It’s been cold the last few weeks. Cold and snowy and icy.
Here in Kansas we have winters like that, but we also have winters that are very mild and see very little snow. This year has been one of the cold ones. And these cold days always make me think of a January morning a couple of years ago when Doug Stremel and I decided to venture west to shoot a remote hill covered with glacial erratics — boulders that were carried along by the ice from the Great Lakes region and deposited in what would become Kansas when the glaciers retreated.
But we decided to go one better and leave early enough that we could shoot sunrise on the Kansas River, near the town of Willard. We got up early and headed west, arriving at our selected river location just before dawn.
And it was cold. I don’t know how cold, but it now seems to be just about as cold as I’ve ever been. We shot for about 50 minutes, according to the metadata in my photos, and headed back to the car. I remember thawing my hands in the heat of the vehicle and feeling like they were on fire.
We got some good shots that morning — and more as we did make our way to the glacier erratics — but I still remember the cold. Sometimes the details of the situation fade with time and I can look at my photos without remembering that it was extremely hot, or that my feet were hurting after miles of walking, or that I was hungry… but this morning sticks with me. I will forever look at these photos and remember the cold of that riverbank in the predawn light.
