All posts by tjccamas@comcast.net

National and regional award-winning journalist, photographer, and activist (Hanford, Spokane River, regional clean air issues, national nuclear weapons and waste policy). Former senior editor Camas Magazine, former client and communications director, Center for Justice, Spokane.

Living Colors

Metamorphosis
River cobbles nesting in the cracks of a shoreline metamorphic boulder.
Translucent spider on sunflower pedals
Interstellar
photographer’s water shoe amid submerged ice age boulders and cobbles in Spokane River.
Ice age flood cobbles on the Spokane River shoreline.
Air bubbles rising to the surface in fast flowing current over metamorphic rock.
Naturally sculpted ice on a creek bed where water is receding after a hard freeze.

Illuminations

The medicine of ethereal light, for the long nights of winter

Some dates I don’t have to write down. One is whatever day it is in early spring that I get my first glimpse of a wild balsamroot bud about to burst open, like an exploding kernel of popcorn. From the inception of erupting balsamroot, spring in the inland Northwest unfolds, operatically, as green replaces brown, and yellows, purples, and cremes come into bloom, often in riots of color. All other things being equal, it’s a happier time to be here, all the more so if you’re a photographer.

On the back end, another date I don’t write down is November 1st, a day that (at least for me) brings an icy gust announcing the coming darkness of winter, with mats of fallen leaves damming the storm drains. The outdoor swimmer in me has to leave the water to avert hypothermia, the cook in me turns to soups, the writer to wistful messages like this one, and the photographer sulks, cleans the refrigerator and tries to catch up on his reading.

But.

There are antidotes and among them are the images that follow—the dances of solar light on the Ice Age-deposited cobbles and boulders strewn on the bed of the Spokane River. Honestly, they’re not just in the river. They’re all around us in Spokane. It’s just that most are hidden beneath a thin blanket of Holocene topsoil. In some places, the current of the river cleans both the grit and the algae—exposing the colors of the ancient mudstones, gneisses, schists, and granites that originate in the mountains of British Columbia, Idaho, and Montana. To be sure, there are lumps of home-grown, black basalt in the mix—but not as many as you’d expect. The epic imports of great flood cobbles dominate. Add sunlight and a camera and, voila!— an over-the-counter antidote to the long, dark nights ahead. (For purchase inquiries, send inquiries to me through the comment panel or at tjconnor56@gmail.com)

Ellis
A Blue Note
Who Knows Where We’ve Been
Silverhead
Synergy
The Brilliant Resilience
Whence it Came
Mirth
Rainbow Salad
The Nursery
The Cosmos

Beautiful Wounds, the Gallery Images

The Beautiful Wounds gallery images from 2022. Order inquiries– tjconnor56@gmail.com.

