Fezziwig Press & Photography by Stu Jenks

From The 2009 All Souls' Procession

From The 2009 All Souls' Procession, Tucson, Arizona (c) 2009 Stu Jenks

[All images by Stu Jenks, except the bottom one of me in a kilt, taken by Tom Willett]

 

"Double Rainbow"

"Double Rainbow at Dragoon Springs, Arizona" (c) 2009 Stu Jenks

[Happy All Souls' Day, and Day of the Dead, y'all. May the ghosts of your ancestors and loved ones find you happy and free, today, tonight and always. My father just whispered a piece of advice in my ear. I'm not going to share it with y'all, but I plan to heed it. ]

"Accidental Magritte"

“Accidental Magritte”
© 2009 Stu Jenks Jr. and Mary Elton Jenks (?)

I found this image in a scrapbook from the 1980’s. I modified the daylights out of it, cropped it, making it a black and white, pushing the contrast, cleaned up the dust. It was with other images taken at The River from that time, most of them pretty mundane: People thickly smiling while sitting around a dining room table at dinner; benign images of the Rappahannock River at sunset, that had no pop to them at all; a rather dull shot of a tree. But this image was like a Magritte painting; very surreal, but with an odd universality to it. It's like it's a still taken by a unit photographer on a movie set.

Who is the Man in the Suit? Is he a Banker, come to tell the Crab Man that he had foreclosed on his farm? But the Crab Man seems to be smiling. Is he happy to see to Man in the Suit? Or is it just a nervous grin?

But I know these men. And I know some of their stories. The Man in the Suit is Buck Flintom, one of my deceased father’s best friends. And the Crab Man is my dad, Stuart. The image was taken at Ed-Lil, the ancestral summer place of the Jenks clan on the Rappahannock River (since sold after his death), and my best guess is it was taken in 1984, for it was in the scrapbook that also contained images of my wedding to Denise from that same year. But why is Buck wearing a suit? I suppose it’s because Buck, who was probably still working for IBM in 1984, had most likely driven the three hours to Ed-Li, straight from work on a Friday afternoon, to spend the weekend with Stuart.

And the photographer? That’s a mystery. I would have said it was Buck’s wife, Margaret, but wouldn’t he have taken off the three-piece suit, if he had gone home to pick her up? I think so. My best guess is it was my mother, Mary Jenks, who took that shot, and that, my friends, is quite shocking. Mary may be one of the worst photographers ever to walk the face of the Earth, always cutting off heads, never holding the camera straight or steady, forever sticking her fingers over the lens of the camera. But you know what they say. A stopped clock is right, twice a day. And Mary was right on the money that afternoon, if you ask me.

Sad. Mary is now anxious, judgmental, old and demented, and Dad is long dead, but Margaret and Buck are doing alright from what I hear, still living on their farm outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. Life goes on, until it doesn’t.

 

The Transpersonal Papers: Chapter Seventeen: "Along The Methuselah Trail"

The Transpersonal Papers: Chapter Seventeen:
 
“Along The Methuselah Trail, Ancient Bristlecone Forest, White Mountains, California”

© 2008 Stu Jenks

 

Namaste.

The God in me sees the God in you.

This Sanskrit greeting has been in my head a lot on this trip. I’ve been trying to remember this phrase, when I first meet people. With kind folk, I then tend to see them as gods and goddesses. With jerks, I then tend to see them as good souls but with a big pile of crap on top of their heads.

It snowed here a week ago. Someone has walked this four-mile loop before me. I don’t know this trail, but I don’t need to, with a single set of footprints guiding me forward.

The rambunctious bikers are behind me. Very good chance they won't walk far. It’s cold, but not bitter. The sun’s going down. It will be dark soon.

I round a corner after a mile and see a Bristlecone highlighted on a ridge line. The tree so brightly lit, it’s as if the Sun was a follow-spot in a dark theatre. I raise my 70-200 and shoot. Pow, pow, pow. Again. Pow, pow, pow. I look at the screen on the back of the camera. I smile. That’s a shot. Insurance, too.

