THIS BOOK HAD ITS GENESIS about five years ago at Lake Lovely Water in the Tantalus Range of British Columbia. Up in that beautiful place is where we discovered our shared passions for mountains, art, poetry, photography, philosophy, salmon and The Grateful Dead. We too are grateful, for the loving support of our wives Kathy and Betty, and the creative assistance of Susy Johnsen with the design of this book.

These paintings and poems are inspired by the wonders we’ve been blessed to see and feel on many adventures in the mountains of western Canada over the last four decades. But the time scale we have attempted to capture in our images and words is much, much  longer.

The title, Passing Through, was inspired by a review of the film The Practice of the Wild (about the wonderful poet Gary Snyder), which had this anecdote:

One night, when he [Gary’s friend Lew Welch] was still alive and was sitting with me by a campfire outside under the pine trees and stars up in the Sierra Nevada…and after a long while of silence, he said to me, “Gary, do you think the rocks pay attention to the trees?” and I said, “Why, I don’t know Lew. What are you driving at?” and he said, “Well, the trees are just passing through.”