Photos, Memories, and Lessons from the Black Hills

In May, I get to return to the Badlands and Black Hills to teach a photography workshop. I just had a cancellation on it, so there’s one space available. You can register here: Badlands and Black Hills Photo Workshop.

Shameless self promo is now over, so back to the essay. There’s a special place in my heart for the Badlands and Black Hills, because I briefly lived in Rapid City.

Those were the days. The only furniture that I owned was a TV, a TV stand, a phone to plug into the wall, and my Thermarest Ridgerest and a sleeping bag. I was broke from having hiked the Appalachian Trail the year before, and I was broke because I put any money I had that didn’t go to paying off student loans into buying climbing gear. I was the quintessential dirtbag climber. The climbing in the Black Hills was great. What money was leftover went into buying film and food. I should scan some of those old photos.

This next photo is one of the earliest that I have on digital of me in the Black Hills. I took this a couple of years after we moved to Grand Marais and was on a road trip that included a stop in the Black Hills. I decided to hike to the summit of Black Elk Peak. I shot this on a Nikon D200.

One of the things that I love about photography is its ability to spark memories. For example, when I see the following photo I remember the day was miserable and I spent most of it in the tent. At sunset, it looked like it might clear. It did. I had to race to get to a spot to photograph one of the most dynamic sunsets that I’ve seen in my life. I ended up not making it to where I wanted to be, but I got the shot and was taught a lesson.

The lesson was get to sunrise and sunset early because you want to be where you want to be when the action starts.

Since that time, I’ve returned to the Black Hills often. It’s like coming home to me. It provides a place for me to reflect on life because there’s something about the Black Hills that feels calming and peaceful.

We must all have those places that feel special to you. They are usually our vacation destinations. For me even though I lived in Rapid, I didn’t have a care in the world. Life at that time felt like a climber’s vacation.

I have a hypothesis on why vacation locations feel special to us. It's because when we vacation somewhere, we have a personal relationship with the area. This relationship is different that a relationship to our hometowns.

A vacation destination is a break from workaday life, and because of the contrast with workaday life, the experience with the location becomes deeper than an experience with our hometowns. It's the same as Aldo Leopold described when describing the value of wilderness experiences. He wrote that a wilderness experience’s value increases by how much it differs from workaday life. And vacations are different. If we don’t have a care in the world when on vacation. It’s unlike when home and the world weighs down our shoulders.

And photos help reinforce that feeling because we take photos at the best times — when we’re happy, or when practicing landscape photography it’s when the conditions are good for landscape photography.

In those places as I’ve watched them change over the years, one of the lessons that I’ve learned is that nothing is static — even our memories. It’s easier to see this when you only visit a destination every few years. You notice all the small changes right away, and having photos can help us remember what it was like and see how things have changed. As we get older, it seems we get grumpier about the changes.

For example, I remember when Mount Rushmore didn’t have the parking infrastructure it does now, and I remember the promise of being able to park for free even after they built the lot. The parking lot near the Sculptor's Studio was open for free parking until 9/11. Then you had to use a free lot around the corner on the way to the climbing area behind Rushmore. Then they closed that for government use. Now, you pay to visit. I have photos on film from a similar vantage point showing how it used to be.

But we can also make new photos that are beautiful of the same areas even though they have changed. And we can change our minds. The new parking lot at Rushmore accommodates the summer traffic they get and allows more people to see this sculpture. And the increased security protects the area. And closing the parking lot on the road kept cars from parking all over the place in an attempt to avoid the parking fee, which also funds Mount Rushmore’s operations. It was good that they built it.

Changing our grumpy minds can be like shedding our winter fur in the spring.

But even our memories change, so maybe what we remember or what we remember from how our photos look have distorted how we felt at the time.

On a workshop, I remember staying out late to get these night shots. We had already been up since 4am the previous morning.

Then after we were done, I asked who wanted to get up for sunrise. A few in the group did. It doesn’t seem so bad now. I only vaguely remember being tired.

There must be a lesson in that too.

The lesson is that people get super powers when on workshops. They can get up early, stay out late, and still go home with great photos. Or maybe the lesson should be let them sleep in after a night photography session.

I feel like I haven’t learned which lesson is the right one on this, yet.

Even if we aren’t learning lessons or making memories, photography can bring you to amazing places at the right time for magic to happen. The morning light and interesting colors from this scene were something that I wouldn’t have seen without photography waking me up in the early morning after a late night.

And I’d guess that few have watched a sunrise from this spot. The only people that I’ve ever seen there at sunrise were people on my workshops. That’s magic only a special location can cast.

Anyway, I love the Black Hills. It feels like magic there. I’ve learned lessons, made memories and all of that has been enhanced by having these photos that I can look back on.

Until next time

That’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll see you again in two weeks, but before I go here’s one last photo from the Black Hills.