Along Sourdough Trail

I’m spending a fair amount of time along Sourdough Trail, but I’m spending it, for the most part, by and for myself. Despite maintaining this journal, I’m not primarily concerned with communicating about the place itself. Call it narcissism, but the emphasis has been more on me, specifically on me photographing, most precisely on me photographing in this particular spot. That does entail telling you a little about the place, but not to the extent that I’ve had to develop names.

Furthermore, my communication has been mostly visual. I don’t need to describe the snowy Watchman, standing just before the main bridge, because I can show him to you. And I don’t need to name him Watchman because I probably won’t be speaking of him again. In fact, I haven’t used that name even to myself before now—though he’s one of a set that I thought of loosely as Guardians when I first began photographing here.

Names are clearly needed for a full, communal understanding of place. Names carry meaning. There’s a world of difference between knowing a particular feature as, say, Flounder at the Base of the Creek (Dzántik’i Héeni in Tlingit) or as Gold Creek. In the present case, the fairly generic Sourdough Creek (there must be dozens in every western state) certainly has different associations from its other name of Bozeman Creek. But I’ll leave that social/historical thread for another time.

What I’m wondering now is what difference it might make, for me in my isolation, to create and use names. Does having a name make a feature more salient, more readily, even automatically, distinguished and noticed? Possibly. Still, an actual name seems superfluous. The Watchman stood out on my earliest visits, though he remained unpictured until snow fell. I notice him every time I walk that path. Similarly, I’ve always noticed, and thought of as a distinct entity, the long, nearly horizontal branch I have to duck under on a certain side path. I’ve wanted to photograph it, but haven’t seen the picture yet. Until now, it never occurred to me to give it a name, and I doubt I shall. (If I do, perhaps Long Arm…)

In many respects, at least for my own purposes, a photograph serves like a name. It singles out its subject, which thereafter remains a noticed quantity. For example, the Tangles I pictured late this spring, though noted in a general way before, will doubtless be more regularly observed in future.

A name is not mere shorthand, but adds some personal touch that’s a product of an individual mind, and that ties the named to other things, to the past. The photograph may also call up those associations, but perhaps not as surely and concisely and unfailingly over time. The haiku I wrote in the first phase of this project aimed to capture something along these lines, and I actually used them in place of titles for the photographs. Nevertheless, I think there’s a big difference between a haiku and a name. The haiku, by nature, represented unrepeatable moments. They don’t seem to carry the judgement, almost finality of a name. Recently, I’ve been reveling in changes more than continuities. The light on a leaf never falls the same way twice. Naming even that leaf is naming in vain.

I’m still learning as I go what the nature of this project is and what the most fitting form of this record might be. Although the blog format seems generally appropriate, it is not my purpose to use the medium in the typical social ways, i.e. to generate discussion or build a following. The main purpose of the blog is to serve as a vehicle and repository of my own thinking and development. (I hasten to add that I’m always delighted to receive comments from anyone moved to write one. They further, rather than distract from, the sort of self-examination taking place here.)

So ignoring proverbs about changing vehicles in midstream, I’m altering the presentation to make this look less like a conventional blog, and more like journal pages strung together. Reducing distraction, I’ve cut the header to a short title and moved the sidebar navigation mostly out of sight at the bottom of the page (also reachable by a click from the upper right corner). If this makes it less likely that a visitor remains on site, so be it. A reader unwilling to slow down for a few images, and a few paragraphs, is most likely one who would not have gained much from it anyway. As for you, if you’re still reading at this point: I hope you’ll find something of interest in the continuing journey.

P.S. One fault of the new design is that lines of text may become uncomfortably long in old browsers used with wide screens. If that applies to you, just narrow your window (or increase font size). Please let me know of any other problems you come across.