Text & photos by Jack Olson
Around the year 2000 I read a wildflower hiking book for the Colorado mountains. It profiled a feature called Shrine Ridge and, furthermore, bestowed upon it the title of Century Hike. That would be at least a hundred different wildflowers in the course of a season. What the authors had shared would turn out to be life-enriching for me.
Continue reading SharingBy Jack Olson
I sure hope you’re planning to attend the RMOWP conference in Rocky Mountain National Park in September. It’s stunning, inspiring, magical. That’s just a few adjectives. Supply your own when you come. I taught up there for about a dozen years at the RMOWP photo workshop and I figure I’ve been in the park two hundred or more times.
Continue reading Rocky Mountain Dreamin’Text and photos by Jack Olson
Drop—-drip—drop. We’re on top of the Continental Divide in Colorado. I love the Continental Divide. My mind capitalizes it. For one thing, it’s high. You can see for miles and miles. In winter in Colorado it collects oodles of snow. Oodles.
By Jack Olson
Listen. Carefully. What do you hear? As I write this I can hear the motor in my refrigerator freezer humming. It does that from time to time. I live in an apartment building and there are all sorts of noises from the many functions of the building. You might call it “building noise.” I can hear a little traffic on Broadway and someone putting trash in a dumpster in the alley. None of this is bothersome. A person gets used to some sounds, and they don’t interfere with life going on, or even thinking.
Continue reading The Sound of SilenceArticle & photos by Jack Olson
I came west for the mountains. Mountains, mountains, mountains. Who knew that a third of Colorado was plains? I would surely never head out east. What’s out there?
By Jack Olson
It seems like it was ages ago. It seems like it could have been last year. About half my life has passed since I made the incredible trek to Mt. Everest. Continue reading One of Those Trips of a Lifetime
By Jack Olson
My friend, Joanne, can be so sweetly devious. Continue reading “You Know, Jack…”
Article & photos by Jack Olson
Our 21st annual conference took place in Montrose, Colorado, in 1994. At our conferences we have at least one, “don’t miss, don’t oversleep” event. This one had several. Continue reading RMOWP Conference The Middle Years, Part VI
Article & photos by Jack Olson
“There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.”
~ Robert Service
I had a beloved, eccentric speech teacher in high school who first enthralled me with thrilling tales of the Yukon. Continue reading A Yukon Dream Come True
Article & photos by Jack Olson
Our 17th annual conference in 1990 congregated at Manitou Springs, Colorado, in the shadow of Pikes Peak. But we got out of that shadow in a big, big way, chugging in the cog train to the summit of the peak. At 14,110 feet, this was one of the few times our hardy crew has breathed such thin air. Continue reading RMOWP Early Conferences, Part V
