The Next Step In My Evolution
A bear jam in Yellowstone National Park with several of my favorite photographers and park rangers.
I don’t do this because I want to. I do this because I have to. To quiet my mind.
My story is a classic story of evolution and rebirth. In case you missed it, back in 2009 my wife and I went through something that completely rocked our world and changed our lives forever. If you want to read the full story, you can read more about it here. Those events shattered me, and eventually completely transformed who I was. I also documented my transformation in a separate post which you can read here.
That transformation didn’t end there and continues today. Looking back on it, I previously wrote that I could see three different blocks of my life, I can now clearly see that I have since added a fourth.
My rebirth was primarily focused around my discovery of nature and was driven by our continued exploration of the world around us and our search for adventure. Overlanding in our Jeep and our search for discovery and wildlife is what literally drove us. So much so that in August of 2022 we sold our house in Maine, bought an RV, and headed our for a life of full-time travel. This continues today, and as we speak I am currently writing this from inside our RV just outside of Key West Florida, a place that is truly special to us.
However, some things have continued to change and evolve. At that time my passion was more focused on my Jeep and Overland travel and exploration. A part of me is still drawn to these passions, but I have found something that completely overshadows it; Wildlife and Photography.
Even before we left, my wife and I had a strong interest in Wildlife. From our home in Maine, we would often head out to the North Maine Woods in search of Moose, Bears, Loons, or other Wildlife. One day my wife had said that she had an interest in picking up photography in order to document our travels and in particular capture our experiences with Wildlife. That Christmas I bought her a Sony A6400, Tamron 100-300 zoom lens, and tripod. This is where it all started.
But interestingly enough, my wife didn’t seem to pick it up, and would often just want to experience the moment when we came across wildlife. I was the one who started picking up the camera, and I didn’t know it then, but this would mark one of the next key inflection points in my life. I enjoyed photography but was mostly driven to pick up the camera when we were around wildlife.
A good example is the wild horses of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Exploring the island, hunting for the horses, in search of the adrenaline high when you come across some. It was intoxicating.
One pivotal moment I remember occurred in Great Smokey Mountian National Park when we were in Cherokee North Carolina. I had been struggling mentally and emotionally. We had experienced some issues with the selling of our house and had just gone home to resolve them. I wasn’t in a good place.
One night we decided to go into the park for the first time to see what we could find. We stumbled on a bunch of cars pulled off on the side of the road, with a couple of park rangers. This was before we even knew what an animal jam was.
The people were watching a small herd of Elk in the grass to one side of the road, so I pulled out my camera and we joined them. A few minutes later a monster bull elk walked out of the woods and joined the herd. He was immense, a true beauty to behold. He was stunning. After a short while with them, I had a feeling that they wanted to cross the road, so I left the throng of people and positioned myself on the other side. Sure enough, a few minutes later the bull slowly crossed the road and stood not too far from me. It was intimidating, scary, and truthfully exhilarating.
A beautiful bull elk in Great Smoky Mountain National Park
It was the first time in a quite a while that I had a true smile plastered on my face. On the way back to our campsite, I told my wife that I was so thankful for the experience. For the experience itself, but also it reminded me the reason we were doing this in the first place. For me. nature, and even more so wildlife, has become medicine. It is healing. It’s an escape, one of the few times that I am able to get out of my head. I was completely hooked.
That quest for the next wildlife experience would become a common theme as we continued on with our travels. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2023 that it fully came to a head. That’s when we arrived at Yellowstone National Park and everything changed.
Yellowstone is like nothing that I had ever experienced before, it is truly a special place. One of the first things that hits you when you enter the park is its size. At 2,219,789 acres, it is larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware. It is truly immense. Most of the park has no cell signal.
The other special aspect is the wildlife. Where else can you see fields of thousands of buffalo, roaming as far as your eye can see? Herds of Pronghorn who look like they would fit better in the plains of Africa. The diversity is incredible, but what makes it truly special are the bears and the wolves, especially the Grizzlies. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is home to close to 1,000 Grizzlies. It is one of the highest concentrations of grizzlies in the lower 48. One of the other aspects that make them so unique, is the concept of roadside bears.
Both Black and Grizzly boars will often kill cubs as it will put the mother back into heat and they can then mate. Bears are intelligent animals. Over time, bear mothers learned that boars don’t like people, so they would often keep their cubs close to the roads, closer to the crowds of people as a form of protection. That is when the roadside bear was born.
Often when driving through the park you will come upon a group of vehicles parked and or driving slowly through an area. These are bear (or other animal jams). As you can imagine, bears in close proximity to the road draw a crowd. Even with 2.2M acres, many of them remote with no access by road, you have a good chance on any day to see a bear. Park Rangers and Animal Management know this as well and will patrol the park in search of bear and animal jams in order to protect both the animals, and the visitors. The rangers ensure that we keep a safe distance, but also often allow you to stay quite close to the bears, while keeping a close eye on all parties.
There is nothing like being in the presence of these immense animals and having them look you in the eye. It is truly humbling. It’s an adrenaline high. It became our priority to find the next high. We were often disappointed when we were not able to find one. We frequently have to remind ourselves that no matter what we were still in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Grizzly mom in Yellowstone National Park
We have now spent May through October of 2023 and 2024 in the park, and plan to do the same this coming year as well. Yellowstone is home to me. It is my happy place. It is a place that calms and heals me.
Photography was also a core part of my experience, and Yellowstone absolutely helped to shape me as a photographer. Looking back on it, when I arrived I wouldn’t even call myself a photographer at all, but more of a wildlife lover with a camera. I had no real idea what I was doing. One other thing that Yellowstone has in spades is photographers. I am not the only one that is drawn to Yellowstone, it’s wildlife, and it’s beauty. There are hundreds of photographers likely in the park at any time of the year. Many of them very good and extremely experienced. That wasn’t me.
However, I was lucky enough to have spent considerable time talking to several of them. Many of them were both friendly and generous with their time and knowledge. I ended up becoming close to a few of them. One of them is now my good friend Paul. I can’t tell you how much I learned, and continue to learn from Paul. I have no idea how he had the patience to put up with me and my never-ending questions that first year.
I had become addicted, this is where my drive to learn to become a true photographer began. My days were spent in the park. My nights were spent on Google and YouTube trying to learn whatever I could. Whenever possible, I would setup my tripod right next to any of the photographers that I knew. I was smart enough to know that when it came to photography, I didn’t know barely anything. But I was willing to listen and learn.
That first year in the park was basically my college degree in Photography. With that said, that year might have built my foundation, but I am still learning and building on that experience everyday. That experience also lit a fire in me. Wildlife photography and videography has become my passion. I am now rarely without a camera in my hand. If I go too long without my camera, I often become down. While Yellowstone is my happy place, I have learned to find Joy in photography no matter where I am. For example, shooting birds and alligators has become a big part of my life when we are spending our winters down in Florida.
It is now who I am. It is what I need. I expect that my transformation will continue, but in the short term I am thrilled with who I have become and where I am at on my continued journey. I hope that it never ends. Let’s see where it takes me next…
