THE WICKED HUNT
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February 26, 2021

Ep 22 – How Camera helped published writer Lynn Martel to compliment her stories through photos

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Ep 22 - How Camera helped published writer Lynn Martel to compliment her stories through photos
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Hey Wicked Hunters, 

Welcome back to The Art of Photography Podcast!

Today we have a published and award-winning writer sharing her creative journey through writing and photography. Lynn grew up in Montreal and moved to Banff, Alberta, in Canada’s Rocky Mountains, in the early 1980s. She shared some of the most interesting stories from her 40 years of adventures in Canadian Rockies. Like how one person fell into a glacier crevasse and stuck there for 5 hours.

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Transcription:

Lynn Martel  0:00  
Wow when I climbed Mount Victoria, oh, it was such a funky day because the clouds were right up to the edge of the mountain on on front side. So we couldn’t see the big drop down the glacier and down the backside was conceal the rubble bellies. I didn’t have a camera on that trip. And I still think about

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  0:27  
a weekend this Welcome back to The Art of Photography podcast, where we share our passion on photography and how share how photography have given us hope, purpose and happiness for many of us. Now, today I have a guest who’s not only a photographer, but also an award winning as well as publish writer. So she’s based here in Canadian Rockies and I’m so excited to have her on board. halen. How’re you doing?

Lynn Martel  0:55  
I’m good, Stanley. How are you doing?

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  0:57  
I’m doing perfect. It’s a little bit warm here. And it’s crazy. I never thought it’s gonna be this warm ever in winter?

Lynn Martel  1:09  
Well, yeah, you’ve been living in the Rockies. One thing to know is that winter changes a lot. It varies a lot all across Canada, it’s different everywhere. And in the Rockies, we get wild wild swings. So it can eat a lot six one day and minus 26. The next day, when that happens. Montreal, Montreal winters are totally different.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  1:33  
Wow, that’s crazy. Because like last year, I had like pretty much like, as soon as I think November hits it never like I never see water coming out of the sky. It’s like

Lynn Martel  1:45  
oh, four. That’s perfect. Big. And our cold spell came really late last year, like late February when we had minus 25 minus 30 days. That’s a bit late. Usually we get them earlier, but every year is different. And it is warmer than when I first came to this part of the country.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  2:05  
Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, it’s crazy. So look, welcome in. I’m so glad to have you in here. I’m so excited to talk to you, actually. And give us a little bit of introduction, who’s Lin marteau and share with the listeners. Who are you and how you kind of get in here.

Lynn Martel  2:25  
Well, I’m a writer, that’s my first thing. But I’m also a passionate photographer. I grew up in Montreal, Montreal at that time was the biggest city in Canada. It was many New York, it was hip and happening. And fashion and music and dance clubs. That was my life. I thought that was what was important in the world was and dancing and music. Music is very important. But then as a 20 year old, my sister came up to bat to the Rockies. And I mean, if you look at a map of Canada, that’s like five hours on an aeroplane. It’s a long ways away. She came out here, and I came to visit and we both ended up staying. So that’s almost 40 years now. So living get coming to the mountains and dance then you got to understand that’s before the internet. It’s before much music from MTV. Its VCRs were brand new. Nobody had a computer in their house. Cell phones. No, none of that. I remember my first answering machine. So to come and come from a happening city like Montreal, where the food, the music, it’s very cosmopolitan, multicultural city. Yeah, to all of a sudden be advanced. This little town of like 8000 people in the mountains. It was a game changer for sure. A lot of ways. People were very friendly. If you’re a 20 year old kid advanced, it is a big party. It’s better than going to university. Because you don’t have class in the morning but you went we went to work on over a lot. But it was also then total commitment. Because people now live in mountain towns and they work remotely and you know they’re connected to people all over the world. For us to stay in bounce meant your whole life was in damp. You know I spoke to my parents on the phone like once a month. They probably phoned me and thankfully they retired here and my mom is 83 still hiking snowshoeing, cross country skiing. She’s great. That’s no longer with us. But yeah, so it was a total commitment. Your whole life your work your play your friends, your world within the small mountain town.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  4:43  
That’s That’s crazy. That’s amazing. I mean, it’s so inspiring. Sorry to hear about your your mom.

