In the summer of 2005, I climbed some two thousand feet up Silver Star Mountain with my father’s camera, alone, to see what are known as the “Indian Pits.”
Located in southwest Washington, Silver Star Mountain stands at 4,390 feet in elevation, looming over the Columbia River Gorge and offering unimpeded views to four major peaks of the Cascades—Rainier, Adams, St. Helens, and Hood. In the west, you can see the Coast Range. The day I climbed was clear, as my photographs would show.
The hike, much of which follows the steep grade of an old road at first, ascends over the course of three miles. It is rated as difficult. I have no idea what I packed for food, what I wore, or the time of day I climbed. I know only that I carried the Pentax K1000 that I’d had, by then, for two years. I had only one lens, the 50mm f1.7. I don’t think I had a filter of any sort. The film was Ilford Delta 100 that I would have bought at Blue Moon Camera in Portland, where I lived.
What was I looking for? A sense of spirituality, no doubt. The Indian Pits, clearly a colloquial name, are also known as “vision pits.” It’s thought that young men went to the mountain and fashioned these pits from the scree fields along the ridgeline. Perhaps they stayed in them overnight, or even for days. I’d long been interested in Native American culture—its mythologies, its religions—and I simply wanted to see them for myself.
I’d learned about them from William Sullivan, who’d authored the 100 Hikes series. A native Oregonian, Sullivan hiked every trail, so far as I know, in the state of Oregon. This trail was part of his 100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon, which included a number of trails in Washington, mostly along the Columbia River. At the time, I was enrolled in the Portland State University graduate writing program; I’d eventually publish a poem, “The Indian Pits at Wind Mountain.”
Not long after this climb, I put my father’s camera in a box for twelve years. I switched to a little Sony point-and-shoot, something I picked up at Best Buy, I think, and used to document hikes and trips while I was writing for the Travel Oregon blog. It wasn’t the same.
Indian Pit on Silver Star Mountain, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington, 2005. Mt. Hood can be seen in the distance.
In 2020, I unearthed these images, including the original 3½ by 5-inch C-prints I’d had made at Blue Moon Camera. That spring, I’d been laid off from my content writing job after six years, a relationship had dwindled away, and COVID-19 had us all in fear. Looking for a way to deal with all the grief and anxiety, I mounted and framed two of these Silver Star images and put them in 8x10 frames. they hang in my room to this day.
Why do this? What was it these images meant to me? Clearly they signified something and still do.
This summer, I uncovered the original negatives for these photographs. They remain in perfect condition. I was elated; I thought they’d been lost to time, that I’d thoughtlessly disposed of them the way my parents did after they’d had drug store prints made while I was growing up. Now, I knew, I could print them myself—and not only print them, but ultimately reinterpret them.
I had a lot to think about, beginning with how much to enlarge them. The 8x10 gelatin silver prints I made in the darkroom showed off the occasional soft focus, depth of field issues; I soon found that 5x7 not only solved that but provided a more intimate piece.
And as with other negatives from this time, I realized I could print them an entirely different way: lith printing, which gave these landscapes a unique look, something more atmospheric.
Indian pit on Wind Mountain, above the Columbia River, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Washington, 2005.
At the time I made the exposures, I was clearly thinking composition. I have several versions of these photographs, and they show different angles, different compositions. For the Silver Star Mountain shots, the two I was to print and frame were ones I shot consecutively—but not before trying out different vantages. As Ansel Adams once said, “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” I intuited this at the time.
The Silver Star shots, too, were made without a red or yellow filter, so far as I know, and so the sky is white. Each image figures mountains fading into the distance, into the haze, gradually assuming a lighter tone as they recede. To me, on reflection, this made me think of ancient Chinese paintings and their use of white space to signify, well, many things. The void, for one. Infinity, eternity, or simply a space for emotion to enter.
There is the general subject as well, which, granted, only the title points to: the fact that these are “vision pits” of not only historical but spiritual relevance. To me, the dark that is contained in the pits themselves is counterpoint to the white in the distance. Two kinds of blank spaces, two kinds of abysses.
I suspect these images will resonate very differently when I lith print; this form of development tends to color the paper, to create very dark blacks but also very little blank spots. We’ll see how it works as I try different approaches this year.
What makes a photograph successful, to me, seems to be two major things: the clarity of the photographer’s intent (I most often want to make something beautiful, meaningful, emotional, significant) and whether the composition conveys that, whether it creates a similar experience in the viewer. Naturally, this equates it to the idea of “equivalence”: that the photograph is the equivalent of the emotion the photographer felt when making it. This idea by Alfred Stieglitz profoundly affected Ansel Adams and Minor White, two of my favorite photographers.
That leaves viewers with a question. How do you see these photos? Do they resonate with you?