Great Sand Dunes

I was debating on how much to say about this place. The main reason being I was there on a weekend with Evan, and the main visitor center had maybe 20 cars in the parking lot, and we only saw one tent while we were out there (not including the camp ground). I didn't and don't want to spread the word about the place and be part of the cause in making it into another over populated park. But then I came to the conclusion that only a handful of people read this blog, and they would probably have heard about it from me anyways, so I will just go ahead and say what I want to about it on here.






Great Sand Dunes National Park has become my favorite place, maybe in the world. For starters we got in for free on a Friday, and didn't even have to pay for a permit to camp on the dunes. The only trace of people we saw while on the dunes was one tent in the distance, but no people. Tracks get swept away by the wind in a matter of hours, and in many places there is no sign of life at all.





It was hard to imagine this place actually existed, and in our country, no less. The dunes seem like they fit more into a novel or movie than real life. Everything about the dunes is like that; the way the wind blows to a deafening roar coating everything we had with sand and almost knocking us down to the absolute silence of the place. The way the light reflects off the sand in the very early morning and just before the sun goes down looks more like special effects from a movie than anything real. The dunes themselves seem larger than life, they instill a sense of awe as you approach. And the night sky was unlike anything I had ever seen before with raw beauty.





Raw beauty is probably the best way I can describe this park. It seems like life is stripped down to it's most basic here. You have wind shaping the land in a very obvious sense. And then you have heat and cold playing against each other in the day and night. It seems like there is no protection from any of these elements when you are there. I think the fact that you cannot escape this environment helps you appreciate what it really is all the more.