Upon Arrival, 30×50 paper/gatorboard, $430

Upon Arrival

Leaving Judith Pool, 16×20 metal, $320

Leaving Judith Pool

Raindrops on Lupine, 20×30 metal, $600

Raindrops on lupine

Showtime, 16×20 metal, $320

Showtime

Liquid Hoedown, 16×20 metal, $320

Liquid Hoedown

My Valentine, 16×24 metal, $384

My Valentine

Remind Me, 20×30 metal, $600

Remind Me

Hooded merganser in flight, 11×14 metal, $154

Hooded merganser in flight

The Sky You and I Share, 24×36, paper on gatorboard, $300

The Sky You and I Share

The Ice Fan, 16×20 metal, $320

The Ice Fan

Devil’s Toenail, 16×24 metal, $384

Devil’s Toenail

Blue Darner Dragonfly, 16×20 metal, $320

Blue Darner Dragonfly

Beyond Cellular Service, 16×20 metal, $320

Beyond cellular service

Kings & Lupine, 24×36 paper on gatorboard, $265

Kings & Lupine

The Feathers in February, 24×36 paper on gatorboard, $300

The Feathers in February

A Point of Defiance, 16×20 metal, $320

A Point of Defiance

The Cosmos, 16×20 metal, $320

The Cosmos

The Falls at Hawk Creek, 30×24 metal, $720

The Falls at Hawk Creek

Heart of Dry Coulee, 24×48 paper on gatorboard, $500

Heart of Dry Coulee

Ramparts at Moses Coulee, 12×24 metal, $288

Ramparts at Moses Coulee

Golden Guys, 10×20 metal, $200

Golden Guys

Footbridge to an Afterlife, 16×24 metal, $384

Footbridge to an Afterlife

Ice Maze, 16×20 metal, $320

Ice Maze

At the Turn, 16×24 metal, $384

At the Turn

Both Sides of the Falls, 24×36 paper on gatorboard, $300

Both Sides of the Falls

Paint the Wall, 16×24 metal, $384

Paint the Wall

HU Ranch Coulee, 12×24 metal, $288

HU Ranch Coulee

Preternaturally Orange, 16×20 metal, $320

Preternaturally Orange

Winter at Soda Lake, 12×24 metal, $288

Winter at Soda Lake

As the Crow Flies, 16×24 metal, $384

As the crow flies

Frenchman Falls & Stream, 16×20 metal, $320

Frenchman Falls & Stream

Dance of the Shooting Stars, 12×18 metal, $220

Dance of the Shooting Stars

Ice Age flood cobbles, 12×18 metal, $220

Ice Age flood cobbles

New Year’s Day, 24×30 metal, $720

New Year’s Day

String Theory, 20×30 metal, $600

String Theory

Unreasonably Orange, 16×20 metal, $320

Unreasonably Orange

Storm Tracks, 10×20 metal, $200

Storm Tracks

Beautiful Wounds

A soul-searching journey—with camera—into Washington’s mystic scablands, now available in bookstores and via mail order.

Nine years ago, I began wandering into a broken landscape with a heavy heart and a camera. For the most part, the ground mirrored how I felt at the time: overwhelmed and torn apart; wobbling with loss and grief.

Blessedly, I began to notice something that is as ironic as it is redemptive. The forces that obliterated the landscape had also opened it up to veins of wilderness and an archipelago of natural cathedrals, many of which are beyond the reach of paved roads. I’m unashamed to admit I’ve needed these places—where meadowlarks sing—to gather myself.

With only a thin layer of topsoil, the rocky terrain cannot be tilled to grow wheat. Strangely enough, though, there is water, especially in late winter and spring. Whereas deep soils in nearby tracts of our region’s famous Palouse hills absorb rain and snow-melt like a sponge, the gouged and cratered earth is braided with ephemeral streams and pockmarked with year-round, natural lakes, some of which are miles long. It is just enough water to nourish a web-like network of wetlands that only took shape in the last 20,000 years or so in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains to the west. It is just enough moisture to nourish green, riparian ribbons and hidden pockets of wilderness.

The dramatic and ravaged terrain exists because a barely imaginable natural catastrophe marked the last throes of the Wisconsinan ice age in the Pacific Northwest. Cataclysmic floods exploded through failing ice dams, washing away vast dunes of loessial soil and leaving distinctly carved bedrock and cratered terrain. A subregion of rolling, fertile hills—as in today’s Palouse—was profoundly excavated by floodwaters—deeper than Seattle’s Space Needle is high—moving at highway speeds.

“Tim Connor frames the raw skeleton of the Columbia Basin landscape between his own acute visual sense and human emotion. The result is a delicately shaded personal journey that reflects all the twists and turmoil of our signature geologic event.—Jack Nisbet, author of Ancient Places and The Dreamer and the Doctor

These waves of destruction seem unbelievable. And for a time they were, even though a brave and gifted geologist—J Harlen Bretz—had produced ample field evidence, by 1923, for his catastrophic flood theory.

Rather than being celebrated, though, Bretz was mocked. It took a half century for him to be vindicated and, at the age of 96, to finally be awarded the Penrose Medal, the highest honor in American geology. I learned about Bretz’s story in 1977 when I was studying geology at Washington State University and his persistence and vindication has been an inspiration to me ever since.

Joan & Gil (~1952) and Bretz’s 1923 map of the scablands.

Like my mother and my older sister I am from here: born on the bed of ancient Lake Lewis that formed in the Pasco basin at the height of the ice age floods. The flood-scoured landscape became known to immigrant pioneer settlers as the scablands. It is as quiet as it is remote, but it is not frozen in time. When my life was being upended, I was drawn into this seemingly bleak and sparsely-populated expanse. I wanted to be alone, but also to walk and climb where I imagined Bretz’s bootprints to be. On days I was too heartsick to speak or write, I could at least use my camera to bottle the light from places that offer a quality of solace not easily described with words.

A result of this sojourn is Beautiful Wounds, the photography for which has accrued over the years, and the writing of which I finished a few days after my mother passed away in December of 2019. The story moves through time, and at the pace of a good hike through the maze of landscape that Bretz and his intrepid students successfully measured and deciphered. The full title is Beautiful Wounds: A Search for Solace and the Light in Washington’s Channeled Scablands. It is being published by The Countryman Press, an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company, and will be released on May 10th of this year.


Available on order at the following booksellers:

Aunties books, Spokane

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop

Indiebound

Apple Books

W.W. Norton


Below–Sampler of photography from Beautiful Wounds
tjc

Canyon sunrise, Drumheller Channels
Falls below Judith Pool, Potholes Coulee
Moose munching on red-twig dogwood, Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge
Migrating Tundra swans on a scabland lake
From the Heart of Dry Coulee

Elephant Mountain basalt palisade, Drumheller Channels
Western Meadowlark
The Feathers in February
Young mule deer buck in the frost
Ice age flood cobbles, Spokane River

Bretz hill and scabland terrain behind a spring storm.
Tim Connor Photography, Rhubarb Skies, 2015-2022