photography

Etherquest!—30 years later

At 7am on January 14, 1994, it was -18F in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I drove to a location that I’d previously explored at Daytons Bluff, near West Hoffman along the Mississippi River.

Icy air resulted in magenta light with a freezing mist blowing off the river.

I found that to keep my lenses from fogging up, I had to keep my cameras outside, while I stayed warm in the car. My Nikon F3T was uncooperative since the battery didn’t fare well in the cold. Luckily, I had an F2 that I’d borrowed from fellow photographer Brian Jennison, and a Nikkormatt FTN, both of which were fully manual cameras.

It ultimately warmed to a flat 0 degrees by midday, but the lighting remained surreal and ethereal.

That evening as an icy dusk settled over the Twin Cities, I coined a mission and a name for my transcontinental winter adventure: Etherquest!

Dawn at Hoffman Avenue—’West Hoffman’—Daytons Bluff, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 14, 1994-Kodachrome 25 slide film, exposed using a Nikon F2.
Westward Burlington Northern freight catches the morning glint at West Hoffman, St. Paul. Kodachrome 25 slide film, exposed using a Nikon F2.
Eastward Canadian Pacific-Soo Line freight crosses the ice clogged Mississippi Rive against a frozen sky. Kodachrome 25 slide film, exposed using a Nikon F2.
Northtown Yard at dusk.

Over the remainder of my overland trip to Los Angeles, I focused my photographic efforts on capturing railroads in ethereal light, especially around sunrise and sunset, and I named the whole trip Etherquest!

Months later, I wrote this up as a feature article published in Pacific RailNews and titled Etherquest!. This unusual article was a contributing consideration in Pentrex Publishing’s choice to hire me in June 1994 as an associate editor for PRN and its sister publication, Passenger Train Journal.

Taking the job resulted in another epic drive from California to Wisconsin.

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