The March Mini-Conference will mix writing and photography. With Pat’s guidance, participants will learn to better use their camera and how to select the best photo. With Keith Liggett and Baiba’s guidance, the participants will work on integrating the story of the photo with the story in their words.
Folks may just work on their photos or just on their writing as they wish. The weekend will be a very fluid workshop. As always there will be a Youth Session, this time led by Danielle Gibson. Saturday March 14, Pat and Baiba Morrow will make a special presentation of their book Searching for Tao Canyon in the Meeting Room at Lizard Creek Lodge. This will be free to the public. Pat and Baiba MorrowA stunning A/V retrospective presentation of mind-bending photography that unlocks a hidden world of natural wonder, personal reflection and outdoor adventure.
One of the world’s most exotic landscapes lies at the heart of the American southwest. Across the high desert of Utah and northern Arizona stretches a labyrinthine complex of slot canyons — narrow, deep, overhanging, and fantastically carved by wind and water in brightly coloured sandstone.
In their newly released book, Searching for Tao Canyon, Art Twomey, Pat Morrow and Jeremy Schmidt tell the story of a decades-long quest to find the perfect slot canyon. An imagined, perhaps non-existent ideal, they called the object of their search Tao after the Chinese word for the way. They thought of it more as an archetype than an actual place — a sort of slickrock Xanadu that might never be found except in the mind. What they did find was an extraordinary world of natural sculpture and shifting light hidden beneath the harsh desert surface. In 1975, when they began their search, slot canyons were virtually unknown, their exquisite beauties not yet appreciated. There were no guidebooks, no guided tours, no satellite images to work from. The pleasure came from old-fashioned exploration and a sense of discovery, of finding places no one knew. Along the way, the dirtbag trio inadvertently helped pioneer the sport of canyoneering. Using jury-rigged climbing and caving techniques, they developed a hybrid sport that required rappelling down sandstone cliffs into unknown chasms, wading or swimming through bone-chilling pools in the sunless bottoms, and using rock climbing skills to follow stone-carved steps left by the ancient people who lived in the maze-like tangle of canyon country. Both the book and the presentation include images from about 30 of the best canyons, all of them distinct in character and color and shape, and all with different stories to tell. Some have become famous, Instagrammed and YouTubed nearly to death, drawing enthralled visitors by the thousands from around the world. Others remain as secret and hidden as ever. Pat’s presentation, based on the book (https://rmbooks.com/book/searching-for-tao-canyon), tells a story of youthful adventure and contemplative search in one of the world’s most compelling landscapes. And how, even 40 years ago, he and his colleagues recognized the need to protect these delicate spaces by not giving the name or locations away, but rather to try and sensitize the public to the vulnerability of the natural world. Last year Pat and Jeremy returned to canyon country and, with a young Navajo rancher turned distance runner, reconnected with one of the canyon systems they had first explored before Eli Neztsosie was born. |
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Keith LiggettKeith Liggett is a ski bum and writer. His ski writing has appeared in major ski journals and in over 75 newspapers. In 2009, Whitecap Books published Island Lake Lodge: the cookbook, which won a Gourmand Award, and went into a second printing in May 2010. like socks in the dryer, his second collection of poetry was published in 2013. The Fernie Originals, a series of profiles of Fernie businesses and essays about Fernie appeared in 2015.
Keith has led writing workshops and organized writing conferences in the United States and Canada for close to thirty years. Keith blogs at: www.fernie.com/off-camber www.keithliggett.ca |
Fernie Lodging Co.
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Lizard Creek Lodge
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Snow Creek Cabins @ Fernie Lodging Co.
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Fernie Slopeside Lodge
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