Leather Boots & Open Skies

As some of you know I have just returned from a week long road trip to Calgary, Alberta. And I must admit it was one of the best trips have have taken in a long time. Two thousand nine hundred kilometers of scenic highway, rustic dirt roads and crackling camp fires punctuated with moments of breath taking stillness and rambunctious exuberance & excitement. We (my friends Jean-Mare, Nicola and Myself) had planned to only spend two days and three nights in Calgary, the rest of the journey would be "on the road" time where would camp and explore as we went along. For the trip I made a decision to only shoot film using my Leica M6 and M4P since I wasn't in the mood to shoot digital and lets face it.. there ain't nothing like film.. as well as the fact that the smaller film cameras were smaller and more mobile. I also brought along my Marantz PMD661 digital audio field recorder and a couple of microphones to record any interesting sounds I'd come accross. Over the next few weeks as I get the slides which I shot processed, scanned and colour balanced and the audio processed I will be posting them on the blog as well as the corresponding "on the road" stories to go with.

For now here are two recordings I made while we were camping at Alces lake which is in Whiteswan provincial park which is about fifty kilometers as the crow flies south east of Fairmont Hot Springs. We arrived there on our second day of our traveling all tired and dusty. We set up camp in the passively dimming late afternoon light and then drove back on the dirt road on which we came to take advantage of the natural hot springs which we had spotted on the way in. The hot springs were made up of four separate rock pools starting off extremely hot and getting progressively cooler as the water approached the nearby river which was FRIGID. I started out in the top rock pool which was the warmest and almost seemed unbearable but as the sun went down and I became accustomed to the temperature it became "just  right". It was a really special moment there we were soaking in a natural hot springs in a pristine wilderness with a beautiful river flowing only a few meters away. Pretty soon it was time to head back up to the camp site and get the fire going before it became completely dark. The recordings below are of a pot of water being boiled for brushing teeth and tea and such and the second is of Jean-Mare pouring water on the fire out before we went to sleep. Keep and eye out for the future posts on the trip.

- Boiling water on the the camp fire, Alces Lake, Whiteswan Provincial Park, BC (08:45 min, Please use headphones where possible), 2010

- Putting out the the camp fire (CAUTION: Its gets loud!), Alces Lake, Whiteswan Provincial Park, BC (01:29 min, Please use headphones where possible), 2010

Details: Recorded with Marantz PMD661 Recorder and a Rode NTG-1 Shotgun Microphone.

The End.