Lynn Martel  4:50  
Most good mums. Good. Oh, okay, still here. She’s 83 She’s still good. She lives in camo she’s out all the time. We lost my dad five years ago,

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  4:58  
right sorry. So that’s that’s where I was. I can’t Okay, so that’s, that’s amazing to hear. And yeah, like, it’s so inspiring. That is one of the most inspiring thing when I moved here to Canada, just seeing these people that are like 60 7080 years old that still going up this mountain and you know, like I’m on early on in my early 30. And I would bring my backpack and I go, like, first switch back and be like, Oh my God, how many? How many more and I just feel like, I saw these people. It’s like, Okay, I better shut up. And so walking, just it’s so inspiring and so inspiring. Indeed. Just seeing the commitment the love for the outdoor and the love for the mountain. It’s, it’s, it really opens up my world like, it’s like you right, I was born in, in metropolitan country, but it’s in Asia. So we try to park as close as as possible to the mall door. That’s

Unknown Speaker  5:54  
what we do. We would go around and around to find a parking by the door. It’s

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  5:58  
crazy. So yeah, it’s so inspiring to hear that and I’m glad that your your mind is still like healthy enough to to be able to do that. That’s

Lynn Martel  6:07  
great. You know, I did a 10 kilometre hike with her last summer.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  6:11  
Oh my god.

Lynn Martel  6:12  
Awesome Lake. That seems it’s incredible. It took her it took us about an hour and a half to get to the lake. Actually, it took two hours. But that’s because I stopped to do a lot of photography. So really, it was an hour and a half of walking time. Yeah, she’s steady. She’s just walking poles and she. But one thing you know what you said about the shopping mall. We didn’t grow up with a car. Montreal is a very transit friendly, friendly city. And it’s actually a terrible place. It’s where I learned to drive. And it was terrifying. But, so I grew up walking, always. And I have no patience to wait for a bus. So I blew off the high heels pretty early in my teenage life, because that was stupid. I couldn’t walk anywhere in the dark things. I wore them to the dance club once in a while, but I got rid of them too, because you can’t dance in them either. But walking is something that I grew up doing. And, and I walked, I would go through long long walks in Montreal. And when I go to the mountains, you know that and my mum walks like an hour and a half every day. That’s one of the reasons she’s so healthy at 83. She’s out there walking every day. She got off she goes and if it’s ICAO she put spikes on her boots, she actually has trouble with the putting the spikes on her boots. So she has two pairs of boots one pair that she keeps the spikes on.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  7:31  
Yeah, that’s very smart. Wow, that’s incredible. That’s incredible.

Lynn Martel  7:35  
Walking is and find somewhere different or new. Walking is the best way to explore a place. fast way to stay healthy.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  7:45  
I agree. So how does this? How does this all like fit in with them with with writing and photography? You know, like, how when do you actually start writing and when you decided that this was for me, like, you know, I’m not gonna do this corporate lifestyle or whatever the you know, the rest of the world is doing. But you’re taking a really courageous path in you know, in a great creative world. And we all know it’s it’s a tough industry to break into, especially when you just started so how did how does this passion come about? And how do you know that this was for

