Review by Allen Best
Winter – December 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
A Colorado Winter – Photography by John Fielder
Essays by M. John Fayhee
Westcliffe Publishers
Englewood, Colorado
ISBN: 1-56579-289-0
THE FIRST TIME I laid eyes on A Colorado Winter, I became excited and more than a little homesick. I was sitting in a sweltering office in a basement along Denver’s Larimer Street. It was hot outside, too, and grubby as a cat box. Inside the book was page after page of scenes I knew from the Colorado Rockies, or scenes I wanted to know.
The theme of this book, the 29th from photographer John Fielder, is that Colorado’s winters have a more subtle beauty than that of Colorado’s summers, but one that is no less intense. I didn’t have to be persuaded, but Fielder’s photos do a good job of recalling why it is, exactly, that I feel that way. Snow cleanses the landscape and muffles the hard edges.
You don’t find this dimension of winter in low-lying areas where the snow seldom falls. My virginal winter in the mountains, in 1977-78, was in Kremmling, with frequent forays to Rabbit Ears and Gore passes. I knew immediately I had acquired a new friend. Even a winter as a union snowshoveler at a molybdenum mine failed to break that friendship. Instead, we became faster friends.
Fielder has scenes of a sunrise over the Ruby Range, outside of Crested Butte, and of sunrise in the rabbit bush-covered San Luis Valley. There are photos of sunset on Gunnison County’s Chair Mountain and sunset in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness. The book has photos of snow-scaled sand dunes and of canyon walls dripping with snow. There are aspen trees, conifers, icicles and gurgling, snow-lined creeks. With only a few exceptions, there is no evidence of man in these photos. This is no paean to the downhill ski industry.
I know how Fielder gets those photos — he works at it, and hard. Two winters ago I skied to a hut several miles north of Vail, on the edge of the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area, where Fielder was out until after dark with his camera, and up well before dawn, despite post-midnight conversation. His nap at mid-day, when lighting is most flat and unappealing, was deserved.
Four essays for the book were written by John Fayhee, whom I’ve known for close to 15 years. He makes his living on the edge of real journalism in Summit County, but his heart, obviously, is in ventures such as this. His theme is of the “healing powers of Nature,” and of the unparalleled marvels in the outdoors, from the always shifting angles of a frozen waterfall to the stunning color of sunrise above timberline.One of his essays tells of taking an Outward Bound course in Rocky Mountain National Park during a near blizzard.
“In 1979, I lived in Chicago for six months. During that time I was a regular at the Chicago Art Institute, and in a gallery populated by Monets and Picassos, I never once saw a painting or a sculpture that was worthy of being described in the same breath as what I’m seeing all around me as I snowshoe my way through Rocky Mountain National Park on this disorientingly blustery day. And while I was living in Chicago, I once had the pleasure of hearing Sir Georg Solti direct the Chicago Symphony. Never in a program dominated by the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Brahms did I hear a single note that could compare to the sweet noise of this wind blowing through my hair and my teeth in this awesome setting. No offense intended to Monét, Picasso, Brahms, Mozart, and Haydn, and I’m sure none taken.”
Fayhee observes that only within the last century has winter ceased to be something that is dreaded by most people, and only within the last generation is it something to be eagerly anticipated. Too, he captures the essence of the climate in Colorado locales such as Summit County, South Park, and the Gunnison Country:
“In these parts, winter doesn’t go gently into the good night; it only leaves of its own volition, in its own time. Summer doesn’t defeat winter in the Colorado high country; winter decides to simply stop fighting for a season. It’s like a big brother getting bored with picking on his little sister.”
That’s well said, and the book is well photographed. I do quibble about some details (e.g., the beaver trappers entered the high country in the 1820s, not the 1840s).
Otherwise, my only substantial fault with A Colorado Winter is that the photographs, and to an extent the text, tend toward the sweeping vistas of winter’s majesty. We always want to view forests, not individual trees, and in doing so we miss out on the subtleties that both Fielder and Fayhee vowed to seek with this book.
–Allen Best
