Images of a White Winter in the Pacific Northwest

Jeanne Hansen (with introduction by Jonah Raskin)

Veteran photographer Jeanne Hansen lives and works in San Francisco, where she has documented the punk scene which goes on decade after decade. Every year, she makes an annual pilgrimage to the Pacific Northwest where she was born and raised and where she reconnects to her sister, her two brothers and her longtime friends. On a recent trip to Baker City, Oregon—while rains pelted and flooded much of California—a heavy snowstorm turned the Pacific Northwest white as far as her eyes could see. Now that it’s summer in our part of the world, images of snow and winter might be welcome to readers of Caveat Lector.

“It was spectacular,” Hansen says. “As awesome and as tranquil as only nature can be. It was wonderful to be there with my family.” Sometimes nature can be both terrible and beautiful and sometimes terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible. I titled my book about American wilderness writing A Terrible Beauty, a phrase I borrowed from William Butler Yeats’ poem, “Easter, 1916” about the Irish Republican insurrection brutally repressed by British troops.

After the winter snowfall in Eastern Oregon, Hansen seized the moment, bundled up with coat, scarf and hat, went outdoors and took a hundred or so color photos. Recently, she and I selected half-a-dozen images that describe a special place and a particular time. The images take viewers into the "wildness and wet," to borrow the words that the nineteenth century English poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, used to describe the natural world he loved. Hansen’s photo don’t include people, but their presence is suggested by their absence.

In her winter landscape, snow calls to fire, as though they have been bound together as siblings for millennia. Several of Hansen’s relatives—former fire fighters—along with her friends gathered logs and set them ablaze in the woods. After she and others plunged into an icy pond— an annual winter rite— Hansen drew close to the fire, warmed herself and took photos of the flames that licked and ate the timbers, melted the snow on the ground and heated her cold bones.

“It was a time of renewal, rejoicing and welcoming the New Year,” Hansen says. Even if you think you know winters in the Pacific Northwest this might be a chance to see one of them with fresh eyes.

I know I was drawn to Hansen’s photos because they remind me of winters in the snow on the East Coast, building igloos, ice skating on frozen ponds in the woods, sledding, skiing and snowshoeing. I can’t remember feeling cold, but rather a sense of exhilaration in the silence that the snow-covered landscape delivered. As a boy, it felt miraculous to wake in the morning and to see the white ground and the trees flecked with snow as though the world itself had been reborn.

Click on images below for full-size versions.

Cemetery in the Snow