Lynn Martel  8:23  
you? I’ll say I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything. So that’s pretty much when it got to dance when I was 20 years old. When you live in a small mountain town you don’t have there are more options now, but there weren’t a lot of job options. So of course I learned to do retail and waitressing and I worked in ski shops, Snowboard Shop through the 90s in the early 90s. Sold sportswear a lot. And I waitress. And waitressing was when I started writing, I never I’ve never been part of the corporate world. I’ve never had a good paying job. So I kind of envy people who do that for a period of time and then have a nest egg before they go to the creative thing. But I skipped that part. But yeah, I did retail in waitressing for a long time, I worked with the tourists and I learned a tonne, working with our tourists, because people save their money and from all over the world save their money to come and see the Canadian Rockies. Wow, that’s humbling. And I get to live here. It’s not easy. But um, and so after the writing was something I always did, I kept a journal since the age of 11 or 12. i i and the journal was just all about me all the time. And the life I was living whatever year but then after being in the mountains about 10 years, one thing that happened was outdoor magazines, powders United States, which just closed this year broke my heart powder by mountain bike magazine, I was reading these magazines and and I thought, well, I’m living this life I should be writing about this too. So I started that way. I didn’t do really well with the magazine with the American magazines, I, I didn’t know how to pitch to them. They weren’t looking for outside stories and but I did. So it started with local local newspapers. So I started writing a column every couple of weeks and it was editor, the editor of the bath newspaper at the time. His name is Dave Rooney. I think he’s still in Revelstoke now. Um, he told me never to write without getting paid. And I’ll say that man, then I got, I didn’t get paid a lot. But writing pays half as much now. Like, writing for an online magazine pays less than I got paid 20 years ago, or 25 years ago. At the higher levels, writing campaigns, so anyone writing for National Geographic is getting paid well. But anyways, uh, but I saw this. The thing was, my friends were ski patrollers, they were at lunch technicians. They were training to be mountain guides. Now they’re all veteran veteran, senior mountain guides. And I felt that there was in our, in our local newspaper down, there was a lot of focus on the business community and on downhill skiing. But I was living at backcountry life, I was living skiing away from the ski hills and backpacking, I started mountaineering and climbing. And I, I learned there was a lot of history in this area that went with those activities. But at that time, nobody was writing about it. And then I learned, I worked part time for a heli ski company for a number of years and met a lot of the older guides, guides who started being mountain guides in the 60s and 70s. And who were part of the creation of the heli ski industry. I learned a lot from them. And and I realised there were so many stories all around me. And they weren’t getting a lot of attention in those years in the 90s. Nobody, hardly anybody was writing about them. Nobody. Yeah. It’s very different now, because there’s so many young people writing but then there wasn’t. And so I started doing it. And

I got a lot of encouragement. I got a lot of work. People were Yeah, I got a lot of assignments from that mostly in the mountain community. But I got some awesome, awesome assignments. They did. And over the years 10 biographical booklets on very special, accomplished mountain people. I just learned a lot of stories. So for me, it was about stories that were happening all around me. And I didn’t, I didn’t feel like they were being recorded very well. And also, some of the early stories have been recorded. There were some history books. But what was happening in the 90s and the 2000s, the 80s. And yeah, like, even the 70s, there were a lot of there was a period there that I didn’t feel I felt had been overlooked and not not written about enough. So to me, history is not what happened 100 years ago. Yes, it is. But it’s also what happened five minutes ago. And so I started interviewing all these fascinating people around me, who were living really interesting lives. That’s really

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  13:33  
cool. Yeah, I mean, I think the reason, sorry.

Lynn Martel  13:38  
And I think it’s because I grew up in a city. Because I understood coming from a city. And I used to go to New York as a 19 year old and run around for the day, and be back on the plane. But my dad worked for Air Canada, so I’d free plane tickets. And I would be back in Montreal by dark. Because I grew up that way. When it goes to the mountains, I knew this world was different. And special and unique.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  14:06  
Yeah, that’s cool that you like you actually share a lot of that. And, you know, like, that’s why I like to slow down my travel, I travelled to a lot of countries, I think it was like 29 countries or something like that. But it’s it’s very few that I actually get to spend a lot of times and go into a little bit more of the culture and the lifestyle. And, you know, I spent here for almost two years now and you know, I think the history part of it, like I haven’t really scratched even scratched the surface. So it’s been incredible to kind of see, like, you know, every now and then people would post this like old photos from back there and share a little bit of history and just be like, Wow, that’s incredible. There’s just yeah, it’s just like an unworldly thing, isn’t it when especially I suppose back there, you know, when it’s a little bit more untouched? It’s, yeah, it’s interesting. And now how does photography so so how do you go from writing to photography? You know how How’d you start saying, Well, I actually enjoy photography.