Ever since I first touched a Bristlecone in Eastern Nevada two years ago, they are like gods and goddesses to me too. They are the oldest living things on Earth, some living to be older than 4.000 years old. The oldest known Bristlecone lives somewhere on this trail. He is 4,723 years old. They don’t tell you which tree he actually is, but they do say, you walk right by him and you could touch him if you knew to.

Limber Pines and Bristlecones surround me now. (Limbers look somewhat similar to Bristlecones but are taller, with different needles, and don’t live as long, but they are old trees nonetheless. If it wasn’t for the Bristlecones, they would be the stars of this forest.) Beside these two species of trees, not much grows on these dolomite hills. Actually it’s because of this poor soil, that the Bristlecones (and Limbers) thrive here.

When I was near Wheeler Peak two years ago, there were quite a few Bristles growing near a receding glacier, but not a large grove. But the troop of trees here covers three ridge lines and hundreds of acres and they say there are even more Pines to the north, along a road that is now impassable by snow.

There is a low hum here, a deep hurrup of old creatures.

This is Fangorn Forest of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

And Treebeard does live here. But they call him Methuselah.

 

Sun’s been down about an hour now. Only a little blue left in the black of the sky. Stars are shining ever brighter now. I’m two miles deep into the forest.

I’ve just taken the Rollei off of my tripod and replaced it with the Canon. The Rollei’s insurance. Shoot, for all I know, the black and white will be better than the digital.

I’ve hoop-danced a lot beside a old man (or is she an Ent-Wife.) Maybe I’ve danced too much. Maybe I need to stick with just two or three hoops rather than five or six. Just like I can overwork a painting and make its colors muddy, I can over-spin a hoop dance and make it too busy. The simplest artistic answer is usually the right one.

The Full Moon’s shine hits the side of this old man’s hide. Hard snow freezes at his base. I’ll just hoop-dance to his left. Three hoops only. An odd number seems to be the key.

I climb up the hill and do my spinning. I then return to the camera. It’s very cold but I’m loving it. I’ll expose the digital neg for about five minutes. With film, I exposed for close to ten. Overexpose black and white film, underexpose the digital color.

I close the shutter after five. Now, I have five minutes of noise reduction before I can reshoot. I think I’ll go and say hello to him again.

I make my way up the snowy hill, gingerly stepping as I have all night, not to dislocate too much of the rocky soil, for it’s only this poor ground that keeps these trees alive. The primary reason that the Bristlecone Pines eventually die is because after three or four centuries, all the soil that covers their roots erodes away and they simply die of drought and famine. The Earth leaves them, but they don’t leave the Earth, even after death. Much of the deadwood around me on the forest floor is over 7000 years old.

I find the big root I’ve been resting on all night and I gently seat myself on it again. I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I place my right hand on the tree. I touch the smooth dead surface of this old man’s body. Even though this part of him is dead, I can still feel a low hum of life ringing through his trunk. He’s alive and happy. Maybe my being here makes him a little happier. I hope so. I don’t reckon he gets many guest humans, up this ravine.

“Funny,” I say to him, “I was wondering if you are the Methuselah Tree and now I think, to even try to figure it out is simply absurd. All of y’all are very old. Except for a few hundreds-years-old whipper-snapping skinny guys over there, most of you have seen many stars pass over your heads, many snows at your feet.”

He doesn’t say anything, but I can feel him listening.

“Thank you,” I say, “for being such a good model and for saying yes when I asked you if I could photograph you.”

“You…are…very…welcome…,” he says.

I stop talking, but I don’t lift my right hand for a good long while. I just keep giving him as much love as I can. Out of the palm of my right hand.

And like when I first met that nice couple in Groveland, California, the other day, I think these few words.

The God in me sees the God in you.

 



 

The Indian Wars: Chapter Eleven: "There Are Killers There, Yosemite National Park, California"

"There Are Killers There,
Yosemite Valley, California"

© 2008 Stu Jenks

It's eighteen hundred and something. Some Miwok Indians escort a few white miners up the Merced River. They come to the edge of a magnificent valley. The Miwoks stop abruptly. This puzzles the White Men. A Miwok man points toward the valley and says in his language:

"There are killers there."

