As we depart from life on Earth, what shall be our legacy?
Artists might more easily own an answer to this question than other folks. I mean, besides parents! Even if not deemed big successes while alive, artists leave works behind for possible re-interpretation and fresh appreciation. A painter like Van Gogh looked poised for reckoning as an utter failure, yet long after his passing, his canvases have increasingly grown valued and celebrated. A writer like Melville could labor in relative obscurity for decades, and yet in the 20th Century his descendants might see top universities compete to possess every one of his scribbled notes.
Or not! The record’s clear: things can go either way. It’s said, no one puts a handprint on the water. Overall, our doings must take a plunge into the cultural compost as surely as our physical bodies must undergo a bout of elemental recycling. The number of luminaries whose “reps” withstand the onslaught of entropy down through the centuries is vanishingly small. Especially, considering the vast quantity of those who don’t quite manage to pull that trick off.
My years-long shtick as an Outdoors writer—22 of them with The San Francisco Chronicle—brought me in touch with authentic leaders, nature crusaders, and heroic adventurers. A star figure who happened to embody all three traits was the Bay Area’s own Galen Rowell, a nature photographer of uncommon drive, perception and genius.
WE’RE ALL CONSTANT COMETS
I recently came across a clip of a story a wrote I about Galen and his wife Barbara after their lives jolted to an abrupt finale in a fiery plane crash on a stretch of high desert at the north end of California’s Owens Valley, on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. That piece I wrote back in 2002 was part elegy, part obituary, but mostly paean. It got me to thinking about Rowell’s lingering effects on the world.
“Captured rays of light, motes of meaning held in well-chosen words, friendly contacts, kind gestures of support—these are some of the notes of grace shed, like particles from a comet’s tail, during the brilliant passage of Galen and Barbara Rowell. We now sway, shocked, into a vacuum carved by their abrupt departure.”
That’s how I opened the piece.
As of now, some 22 years later, many of Galen Rowell’s books of sterling photos and advice on photography remain available, even if the Mountain Light Photography studio in Bishop that he established in 2001 finally shuttered its doors in 2017. I assume his awesome oeuvre of 400,000 images is still being curated by someone, hopefully a family member loyal to his legacy. It looks like pre-owned prints can be bought on eBay, and some fresh ones sourced from Getty Images.
Yet I wonder about some of his effects that could be categorized as more vague or ephemeral: Rowell’s influence on people who met him, worked with him, mountaineered by his side or attended his photography workshops. People who didn’t just track his remarkable life story, but were directly stimulated and inspired by his vibrancy and generosity of spirit.
I suppose that you can number me among those.
WILL THERE BE A CHARGE FOR THAT?
I interviewed Rowell for some of my outdoor stories, and at times to create reviews of his forthcoming books. We got to be friends—not tight ones, yet we enjoyed a reasonably warm level of interaction. I went to parties at his studio when it was in Emeryville, and I still own a few works signed by him. Based on those contacts, I can aver that in a world where most people are wired for 110 volts, Rowell was clearly set up to run at 220, and it didn’t take much time or effort for him to flip his switch to full power.
More than anyone else I’ve ever known, Galen Rowell was always “on.”
Some people found him arrogant and self-absorbed, even if they occasionally let themselves feel enraptured by his photographic achievements. Others, unfazed by his unrelenting intensity, simply relished the entire show. To say that man was competitive at nearly all times and in most settings is an understatement.
“We shared a hotel room at a meeting of the American Alpine Club,” recalled Grant Barnes, then-director of the UC Berkeley Press and an early mentor of Rowell’s budding career. “An ad hoc chin-up contest among the climbers broke out on a spiral staircase in the hotel. Galen waited till everyone else was done, so he could find out who scored the highest count. Finally, he proceeded to beat that number—but using only a single arm! Pound for pound, he was the strongest man I ever knew.”
HOT PURSUIT OF PEAK PERFORMANCE
In 1992, I joined Rowell in a cross-country endurance race called the Avia Scramble, held on the slopes of Mount Hamilton, just east of San Jose. The event combined rough terrain running with ascents and descents of steep and crumbly hills. I felt proud to complete the course just ahead of the last-place finisher. Rowell, a decade older than I, had already blazed to the finish line near the front of the pack, right on the heels of top national athletes.
Where did such an impressive level of drive come from?
Rowell was slight, short and wiry. It’s probably too easy to blend “small-man complex” with “only-child-syndrome” to explain Rowell’s assertive and sometimes abrasive personality. But surely, such aspects ought to be cited as potent influences.
However, his draw to nature was also instinctive, strong, dominating and occurred early. Throughout his life, Rowell put everything he had into celebrating the beauty and wonders of our wide, wild world. He did his first roped climb in Yosemite in his teens. He managed to finish high school, but dropped out of college so he could become one of the scruffy but dedicated young climbers of the park’s legendary Camp Four gang.
His economic lifeline came from owning and running a Berkeley auto repair shop. This shop also supported his climbing jones by helping him create awesome hotrods that appeared to be innocent family station wagons. At the end of each week, he fired up these rigs to speed to favored climbing sites in the Sierra.
BIG DADDY ROTH WOULD APPROVE
In one memorable episode, after he spotted a red CHP meatball glowing in his rearview mirror, he conjured a quick escape plan with his on-board crew of climbing buddies. Rowell accelerated, whipped around a few more turns, then slid into a vista point turnout. A blanket and various food items were immediately spread out. As the CHP cruiser sped past them, those placid picnickers gazed at it in mock surprise.