Lynn Martel  15:04  
Um, I’ve always had a bit of some interest in photography. In Montreal, my dad actually had a little Pentax and he would set up a dark room in the bathroom. Yeah, to black curtain and, and a couple other places we lived, he was able to do that. And then the last place, I lived with my parents when I was in Sitia, which is Quebec college. Yeah, he wasn’t able to do it in that place. But anyways, it’s something so there was always a bit of an exposure to it. And when I came out to the mountains I went lots of years without having a camera, because in those days, you had to buy film, and then you had processor. So when you’re making minimum wage, you don’t always have money for that. So I had, yeah, wow, when I climbed Mount Victoria, oh, it was such a funky day, because the clouds were right up to the edge of the mountain on on front side. So we couldn’t see the big drop down the glacier. And down the backside was, you could see all the rubble bellies, I didn’t have a camera on that trip. And I still think about digital changed my life. Because prior to that, computers not have not, it’s heavy. And I’m small. I’m five foot three. Now I’ve shrunken and she used to be five, four, I think carrying a pack might be part of that. And if I was going to try and keep up with with six foot guys, you know, I had to work really hard to keep up and carry a pack. And so there were lots of trips where I didn’t have a camera, but then the digital cameras came along. And in the early 2000s Really big. And I had tried little periods of time where I had a camera didn’t have one had one didn’t want. But anyways, with digital, all of a sudden, you could have a small talk small camera that fit on my chest strap that took decent pictures. So that was great, because since about 2006 or seven, I’ve had a camera with me on all my adventures. And I’ve gone through a big progression of cameras. Now here I am getting older and shrinking. And I’m carrying I’m using a Sony a seven, two. But I don’t take it everywhere. Because sometimes it’s too much. And I have a fabulous little canon that I carry. I can’t remember which model is actually getting a little repair right now. Anyways, but it wasn’t a cheap one. It’s a really nice one, but it fits on my chest strap. So that when I can take any gear, I can take it rock on a rock climb. It can take it up anything and there’s no weight so it’s not a problem. Yeah. So it was a progression and the more time I spend in the mountains especially now because I’m moving a little slower my partner and I take our time a bit more than than mountains when you’re young you’re trying to get to the summit. It’s go go go go go. And now you know all these amazing beautiful things they see in nature. I actually stop and take the picture now.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  18:20  
That’s incredible. I know exactly what you mean. I’m pretty sure this LM like 160 centimetre I don’t know what’s that translate to two feet but man like close to me. Yeah, so like trying to keep up with this tall guy. So he’s like, I have to do twice steps where every step you take and exactly, and I got like this big pack is I got my DSLR and I’m not the foetus as well because you know they live here in the Mountain I just like it like you know, every time I took like one photo and like man like they disappear already. It’s a tough job for sure for sure. You know, the vertical challenge vertically challenged problems for sure. So I know exactly what you mean. And it’s really changed the game isn’t it like the digital cameras is everything a lot more compact and a lot more possibility. So

Lynn Martel  19:14  
even my Sony mirrorless like that actually. When I have my big lens I have a 24 to 105 which is fabulous lens and it’s good for a lot of situations but it’s quite heavy. And I don’t take my tripod everywhere but I just recently got a little point lander Hilliard Super Why because that’s great for if I’m getting up high, but it’s small enough and light enough that I can actually bring it with me.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  19:42  
Yeah, no, that’s cool. And now I think that story that you share with us in Victoria. First of all, that’s incredible. You went up Mark Victoria is it’s it’s a it’s a beautiful place there. I haven’t been there myself. It’s a big achievement for sure. But um, you Yeah, like, I think a lot of us can go through that sort of place as well, where we go, oh, man, I really wish I could, you know, capture and share that with everyone. So what are some of the most interesting maybe share with us one or two experience that you have that, that you are able to capture with your camera?