Others of his tribe repeats what he said. Yes, they are killers.

The head honcho white man smiles.

"Yosemite? Yosemite. So that's the name of this place. How do you spell that?"

The Miwoks don't know what the White Man just said, but it looks like he doesn't grasp that they are all risking their lives by enter this valley.

They enter it anyway.

Hence this is how Yosemite got its White Man’s name. Or a story something like this.

 

The killers that the Miwoks were referring to were a band of Piautes led by chief Tenaya. May not have been such a great guy, Tenaya, for the Mono Piaute Indians of his birth stoned him to death, when he relocated back to his home near Mono Lake after the Mariposa Wars. Seems he stole some horses from his hosts and they didn't care for that too much.

Later, more confusion reined over who were the original inhabitants of Yosemite, when the Miwoks settled into the valley. They were given government housing, not out of pity or as part of the reservation system, but because the Indians made up a large portion of the workforce that was part of the new U.S. Park Service. The Miwoks came to help care for Yosemite and they got paid too. Many Indians still live and work for the government inside the Park, to this day. The government thought the Miwoks had lived there since forever. But the best guess is it was the Paiutes had lived in Yosemite Valley for centuries prior to the Gold Rush of ‘49. The Paiutes were a nomadic tribe, with a warrior culture. In contrast, the Miwoks of California were mostly non-nomadic, and much mellower and more peaceful in nature than their rivals to the east. And the Sierra Nevada Mountains were a natural barrier that keep the tribes apart. Mostly.

There are still some Paiutes and Miwoks in the area surrounding Yosemite National Park. Some have intermarried and generally everyone Native seems to get along. Mostly. Of course there are exceptions. But the Miwok reservations in California are small now, many with casinos that provide great income so they can send their kids to college. But what’s most striking to me, both in Yosemite and all throughout the Central Valley of California, is the general absence of Native People. The Miwoks had few warrior skills and were no match to the White Miners who came in the 1850's or any one else for that matter. And it makes sense that they would be a peaceful people. The land was rich with fish and game. There was plenty of land, plenty of water and it was a mild climate. It was Shangri-La. No need to fight. Let’s share.

So were they killed by the miners or the Paiutes coming from the east? Some were, of course, but that's not what killed most of the Indians, Miwok and Pauites alike, in California. What killed 90% of them was disease, Smallpox and other White childhood illnesses that the Indians had no natural defenses against. The Whites didn't shoot them. They simply coughed on them, and killed them just the same.

 

Muir Trail. 5 a.m. Still dark. The Full Moon set an hour ago

A Stu Fun Fact: If you want to be alone on a trail in the second most visited National Park in the system, go in the off-season and get up early.

I camped last night in a small city known as The Upper Pines Campground. Why do so many people have to bring their whole house with them when they camp in the wilderness? Does it scare them that much, that they have to bring familiar touchstones of home to combat their urban anxiety? But I got lucky. All the nuclear-powered Coleman Lanterns were either shaded from me by the mammoth fifth-wheels or they were far away. And all the screaming kids were inside by the time I arrived.

I had a dinner of salt and vinegar potato chips and a couple of Clif Bars purchased at a nearby store in Curry Camp. While walking to the store under the full moon, I noticed Yosemite Falls glistening in the moonlight, a grassy meadow spreading between me and the distant cliffs. I saw a nice hoop dance in my mind's eye, but decided on sleep instead. Sure glad I did, for I bet you I wouldn’t be on this trail now if I had shot last night.

All I have with me this morning are some warm clothes, a bottle of water and my Canon backpack that holds the digital with its 70 to 200 mm lens. (The lens has two names. "Cathy Jean" or "My Big White Penis". Depends on my mood.) Being a desert rat, the glorious roar of the Merced River's rapids to my right is enough to heal many a psychic wound. The endorphins that will come from hiking and the pics that will come from the heights will just be bonus points. The real prize is that sound, that space, this place. Just like a two dimensional image can't capture the three dimensional valley called Yosemite, a sound recording can't capture the roar of this river, unless, of course, it's played through monster speakers. But even then, you wouldn't have the musky river smell, nor the humidity of the spray, nor this moment in Time.

