This photograph is one of the most important I’ve ever made. I made it early on in my tenure as the photography artist-in-residence at The Bascom Center for Visual Arts in Highlands, North Carolina, on the Highlands Plateau opf the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was an extraordinary time, which began in late February and ran until late April. One of the first things I did was to explore along the Cullasaja River, twisting along the narrow gorge road and pulling over at any turnout I could find. On one such stretch, I clambered down the steep slope and found this boulder in the river. It was my father’s birthday, February 24, and of course I’d have thought that the very reason I was there, enjoying this immense opportunity, was because he’d gifted me his Pentax K1000 twenty years before. And by the time I stood there, on a wet rock over the river, he’d been dead for nearly a decade.

There was something about the solidity of that boulder, its endurance, that resonated with me. I shot it many times and at many times of the day, but this shot was done in the evening, when the shadows of the trees along the banks cast themselves over the water. I wanted the water to be moving, so a slow shutter speed was necessary. What I wanted was that boulder, unassailable, in the midst of movement, the serenity of it, the unperturbed strength in the midst of constant change. I connected this idea with my father, and I wanted to inhabit that kind of strength, as well. To me, this photograph is totemic. When I showed it to my high school students, one of them told me they thought it was a mountaintop rising out of the clouds. I loved the idea.