Lynn Martel  20:22  
It’s the little things. I have some hammer with me, every time I go with backcountry skiing, and it’s the simple, small things. And I’m still working on my skills because I see things that I wish I could do a better job of capturing something really great in that place that my skills aren’t there yet, but we’re gonna have only been working at it really for the last couple of years. Let me think.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  20:57  
So what are some of the things that you love to capture maybe when you go back countries

Lynn Martel  21:01  
marketing up on the glaciers? Yeah. It’s funny, because there’s a lot of people right now going in photographing glacier cakes, which are fabulous. But I like to get up on glacier and get out there. And where you’re just surrounded by this ocean of snow with some pizza distance and, and to be in that world, when you’re up in that world in the winter, there’s no sound if it’s not windy, there’s no sound. There’s no trees. So there’s no birds. There’s nothing growing up there as you’re surrounded by miles of Niles, of snow and ice. It’s such an amazing environment. When I give a presentation on my book, which I’ll show you guys later, on my glacier book. Yeah, I have a couple of video clips I use and if you’re around the glacier in the summertime, it’s water, water water. So that actually that environment in the summer is my favourite place to be at the toe of glaciers in the moraines with the rocks that have just been recently exposed that you know, were under ice for 1000s of years. And now, every year more new rocks are being being exposed the mouth sei smells, but that’s a fascinating environment for me. Where the waters trickling, trickling, roaring, gushing, spilling waterfalls, the noisy environment in the summer, there’s so much water going on. And wildflowers is the other summer passion. So yeah,

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  22:31  
it’s it’s amazing to hear that you go into the glacier. It’s something that I want you to do, but I never, I haven’t had the chance or the skill to be able to travel into glacier yet. But it’s like looking at so the other day when I was going to exploring the ice cave, I saw like four people on the glacier and just like man, that would have been so wild, like just travelling up the glacier.

Lynn Martel  22:55  
On glaciers, sorry, I camped in a tent on glaciers.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  22:59  
Yeah, that would have been really well that like, you get you get like blown over like with the with the highway

Lynn Martel  23:06  
sometimes. One of the chapters in my stories advice book is called How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the wind. When you can, when you camp in a tent on a glacier, you you stake it down with your ice axes, your ski poles, your skis, you’re tying it down. You build a fence of snow blocks, like an igloo fence around your your tent. Yeah, you do a lot of things.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  23:33  
Yeah, cuz I was like just imagining it. Like if they were going up in and pitch a tent. And for whatever reason, if the anchor can it comes down, it comes out, man that’s like a long way down. And it’s a slippery slope from the looks of it.

Lynn Martel  23:47  
Well, it’s depending on the glacier, a lot of weight, like when you get up on the Columbia Icefield it’s pretty flat up there. But the wind can throw you a long distance. And I’ve been I’ve been knocked over in the wind when the wind is so strong that, that it just knocks me to my butt, even with a pack of one.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  24:06  
So I want to talk a little bit more about your book. And your book is it’s the story of Isaac in mind, right? Yeah. Yeah, story itself is Yeah. So. And in there, you cover a lot about your experiences, you know, which is what you just mentioned here. Do you want to share with us what really inspired you to write this book? And you know how? Yeah, how does it come about?

