Claudia O'Grady
The Experience of the Experience
AUGUST 2, 2024
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In the Redwoods

Once when I had family visiting, we went up to the bobsled facility used in the 2002 Olympics. We got to watch a few pros taking practice runs, and then decided we'd do a run ourselves.  That is, we bought tickets to hop in a bobsled with a driver who ran us down the course.

Afterwards, I thought about that course, in part because it made me a little sick.  I don't recommend.  But what I couldn't stop thinking about was that for the bobsled, there is only one way down the mountain.  Drop the sled in the track with a driver, and it gets to the bottom the same way every time.  There is so much mountain, and so many ways down, but for that bobsled and its occupants, there's one path, and one path only. With this kind of predictability, bobsled teams can blaze through the run at 90 miles per hour.  Without it, far slower runs and likely more missteps.

I think about this sometimes when I step out of what is familiar to me.  Most of what I photograph is Utah landscape.  That's become my bobsled run.  I'm comfortable there - maybe too comfortable but that's another matter.  When I find myself in another environment, it's harder for me to see and interpret, and I struggle with my photography. So when I took a trip to northern California recently to visit the Redwoods, I made a very conscious effort to see things differently. I did the slowest bobsled run possible, outside the track. 

Walk twenty yards.  Stop.  Look up.  Look down.  Smell.  Feel.  Listen. I spent hours poking into ferns, examining forest decay, touching soft mosses on fallen tree trunks, and listening to raindrops make soft plinking sounds on my rain jacket. It seemed the only respectful way to visit here. And I made a few images.

It's quite a magical experience anywhere, but certainly among these giants.  I felt deeply connected to the forest, but also very small, as I was reminded that human existence is so fleeting, so temporary.  

As for the images, well, as I like to remind myself, it's not about the image, it's about the experience.  More of this, please.

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