Suffering (by Ian Plant)

In the immortal words of Dimmu Borgir (beats me, some Norwegian death metal band), “all great art is made from suffering.” Truer words have never been spoken by a creepier set of dudes. Think about it for a moment: Picasso’s Guernica was born from the travails of war; Beethoven was sucker-punched by irony (A deaf composer? Really?) and lived in chronic pain; Jack Kerouac struggled with clinical depression and substance abuse. And who can talk about suffering artists without mentioning Van Gogh: when the demons in his head weren’t causing enough grief, he upped the ante by cutting off his own ear. Wow, now THAT is suffering! No wonder he was such a great artist.  

Now, there’s one group of artists who suffer more than all the others: nature photographers. We spend long hours, days, even weeks in the field, usually alone, tired, and dirty. We get feasted upon by thousands of insects: mosquitoes, black flies, green heads, horse flies, deer flies, ticks, chiggers, no-see-ums–you name it, we’ve been bitten by it. We are exposed to the mercy of the elements: always too cold, or too hot, or too wet. We are constantly in peril from a number of dangers: exposure, heights, falling rocks, rogue waves, lightning, animal attacks, drowning, hypothermia, frostbite, avalanches–just to name a few. At the end of every day, our feet are sore, our muscles ache, and our heads droop with fatigue. Van Gogh’s ear episode starts to pale by comparison.

So, it stands to reason that . . . nature photographers are the best artists the world has ever known! Considering the crowd who reads this blog, it’s unlikely that I’ll be getting any hate mail over this statement. A pleasant change, to be sure.

I’ve had my fair share of nature-induced suffering, but a few incidents rise to the top of the list.

1. I was attacked by a swarm of angry yellow jackets, and stung well over 50 times.

2. I lost my footing while photographing a waterfall and slid down fifteen feet before managing to stop myself at the edge of a twenty foot drop. 

3. I almost drowned off the coast of Cape Cod. Well, more accurately, I could have almost drowned if the Coast Guard hadn’t rescued me. I did get very wet and cold, and lost $13,000 worth of equipment. It would have been cheaper to get a severed ear stitched back onto my head.

I’d like to hear from others about the suffering they have endured while in the field. Please feel free to leave a comment and tell us your own personal story of toil and dread. Focus on the single worst event, rather than giving us a laundry list. And if it involves cutting off a body part, don’t bother to tell us unless you did it to free yourself from a fallen boulder pinning you to the ground, to lure away a wild animal intent on devouring you, or some other nature-related story. Masochistic ritual self-mutilation doesn’t count.

I’ve also included a poll. C’mon, someone must’ve been hit by a coconut. Perhaps dropped by a swallow?

~ by mountaintrailphoto on August 25, 2009.