And when it came to scoring his own climbing achievements during Yosemite’s “Big Wall” heyday of first ascents, Rowell made sure he was on the cutting edge, not an also-ran. His contemporaries noted that he tended to over-share the tales of any triumph, but it’s not bragging when you back it up. Over the course of ten years, 1962-72, he made 19 first ascents, including the blank south face of Half Dome—on his second try with that fabled rascal Warren Harding.
Royal Robbins, another top star in the rock world (who’d helped rescue Harding and Rowell during their ill-fated first attempt) admired him as both an athlete and an artist. “Galen liked to race up routes faster than anybody else,” Robbins told me. “I never dreamed he’d become the world’s foremost color photographer too, but he went on to terrific success. His work has delighted people around the world. He demonstrated true reverence for nature, mountains and very different cultures.”
Rowell’s photography began just as a way to show family and friends where he’d gone in the great outdoors. But that hobby soon became a fascination, next a compulsion, and ultimately a career. He sold his auto shop and gave himself one year to make a go of photography while living on those proceeds. National Geographic hired him within six months for a cover story on Yosemite climbers—and that chap was soon well-launched upon his desired path.
POWERING ON DOWN THAT FREE WAY
Michael Powers of Miramar is another top-notch, self-taught adventure photographer, as well as someone who cites Rowell as an inspiration. In 1998 he accompanied Rowell on a dynamic seminar that took place all along Peru’s Inca Trail.
“Galen liked to show off, no question,” Powers said. “However, an upside was that he came alive onstage. In that sense, he was a natural teacher. He showed what could be achieved through concentration. One spiritual aspect of his work was that he asked photographers to stay ethical. I admire that point— what makes for better pictures is trying to be a better human being.”
Over my years of interaction with Rowell, I acquired a signed copy of his magnum opus, the photo book “Mountain Light,” and a signed print of his color shot of a redwood grove. However, I ran into a bit of a sticky wicket after I tried to acquire a copy of his most famed image, of a rainbow that arched high above the Buddhist palace named the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet.
Since income from prints of that shot were devoted by Rowell to charitable causes, the price for just one of them was fixed at $10,000, and he wasn’t about to budge or negotiate.
TRIUMPH OF THE POSTER CHILD
So, I settled for a poster of the image, which was only $150, and asked Rowell to sign that. He told me that he never, ever deigned to put a signature upon mere posters. But at this moment in time, his charming wife Barbara stood right at his elbow. She grinned and poked her husband and said, “Oh Galen, go ahead! Don’t be so uptight about it.” So he did.
I eventually donated the signed print of the redwoods to the Save-The-Redwoods League; I assume it still hangs on their office wall in San Francisco. But I kept that one-of-a-kind signed poster, which hangs on a wall in my home. It’s not only a tranquil and lovely and exotic image, it’s also a reminder that Rowell considered photography an action sport. He was in Lhasa after a storm, with the sun about to set, when saw the rainbow take shape and start to glow. He realized that if he sprinted quickly across the slope he stood on, he could position that rainbow’s end directly over the Dalai Lama’s traditional palace. He took off running, and managed to score the shot only seconds before the rainbow proceeded to fade and vanish.
When I gaze at that image now, it speaks to me of Rowell’s headlong pursuit of his dreams. If you hope to succeed in any difficult profession or vocation—which writing and photography both emphatically are—then you must gird up your loins and make a total commitment to chase after it. Never rest or relent until your desiderata is in your hands. And then, as soon as possible, set your heart on the next goal and go after that just as hard.
There are aspects of Rowell’s death that I find difficult to comprehend. Yes, it was tragic, yet it was also rather stupid—uncharacteristically so. One bit of wisdom any rock climber needs to learn early on is that a bold move ought to rest upon a foundation of consummate care and caution. Smart planning and preparation are all. If you intend to test that narrow crack as an upward route, first you must set “bomber pro”—the protection that secures your rope to the rock in order to arrest a catastrophic fall. Thus, you live to climb another day.
NOW, WHERE DID I PUT THAT LENS CAP?
In the case of the plane crash that took their lives on the night of August 11, 2002, such a wise approach was not applied. The pilot had just 52 hours of flying the Aero Commander they occupied, and he had a mere 1.6 hours piloting it at night, so he was unqualified to zoom passengers around in anything other than broad daylight. Rowell and his wife (an accomplished pilot herself) should have known this. However, in a pitch black sky at 1:23 a.m., this pilot to whom they’d entrusted their lives circled the airfield, made his final approach, then came down in the rough desert landscape a quarter-mile short of the runway. And that was that.
I sometimes wonder if, at some level of awareness, we might not plan or choose the biggest moments or changes or challenges in our lives. Whether it’s possible, say, to decide to die near the summit of our achievement and fame and power. I mean, rather than watch that pinnacle of life slide on by as we head inexorably on into decrepitude and decline. But I suppose such a question is unanswerable, except perhaps by the most astute of crystal-ball-gazers who manage to dwell with us muggles.
What is undeniable, even if it is ephemeral, and in most ways incalculable, is that his vision does contribute handsomely to our world more than two decades after his passing. And that brilliant legacy of Rowell’s does bid fair to continue a while longer. Who among us can hope for an equal or better bequest?
I ended that newsprint piece with a quote from him that I had acquired in 1986, back when “Mountain Light” was first published by Sierra Club Books.
“My travel and my work have made me much more of an environmentalist than I ever was,” Rowell told me. “I hope my work has an effect on that worldwide struggle. In a very real way, I think it may help people aware of the beauty we have on the Earth right now, and how fleeting it can be.”
