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Lake Clementine
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Making storytelling photos has always been my mantra. Throughout my journalistic career to now, as I document my kayaking paddling days, on Instagram, and for my post in Outside Adventure to the Max, I want to tell you a story. Each day, I hope to capture in a photograph what the day was like and what did. Was it sunny and bright or a bit gloomy? Was I with or leading a group, or was I on a solo trek across the water?
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Sunset Paddle on Lake Natoma
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I love to shoot a lot of my photos in the so-called Golden Hour. I have a propensity to light and shadows and the mood it presents. I find it irresistible to let those magical moments pass without trying to catch just a part of it. I can not lie. It makes for beautiful pictures, especially when on the water. Those serene moments make my kayak tripping a bit romantic and picturesque.
Yet the storyteller in me also wants to share my so non-romantic things about my paddling days. The grittiness of the heavy kayak and steep portage to the sluggishness of sluffing boats at the end of the day at the boathouse, to the unplanned swims, Not all my paddling days are a memory of cool Kodak moments.
Summer 2020 was far from picture perfect and a bit more unalluring and unappealing than any photos can suggest. By most accounts, it was an unfocused and somewhat shaky ordeal that will be remembered more for what we didn't do rather than what we actually did.
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| Sly Park Paddle Rentals |
For all of us, Summer 2020 certainly did not start all that well. The as the novel coronavirus know as the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly canceled and delay it from the start.
"Now we have something that turned out to be my worst nightmare," the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CNN in June, "In the period of four months, it has devastated the world."
At the start of the summer season, self-quarantining recommendations and restrictions became the norm. Movie theaters, indoor restaurants, and churches were closed. Events and festivals were canceled, and stacks of guidelines were imposed, calling for "social distancing" by staying at least six-feet part from one another.
Across the country, popular national, state, and local parks and beaches were either closed or were limiting access as health officials raised health concerns about large, possibly maskless, groups of visitors arriving and potentially skirting social distancing guidelines.
But as we all know, going outside is good for us, especially in a pandemic. Being in nature and the fresh air can help us relax and feel less stressed, which is what we needed most both then and even now.
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South Fork of American River
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So I took advantage of my free time to head to the Lower American River and even run the South Fork of the River with a couple of guys during the early days of the summer shutdown.
As the stay-in-place restrictions were relaxed, outdoor places like state parks suddenly become important in a new way. They were safe places, but only if people recreated reasonably. Masks for many became the fashion as we looked in either bandits or doctors when they arrived a the boat launch. At Sly Park Paddle Rentals, where I worked after the delayed start, I would give all the equipment a sanitizing bath in E-san 64 after each rental. As the pandemic lingered into the middle of summer, people continued to flock to places like Lake Jenkinson, giving me a busy and brisk business as folks tried to escape the routine of the pandemic by getting on the water.
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Loon Lake
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But just the same, it was not all work and no play. The after-hours canoeing and kayaking sessions in the lake helped give me a sense of normalcy. An annual trip down the Lower American River and no-frills expedition to Loon Lake with Bayside Adventure Sports, a Christian based outreach group, gave me a chance to lead a great group of paddlers. Okay, okay! That week on the was close to picture-perfect as could be, for me and maybe all them. It was the highlight of my summer.
But with every high, there comes a low. And this seemly apocalyptic summer dished out a slew of record-breaking temperatures, devastating wildfires, and ghostly orange and Martian-red skies from the shadow of smoke blowing eastward during the ladder part of the summer. A mid-September camping trip to Sierra Mountains Silver Lake was called-off due to the threat of fire danger, and my days on Lake Jenkinson were plagued with smoke and haze. It led me to get some dramatic photos, but also a realization that with climate change being unchecked this could be a prelude of things annually.
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Lake Jenkinson
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It's official. No matter how I regard it, this lost summer is over, and fall has begun. Time to start planning for next year. While for some, this ominous year of 2020 can not get over quickly enough as we all deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, racial unrest, and looming contentious election. As we start the Autumn season, we search for that silver lining.
“Our main job as artists is to make the art that only we can make, right now in the times in which we are living,” wrote California College of Arts Dean of Fine Arts Allison Smith to her students this past year. “The art you are about to make will be a source of survival, and it will change us all for the better,” she concluded.
So in these crazy times, I look back on my summer 2020. I certainly will cherish all my photo moments, both good and bad, all the friendly faces, and all the memories of my time on the water. To help me and maybe even you cruise through to till next summer, I picked out some of my favorite images I created over the past few months to help recall the past season like no other.
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