I Toil On

You can't go on trudging without a little persistence

It’s about 10:00am.

I shuffle to the front door, arms full of clothes, two backpacks strung over my shoulder and a camera weighing down my left arm. I struggle to get my keys from my pocket, the tip-taps of the dog waking up from her morning nap begin as I push my way in and drop a morning’s worth of gear on the table, and two sets of clothes go right to the laundry. “I’m beat.”

“It really is remarkable how often you’re willing to do this to yourself” my wife comments as she helps me into the house. A welcome and comforting voice.

“I suppose” I say, not sure how to feel about it all.

Wildlife photography has been a gift from somewhere beyond my understanding. Before I began waking up hours before sunrise and filling any and all free time with editing and scouring every map I can find, I was slipping.

I graduated college at the start of COVID with a degree in Wildlife and Conservation, freshly energized by a world of nature, education and the camaraderie that college brings. Naturally, biology positions were few and far between before the pandemic (you can imagine after), so my only route was a gloriously unfulfilling position that dug me a rut into the pace of the working world. I blinked and suddenly it had been a few years. I had a new job but had largely left ecology behind me. Without my knowing, this lack of fulfillment ate away.

Eventually, the depression and anxiety that runs in my family reared its head. I was lost and unenthused by basically everything. One day I broke down and ranted to my wife to which she replied “well, what do you want to do?”

“Uhh...”

That was a question that had never been asked. I dreamt of freedom and investment in things I care about while the working world seemed to only want extraction and results and a bunch of shit I never cared about. But I had a Nikon D5600 and a kit lens in the closet that we used to take camping and damnit, I was going to start taking photos again. I wish I could lie and say the moment in Walter Mitty with Sean Penn and the snow leopard didn’t pop in my head, but cliche’s exist for a reason.

It took over like a massive wave, suddenly I was back in a mindset of searching every tree and wanting to relearn a lot of what I glanced over in my degree plan. I had realized the extent to which I abandoned my education of the natural world and how much it (rather than just the fun of college) was motivating me back then. I had a way out.

The human psyche isn’t black and white. It wasn’t like someone gave me the answers to it all and suddenly everything was fixed. It was more like a ladder was lowered and the goal was now to get my lead-soaked self up and out while everything’s still heavy. Every rung, a little bit of that weight drips off but it’s slow and imperceptible and the ladder is long.

Wildlife photography is an imperceptibly slow pursuit full of frustrations and backtracking, a lot of self-doubt and maybe a little bit of triumph. Every day I want to quit but every day I yearn to be able to take these incredible photographs that we compare ourselves to online. You can’t get both. I want to lead retreats but know I would feel like a fraud if it all came true right now. I want a great photo every outing but know it would lose what makes it special. I’ve become a much better wildlife steward and educator but still feel like there’s too much to learn. I don’t know what I’m doing but somehow, I’ve made progress. Each step has felt heavy but, somehow, my clothes feel lighter.

So, I toil on. I don’t know where it will take me, but we’ve gotten this far.

I’ll keep taking mediocre photos and every now and then something special might happen and I’ll just be grateful to have been there. The world has many secrets and each one she shows you is a gift. I’ll be sure to remember this as I trudge back to the truck after a long hike and nothing to show for it. What else would I do, if not toil on? The destination is the journey after all