Lynn Martel  24:36  
Well, I’ve been writing about people mountain, the mountain community for more than 25 years. And over those years, I interviewed I wrote stories about a lot of artists going up on a glacier creating something from something artistic being inspired by glaciers. I’ve been out on glaciers with mountain guides by backcountry skiing lodges, and also with scientists, and, and I’ve been out in the field with scientists as they work on the different kinds of research they do on glaciers. There’s a lot happening on the glaciers in Alberta and British Columbia. So that’s southern Southwestern Canada. And we’ll all have BC coast. It’s the coast mountains is a massive glaciation glaciated area. So, over the years, I have a friend who works to the United Nation. He’s in water. So he’s a water expert. And he works lots of scientists to hydrologists in glaciologist. So from him, I ended up meeting a lot of scientists. But also over the years, I saw that whenever I saw books about glaciers, so often, they were looking at glaciers from the scientific perspective, but not really from the cultural one. And in our part of the world, bleachers are part of our lives, whether you know it or not, like some of the meltwater that can send the Bow River right through Banff and through Calgary and through Saskatchewan, all the way to the Hudson Bay. That’s glacier water, partly. But yeah, we we have people in this part of the world who make a living on glaciers every day. You know, Pete, and mountaineers who are out on glaciers every day, scientists, artists, so I wanted to write a book that showed glaciers to be more than just these massive device on a landscape that scientists study and tell us they’re melting. Glaciers are in the news a lot. But I wonder how much does anybody living in Manila, know about a glacier? So and even in Canada, growing up in Montreal, and no clue, no one’s really sure was. So I thought, and because of my experience, my writing experience and all the different people I’ve interviewed over the years, and, and my own experiences, my own adventures. So the idea grew from there. And I took senior. So the idea I had the idea six years ago, and the book came out in October. So it took six years to make it happen. I had lots of my own interviews and articles in my files, pulled them all together, and then I had to shape it. And then I went out looking for new stories, too, because I things I’d heard about over the years. People I’d heard about, oh, I need to interview this person. I contacted I got like 20 different photographers give me some of their photos, because mine weren’t good enough to tell the story. Or people had just great photos that I knew would help tell the stories. Because it’s many, many stories. And I tried to tell the story of what glaciers mean to us.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  27:47  
Share us some interesting stories, you know, give us a little bit of insight, like 510 minutes version, you know, one of the most interesting parts of it. So, you know, we can learn a little bit more.

Lynn Martel  27:59  
I got one. One guy, I got a phone call one day or email, probably, Robert Raymond says me and he’s somebody I didn’t know, mountaineering with a couple of times. And he said, I got a story for you. So years ago, he had in skiing up the Athabasca glacier onto the Columbia Icefield with a buddy they were they attend some all their mountaineering gear and they were planning to be up there for five days and and climb some summits. But on their way up to the glacier, they’re skiing long. Robert was in front. All the sudden his world goes dark. He’s fallen in a crevasse. Thanks, good thing, their rope together. So he falls like 40 feet into the crevasse. He’s in the dark and the ice and his buddies on the surface who are trying to you know building an anchor to stop him from falling and further and he was successful in doing that. But his buddy couldn’t remember how to do crevasse rescue, how to build a pulley system to get them out of there and one on one, it’s really difficult to pull someone out of a glitch out of progress. So they couldn’t communicate. Like he was calling up from the hole. His buddy was calling down to him. They didn’t hear each other because he was so far down. And his buddy had a lead in there. He tied off the rope, build a good anchor tied off the rope and then he skied back down the glacier all the way down to the road to where there’s a payphone might have had a cell phone but this was quite a was like 20 years ago. And yeah, so his buddy was able to contact Parks Canada and and get the rescue team to come in. Robert is in the glacier for five hours. Five hours, never ever go on glacier without Mungus down jacket. He put every layer on that he could he was able to put a screw you know, drill the ice screw into the wall, hung his pack from it. He was able to put all his clothes on and he had to wait in there for five hours in the dark. They came and rescued him so great. He was pretty happy about that the helicopter full and we’ve got some of that As rescue people in the world here, they’re world class. So they get out of the fat. Because when you’re skiing up the Athabasca up on the side of snowboarding, there’s these cliffs, these rocks, these broken pillars of ice, and they fall off in chunks every once in a while. So it’s not a place you want to hang out. The rescuers. They, they got him out, but they left his pack and his skis in the class. 12 years later, somebody contacts him. One of the tour guides that there’s guides who do walking tours on the glaciers. Well, one of the guides, she found this gear laying out on the moraine. And it turned out after 12 years, his gear had melted out of the crevasse. It’s an amazing story. So he went back there, it had actually, because it had been inside the glacier for 12 years, it got all mangled and crushed, and glacier was moving, melting, stretching, like doing all the things that glacier does. And it actually had pushed the gear came out half a kilometre from where it went in. And it had, so the glacier had melted back, you know, the crevasse that he fell into No, no longer exists.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  31:10  
That’s crazy. That’s, that is why I don’t go on on a glacier.