I love to shoot nature. I love to record its sounds too, but it never really 'captures' it, nor do I try for that. I work at making something new and universal from these raw materials, and try not get in my own way too much or in God’s way for that matter.

I take a break from hiking and call Craig in the Bay Area. I think I woke him up.

"Hey Craig, it's Stu, calling you from the Muir Trail"

"Hey Bro."

"Amazingly I'm getting cell phone bars in fucking Yosemite. Anyway, you going to be able to come?"

"Sorry, man. I got an appointment I can't miss but I sure wish I could come see you and Yosemite."

"That's OK, Craig. Cathy couldn't make it either, but it's nice of you two to want to come and share this with me. Just the thought of coming is very nice."

"Hey, by the way," I say, "I figured out what Yosemite’s about."

"What's that?"

"Yosemite is about Granite. Lots and lots of Granite. In a very big way."

We both laugh.

I can see why Ansel Adams plowed this field so thoroughly. The gray tones on the granite walls, even in the predawn light are exquisite. Such a range of tone, from snow gray to deep black and all the shades in-between. And a large format camera with black and white film would eat these tones for lunch. I'll see what I can get with the 70/200. I feel a little sad though, for the ghost of Ansel, and for the spirits of the Miwoks and Piautes. Yosemite Valley isn't wilderness anymore. Other parts of the park are but not The Valley. And living and growing up here, and dying and growing old here, as Native People did for a millenium, must have been the North American Indian equivalent of living on a South Sea island, with banana trees everywhere and all the fish you can eat. And poor Ansel probably would get lost on the valley floor now, with its one way roads, its huge cafeteria, its long rows of two story apartments and its tourists who carry their houses on their backs. Least the Granite hasn't changed that much, I suppose.

I was wrong back in Coalmine Canyon. Just because I've never been someplace before, doesn't mean I won't see how the place has changed over time. A blind man can see it here in Yosemite.

Higher and higher I climb. Not an easy trail but not that hard either, made even sweeter by the complete lack of humans. (They are all asleep below.) Miles pass. The light continues to grow. I take some silhouette images of trees. I shoot distant waterfalls and water close at hand. Will I make it to Half Dome's base? Probably not. I'm not driven to 'bag' that rock. It's not about the destination. It's about the walking, the seeing, the being. It always is, really. The Now, you know. There is only right here, right now, be it this magnificent trail or a dirty back alley in Tucson. The illusion is that there is ever a Somewhere Else.  And this isn't just blind Woo Woo I'm talking here. This is an experienced truth. This, I believe, is a central Truth in the world: That what we see, feel, taste, touch, hear, smell, walk, kiss, pray and breathe, exists only in the Present. Try kissing your girlfriend tomorrow, today. Can't be done.

I take some more images but not that many, for the picture-taking is starting to get in the way. It's as if the glass of the lens filters the deeper feelings. That happens sometimes

Up a couple more miles. Pray. Drink. See. Feel. Smell. Walk.

Dawn is here. Dawn is now. The gray tones come alive in my eyes.

My eyes. The best camera of all.

 

Inspiration Point. Late morning. A shitload of people. Couldn't get to Glacier Point. Snowed in. It is what it is. It's OK. Getting close to Noon now. It's a clusterfuck here but kind of a fun clusterfuck. Fun to see all these tourists taking pictures of each other with Yosemite Valley behind them. I take some shots of them taking pictures of each other. That’s fun too.

But it's kind of sad looking into the valley. I know there are no Indians except the few Miwoks who work for the Park Service. No campfire smoke rising in columns below me from native camps. There is less fish in the river, less game in the dells. Lots of people there though, some taking the obligatory shots of Yosemite Valley from this roadside pulloff, but a few do dwell and take it all in, here and there. Not all Americans are jerks. The Second Noble Truth.

I watch folks come and go. Among all the people around me I see a nice looking family of three. I have an idea.

"Excuse me,"  I say to a man who is a bit younger than I, " Would you take my picture?"

"Sure," he says, smiling.

I hand him Cathy Jean.

"This is quite a camera," he says.

