Rocky Mountains: Wilderness Reflections

Patricia Whitney, former coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program at
the University of Prince Edward Island, is the Bank of Montreal Visiting
Scholar in Women’s Studies at the University of Ottawa.

Tim Fitzharris is a nature photographer with more than 25 books to his
credit, including collaborations with such distinguished writers as John
Livingston. This time Fitzharris has produced both images and text for
Rocky Mountains: Wilderness Reflections. His gifts are really those of a
photographer; the narratives accompanying his dazzling pictures are
brief, predictable, and often prosaic. Nonetheless, this book remains a
fine collection of photographs.

The author organizes his material both thematically and regionally.
Beginning with an introduction based on his “Reflections on Beavers
and Ponds,” the autobiographically narrative text somehow attempts to
position the photographer as one with the beaver, or at least dwelling
in a communion of “brotherly affection” with Canada’s industrious
national animal. This type of writing is inept and, worse, detracts from
the splendid photographs.

In chapters exploring the Northern Rockies (Alberta and British
Columbia), the Central Rockies (Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming), and the
Southern Rockies (Colorado and New Mexico), the author provides the
reader with stunning photographs recording the glories of North
America’s greatest mountains. Captured in all seasons and lights, the
mountains, their rivers, lakes, flora, and fauna bring to mind one’s
own experiences of these natural splendors. Occasional still-life
studies, such as “Ponderosa Pine and Red Paintbrush,” express
Fitzharris’s painterly eye.

The photographer captures birds and animals with sensitivity, providing
shots of osprey, marten, loon, hummingbird, avocet, and the great
mammals of the mountain forests. Such images are nicely arranged among
the panoramic views of the sublime: Mount Robson reflected in a
mirrorlike lake, the peaks around Moraine Lake in Banff National Park,
beaver ponds surrounded by autumn colors in Waterton Lakes National
Park, the Sangre de Christo Range in Colorado, Gothic Mountain in
Colorado at moon rise, and the snow-covered Sante Fe National Forest in
New Mexico. All pictures are breathtaking, accurate, and magical.

Fitzharris ends this collection with a useful, short chapter of
“photography notes,” a welcome and generous addition for the nature
photographer, both amateur and professional, who will enjoy this book.