Lynn Martel  31:17  
And he took pictures to the great thing was some when he went back and he collected all his gear, you bought a garden. And he took pictures. So I’ve got some pictures. And visitations when I give presentations, I have some of those pictures to share. That’s

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  31:32  
such an incredible story. Like, I mean, that’s that’s why, you know, like, if you’re listening, and you’re, you know, you’re not trained, you shouldn’t go on a glacier. And that’s why I haven’t been travelling in a glacier because I don’t have that skill. Yeah, but that’s just incredible. And look, I mean, like, as a, as a, as someone who had been living here in, in the heart of the Rockies, you know, with basically having the glacier and snow as, as part of our backyard. Right? You would have seen a lot, a lot of challenges that come with it. What what are some of those challenges? Because I know, like, for myself, like, like you say, I wasn’t even aware about glacier. And actually, only a month ago, I found out that, like one of the glacier or most of the glacier here, like receipts at a rate of 50 metre per per year, which was, it’s crazy. So what are some of the challenges that you see around around here that maybe you can share with the listener, the listener, and give a little bit more awareness of what’s happening?

Lynn Martel  32:41  
Um, Glacia glaciers all over the world are melting, because our, our average temperature all over the world is racing. Whenever somebody says to you, oh, but that’s happened before in Earth’s history. So there’s two points to remember. Yes, our glaciers have melted and returned before, but never have they melted as fast as they’re melting. Now. It’s insane how much they’ve melted in 100 years. And the second thing is that, in periods of Earth’s very long, long history, when the glaciers have melted, and returned, those changes happened, before humans ever lived on earth. So we are the first gen or the first humans to live with this kind of rapid temperature change. 1.3 degrees doesn’t sound a lot. But if you’re a glacier, if you go from, you know, being point three degrees below zero, you stay frozen. You go to point three, you know, but one degree above zero, you stop being frozen. So in society a challenge is that in this part of the world, and in a lot of parts of God in the Himalayas in a huge way. societies and towns and infrastructure is built to expect glaciers to release water, especially late in the summer, when we’re not getting much rainfall. Our river here the Bow River, in at the end of summer can be 30% of that river could be the glacier float meltwater. And we have no plan for when the glaciers aren’t doing that anymore. So there’s a funny little challenge. We’re gonna have we have something adapting to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  34:35  
It’s crazy to see like, I mean, when I’m living here, it’s crazy to see how the water of the river fluctuates between summer and winter, and you know, it’s only that it’s only because I was able to like experience it the full year to kind of like see and observe this and I’m sure like people who come here for a week or two that would, wouldn’t even you know aware of this right so Yeah, I think it’s a really important message to share with people and to, I guess it’s really hard to know about it unless you live in it, isn’t it?

