On Valentine’s Day weekend Sisy and I went to Portland for a long needed get away. We love hiking and asked our waiter at Stanford’s for a good local hike. He recommended Eagle Creek. We debated for the rest of the evening whether the 45 minute drive there and back out Highway 84 was worth the effort. We love Portland and theirs lots to see without having add another hour and a half of driving to our weekend. The next morning over sweet potato quinoa cakes and fruit smoothies at Whole Foods on Burnside, we decided to go for it. So with espresso and mocha in to go cups, we braved the not so harrowing drive from downtown Portland to Bonneville Dam on I-84 East.

I can’t recommend this hike enough. The views are spectacular, the sense of adventure is high with a rocky cliff face trails, bridges spanning hundred’s of feet over gorges and a tunnel behind the final of 4 + waterfalls on this 6 mile (one-way) trail. I’m working with a book called “How to be an Explorer of the World” and one of the activities is to photograph faces found in the world. Not portraits of people but faces found in objects and surfaces, like staring at clouds. So this is the intention with which I approached photographing our explorations. In the process, I came to realize that I have begun the process of creating a new body of work that I am calling “Beautiful and Wounded Creatures”. Here is a preview of the first studies for this series, and a few waterfall photos just because.

Skull Rock

Ao

Turtles All the Way Down

Gui Shu

Punchbowl Falls

Titan's Eye

Punchbowl Falls II

Pan Gu