Blodgett Canyon: A Landscape of Norman Maclean

 Blodgett Canyon: A Landscape of Norman Maclean

By Bryan D. Spellman, Ph.D.

Some photographs begin with a view. This one began with a story.

I photographed Blodgett Canyon in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains while researching an article for Distinctly Montana magazine about the landscapes of Norman Maclean. Near Hamilton, this canyon connects the physical Montana I know through my camera with the Montana preserved in Maclean’s words.

Blodgett Canyon features in “USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky.” In that story, the canyon is part of the passage between mountain work and life down in the Bitterroot Valley. Reading about a place gives us one way of seeing it; standing before it with a camera gives us another.

In this photograph, sunlight catches the rugged rock faces while clouds partly conceal the higher ridges. Dark evergreens and a brilliant golden tree bring autumn into the foreground. There is a great deal happening between earth and sky, even in a still photograph.

That meeting of landscape and literature drew me to this project. Maclean’s places are real places, and visiting them adds another dimension to the experience of reading his work.

Read my article, “The Landscapes of Norman Maclean: Forest, Mountains, Water”:
https://www.distinctlymontana.com/landscapes-norman-maclean-forest-mountains-water

This photograph is available as wall art from LightIntoArt:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1664028635