The perils of solo travel
Are there bears in Oregon?
Until this thought, I was quite enjoying my solo adventuring, especially the walk around Trillium Lake. Hiking with other people usually means chatting as we go, lovely, but I never see the wildlife. On this excursion though, I watched otters gambolling by the water and a deer prancing through a meadow. I stood completely still for an eternity waiting for an owl to turn his head to the camera for me. I twirled beneath a canopy of cedar, trying to see where the tap-tap sound of a woodpecker originated. I had not a care in the world. At least, until I started thinking about bears. Because if I was going quietly enough to hear the woodpecker’s tap, I was probably going quietly enough to surprise a bear. My solution was to start singing. Unfortunately the only song I could think of was that children’s song “We’re going on a Bear Hunt”, not great for the nerves. I have to assume it did the trick because I didn’t see a bear. I didn’t see any more wildlife either, so had to go back to taking photos of landscapes instead.
This brings me to another problem with solo travel. On my return, all my photos are of landscapes. I have a thousand photos that could be classified under “Some trees, some mountains and some water”. Now I’ve been lucky enough to go to some beautiful places, so landscapes generally turn out well, but sometimes it would be nice to say “Look, proof I was here.” But even on automatic mode, strangers don’t like to deal with an SLR.
Since I only have a prime lens at the moment (Yes, my good lens is STILL in Calgary), I can’t take shots myself.
Instead I get this,
or sometimes even this,
So until I have one day worked out how to photoshop myself into a picture, I have come up with an alternative solution. I will take photos of random strangers. Given I was in fact standing in this spot, with a camera, not five minutes before these two arrived, you can just pretend it’s me. Before I close I should point out that although this is far too short to do justice to the trip, or the place, that I am lucky to be alive to write even this much. If you google “Bears at Mount Hood”, the very first entry that comes up is a sighting of Bigfoot!
Tags: photography, Travel, USA
