Mountain Light

NOVEMBER 2002 - In a sense, the tragic deaths of wildlife photographers Galen Rowell and his wife Barbara while returning home from a circumnavigation of the Bering Sea on 11th August this year, will mean nothing to most readers here or in India. The Rowells were not exactly household names and yet when you begin to consider the quality of the work this wonderfully talented couple produced from our part of the world, you will understand that their deaths are most untimely and senseless. The Rowells were killed alongside two other friends when their small, privately owned plane came down just a few minutes before they were to touch down in Bishop, California where the Rowells lived. Galen was 62 and Barbara 54 but they had already compiled a very impressive portfolio of some of the most stunning wilderness photography and many exciting, thought provoking books and articles.

Galen born to a college professor and a concert cellist, was in the thick of wilderness long before he was walking. By the age of ten, he was climbing mountains like a goat and by the time his plane came down, he had completed more than 40 expeditions on all seven continents and to both the poles. He had produced 18 books of superb quality, in terms of the writings and stunning photography; both were the hallmark of Galen’s creative genius. He had, in the process of close encounters with death and sheer audacity of taking on nature at its mightiest, exemplified his special brand of participatory wilderness photography in which the photographer transcends being an observer with a camera to become an active participant in the image being photographed.

Galen’s emotional connection to the subjects was evident even in his early work of mountain climbing photographs that drew public attention to his enormous talent. At the age of 16, he had already made his first roped climbs in Yosemite Valley and over the next 15 years, he logged more than a hundred first ascents of new routes in this valley and elsewhere in the High Sierra backcountry that he loved so much. By the time he was 22, he had already become a full-time photographer and within a year, he did his first major assignment, a cover story for National Geographic. The magazine, a showcase for only the world’s finest photographers and adventure writers had already spotted the gifted young man from California. Over the years, he continued to be featured in this magazine. His landscape imagery was evocative and singularly mesmerizing and he once described his work as ‘a continuing pursuit in which the art becomes the adventure and vice–versa. In a career studded with awards and accolades, he received the coveted Ansel Adams Award for his contributions to the art of wilderness photography and in 1992, a National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Grant to photograph the Antarctica. With the mobility that came to him so easily – he was an accomplished mountain climber from the 35 mm format he used so effectively, he turned his active participation into a hidden fourth dimension that made his work come alive. Those of you who have seen, to name just one picture from the 350,000 images that he produced, of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet in his book ‘Throne Room of the Mountain Gods’, will understand what Galen’s work was really like. The picture taken in the late afternoon captures in eerie splendour the sunbathed city of Lhasa glowing like a pearl in the slanting light while rising literally from the center of the royal palace of the Dalai Lama,a rainbow of stunning hues climbs up serenely into the Tibetan sky. If you didn’t know Galen Rowell, you would think this was a manufactured photograph. The mystic quality of Lhasa flows through this stunning picture and words cannot describe the quality of this work. Galen who was a few miles away returning from a trip saw the light caressing the city and the beginnings of a rainbow and knew instinctively that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. To get the right perspective, he ran like a man possessed till he was in just the perfect position to capture this heavenly moment. It is work of sheer class.

Galen produced over 16 large format books of photos and text. ‘Galen Rowell’s Vision, North America, Inner Game, The Vertical World of Yosemite, Many People Come Looking, Looking, Mountain Light (a 1986 best-seller now in its tenth reproduction), The Art of Adventure, Poles Apart, Mountains of the Middle Kingdom, High and Wild --- the titles go on, just as evocative as the pictures and narratives that make them irresistible. In the last 20 years, Galen made over 35 journeys to the mountains of Nepal, India, Pakistan, China, Tibet, Africa, Alaska, Canada, Siberia, New Zealand, Norway and Patagonia. Besides participating on major expeditions to Mount Everest, K2 and Gasherbrum II he made the first one-day ascents of Mount McKinley in Alaska and Mount Kilmanjaro in Africa as well as first ascents of the Himalayan peaks Cholatse and the Great Trango Tower. If that is not enough for ten lifetimes, he made the highest complete ascent and descent on skis of Mustagh Ata (24,757 feet) as well as a 258-mile winter traverse of the Karakoram-Himalayan range!! This was no ordinary man. During the Zia years when the Saichen glacier war exploded, Galen and Barbara were in Pakistan and flew throughout the area with the army producing a memorable story for National Geographic that exemplifies their combined talent so beautifully. Whenever he was in Pakistan, he was always in touch with Pervez Ahmed or Patty to most of us, the gifted and shy mountain landscape photographer whose own work has the same kind of quality and appeal that his mentor so refreshingly created each time he picked up a camera. Patty who has climbed and photographed with Galen and the famous Austrian Messner, was the one who broke the news about the death of Galen and his wife.

Barbara who met Galen in 1981 fell in love with him inside of a week and the two married within a few months. A gifted writer, climber and photographer in her own right, she directed her energy initially into Galen’s work before striking out in search of her own passion for flying. How ironic that this very passion was to bring her life to such an unexpected and sad end. She appeared to have everything. A famous husband, a successful and exciting business, great friends in so many lands and the opportunity to travel the world and photograph vanishing civilizations and cultures, but it was flying that drew her like a moth to a flame. She learnt to fly and her book that releases this fall, Flying South is the hair-raising, reflective and ultimately inspiring story of her trip of a lifetime, a 25,000-mile, 57-leg journey through Latin America. The book with 100 stunning photographs by the couple is the story of a woman who finds herself through flight. Her journey inspires us all to go after the experiences we long for and to live the lives we dream of but never attempt to realize. ‘When I’m in the air on a clear day, I don’t want it to end,’ so goes the poem and perhaps it was not such a clear day on August 11 when that small plane with such a precious cargo, came down forever. The two great modern day adventurers who had survived hundreds of scares and near misses, didn’t make it this one time but their work endures and lives. That’s not a bad epitaph.