"Yes it is," I say, "And thanks for doing this. I rarely get any pictures of me in such places as this."

He raises the Canon to his eye.

"How does it work?"

I quickly show him.

I stand, my back to Yosemite Valley.

"How's my hair?" I have camping hair. It's going every which a way.

"You look fine," says his wife with a tone in her voice that says, 'Don't be so vain.' Sorry, hon. Too late.

I cock my head slightly to one side.

I smile.

All in all, it's been a great morning. Good people, a great river, even greater Granite.

Click goes my Canon.

 

"At Last Light"

"At Last Light:

The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, California"

(c) 2008 Stu Jenks

"Coyote Speaks" by Ari Berk & Carolyn Dunn

"Coyote Speaks" by Ari Berk & Carolyn Dunn

[Ari and Carolyn's new Abrams' Book for Young Readers is out. Ari asked me for a few photos for consideration and they ended up choosing my "El Tiradito" image, for the chapter on Mythmaking in the 21st Century. (You can find that photo at the bottom of this post.) I just got my copy of the book and it is beautiful laid out and wonderfully written. Both kids and adults will love this book, I believe. And I'm proud and happy to be in an Abrams book. I've always dreamed of being published by Abrams. Maybe someday I'll have my own book but no matter. I'm just thrilled, right here, right now.

I've already been paid by Abrams for my image (handsomely, by the way), but Ari and Carolyn could use the cash. Well, they got paid too, but let's help them out, if we can. This book will make a great Christmas gift, for your teenager and your grandma too. Go to Amazon and you can order it there. That's where I got mine. It's a sweet, sweet book. And thanks Ari, Carolyn and all the good Fantasy folk. Whether it is a big dream or a little dream, we're still living it.]

"Someone Left Something On Our Beach"

"Someone Left Something On Our Beach"

(c) 2001, 2008 Stu Jenks & Stuart Jenks Sr.

Seven Years Ago...

     [Image: "Stuart Jenks Sr., Spring of 2001" (c) 2001, 2008 Stu Jenks, Jr.]

     Dad died seven years ago today. Actually the date doesn't remind me of that time, as much as the day does. He died on Labor Day Night, a little past midnight. But today is the 4th and the 4th was the day.

     On a bookshelf in my apartment in a small wooded frame sits a four by six photo my father took of a spiral I drew on the beach below his house in 2001. I popped the frame the other day, to grab the photo so I could scan it and found the above shot behind it. I don't remember taking this but I bet I did, judging from the composition. I scanned this shot of Stuart and The Beach Spiral image and played with them a bit in CS2. In this post and the next, are those two images and a bit of his handwriting.

     I've written a lot about my relationship with my father, his death, and its aftermath. You can find some of those essays, inside the files of this blog. I have thought of him on every Labor Day Night since his death, and am grateful that he died peacefully, without pain. He's a nicer man in my memory than he probably was in real life. He could be quite the judgmental prick, but someone else who shares his name can be that body part as well. I am my father's son sometimes (even though, more times than not, I feel like the stork brought me to the wrong house.)

     I miss you Dad. Prick and all. I loved you and you loved me, and I feel blessed, when I feel your presence over my left shoulder. Visit Mom in her dreams if you have the chance. She going through a rough patch right now, and your daughter could use to see your ghost too, wandering the halls of the Raleigh house.

     Know that I love you, and thanks for loving me. As times has pasted, I understand and love you even more.

The Transpersonal Papers: Chapter Nine: "The Death of Self"

The Transpersonal Papers:
Chapter Nine: "The Death of Self"
(c) 1999, 2008 Stu Jenks

[Mr. Self sold my parents a fine Chevy in the 1960's. His body now rests near his church in the small hamlet of Emmerton, Virginia. I'm not making fun of his name here, but rather am spiritually grateful for it. I could see his grave from the road as I drove by, when I was visiting my family in the Northern Neck, and it reminded me, then and now, that it's not about me really. It's never about me, no matter what my Ego, or my Self, says. But granted, as I was thinking spiritual thoughts while breezing by Mr. Self's grave a few years ago, I was smiling.]