In the highest reaches of the Southeastern United States, there exists a world that feels separate, and unlike anything else around it. Lonesome spruce and pine cling to a fragile zone where it is high enough and wet enough for them to persist. Remnants of the last ice age, they are reminded every year of the bitter cold from which they are born, as snow and ice batters them for months.

I’ve taken this exact photo multiple times, although this most recent one is my favorite. I was finally able to capture it on film, and in quite precarious circumstances. To me, this photo represents the culmination of a year of studying and practice.

This is one of my best compositions, I took it on the final day of a 3 day, 30 mile backpacking trip in the Shenandoah National Park. It had rained all day the prior day, and we were worse for the wear as we reached the highest elevation of the trip. At these cliffs, the sun broke the clouds for the first time in days. I was immediately called back to the famous Romantic painting of the same title, and tried my hand at homage.

I was in fact listening to Bobby Darin’s timeless classic on honeymoon in Maine, when we spotted this marvelous vessel cutting up the long cove we were in. I took three shots, and the weather was working wonders for me. I love that this image feels rugged and lonely, yet also elegant.

This photo epitomizes the allure and mystique of the Appalachian forests I so often find myself in. These old, tall trees, and deep dark hollows are simultaneously comforting and uncanny. Much has been said and many stories told the reflect the scary depth and expanse of these woods, but nevertheless, these forests more than any others I’ve walked have felt like home.

I ventured to the far north, way up into the great 100 mile wilderness of Maine to test my mettle against one of the finest peaks in all of Appalachia. It was a true alpine experience, with great effort and a head for heights needed to see me to the top. This place was desolate, one of the most remote locations I had visited thus far. The woods here felt sacred, untouched by the hands of man. Still yet, this is only because the country was so rugged, and so completely barren of any places to build or reason to develop.

On the high peaks where the wind is strongest, the fog dwells, and the light of dusk and dawn lingers longest, there is the Appalachian Balds. There is no official consensus on why these mountains are bald, and the phenomenon exists across the region, although in a fragile and delicate few ranges that fit the exact conditions needed to preserve the ecosystem. The balds are what inspired my mountaineering career, and to an even greater extent, my desire to learn photography.

This image says a lot for me. I’ve been seeing this abandoned house since I was a child. It was less than five minutes from my childhood home. It has always struck me as lonesome, and lots of people wonder why nothing has been done with it. Yet in spite of total neglect for decades, it somehow persists. I think this says something about life in the region as a whole. It is forgotten, yet it means something to the people who live around it. We wonder why it happened, but the rot continues without ceasing. Someday it will be gone entirely, and we can only think of how we loved it enough to remember it and ponder on its circumstances, but never enough to save it.

From my winter hike of the Roan, Grandfather Mountain is dazzled by the rising sun. I have been toying with the framing of the trees for a long time to add some pizazz to my mountain pics, and to mask my inability to capture the blue of the sky. In this one, it feels like we are peaking out of the forest to see something grand, and I am particularly fond of how the light dances across the scene.