Lynn Martel  35:09  
You know, it’s like that everywhere. If you’ve never been to the west coast of BC, and walked in a rain forest of massive old growth cedar trees, it’s a mind boggling experience to see that kind of forest. And I’ve only seen tiny blue bits of it. So they that, yeah. Travelling and having experiences. I think, though, it’s a fine line, and how much travelling anyone needs to do. I grew up with as a teenager in my 20s with free plane tickets. That was awesome. Now, I have not been in an aeroplane since 2011. I don’t have a lot of money. So plane tickets aren’t part of my picture. But I do prefer a road trip and because then you see the landscape as you’re travelling through it. And when you find it, an aeroplane from here to there, you’re so disconnected from it. And granted, there are places I do hope in my lifetime to go to the Himalayas. We actually had plans to go my honey and I, we were gonna go to Nepal last May. So that trip got cancelled. I don’t know when we’ll be able to go. And he’s got Sherpa friends. So there’s a lot of meaning. For me, I would prefer to save and wait and do one larger trip rather than a small one. And in my book, in the back of my book, I talked about that, you know, I can’t imagine what you’re gonna see 30 years from now because you’re like 30 years. 28 years younger than me. I’m 59 now moisturising works, you sunscreen. But the change that I’ve seen in my life, but one of the freakiest ones. There was a statistic and I put it in my book, where we have had on Earth as many as 200,000 aircraft in the sky in 124 hour period. We can’t keep doing that. We can’t think that that’s okay. We can’t think it’s okay to cut down all our old growth forests, whether it’s Brazil, or British Columbia, and we’re guilty of that in Canada, too. Got a government in Alberta right now that wants to do coal mining on the eastern slopes, which is headwaters of so many creeks, feeding rivers that grow our grow crops in the prairies. Insane. There’s so many things that we do as humans for matters of greed or convenience, or, Oh, well, that’d be somebody else’s problem down the road. It’s our problem now. So my book is mostly a tonne of fun. It’s stories and it’s people and it’s exciting, and it’s fun. You’ll learn stuff you never imagined. But at the end, we got to think about how we treat planet Earth. So back to travelling. I think travelling less is more. And you said it. So you stayed here for two years. Like how much you learned, like how much you learned by staying in one place. I spent two months in New York travelling around New Zealand did some bike touring roads bus travelled a whole bunch of different ways in two months, and I got to learn a lot more about the country than if I had flown there for you know what takes a day and a half to get there day and a half to come home. So you got like 10 days for your vacation. I don’t need to see a place that badly. I want to actually learn something about when I’m there. My last big trip was Peru in 2006. But I stayed a month. I never saw much Picchu. I stayed more of the climbing area. Lots of climbers from Spain, Basque climbers, all the Spanish speaking countries. They go and the mountains there are humongous. They’re 20,000 feet 22,000 For Huascaran is the second highest mountain in North America. It’s the monster of a mountain. But I stayed there for a month and lived in a hostel run by a Peruvian woman. And I got to learn something about the place by staying that long. Yeah, I lived in Maui for two months, one year. So much rather it didn’t and Whistler for three months. So in here almost three months. But yeah, staying one place and

living with the locals. learning something about it because if you get off a plane and go stay in some hotel and eat in restaurants, and heaven forbid, and that’s funny because I work as a tour guy but as I can go but Um, yeah, hire a local learn something about a place, like one thing to go to our, our trip to Nepal will be five weeks when we do it. And we will have a local person take us for three weeks trekking in the mountains, three weeks, I want to place pop in for an hour and say I’ve been there.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  40:20  
Not that’s very true. You know, like, I think people should kind of try to slow down, they travel and get off, get out of this mindset of ticking the bucket list because I have done that. And the thing is the experience that you get sure you get to see a lot of this different places, but the experience that you get is totally different. Like, you know, like, I spent, like I say, like two years here, man, like the amount of experience that I get from that experience from that two years is much better compared to two years of travelling to, you know, 25 different countries or whatnot, to just jump from one place to another. So, yeah, totally. Like, I think you’re very true. And thanks for bringing that up. I think it’s people should really try that. At least, like, like we say earlier, right? It’s hard to kind of, to kind of convince you until you actually try it. But you know, just try and see how it actually changed your mindset and your, your experience in travelling. So yeah, that’s that’s a great advice.

Lynn Martel  41:26  
You know what else and that ties into photography too. Because I enjoy taking photos, you know, we go on a road trip last spring, we went on a three week road trip to BC, went to some places I’ve been to before favourites, and other places I haven’t. But I like to go back to and spend a little longer because I’m enjoying photography so much now. Mostly in my home mountains. Because it’s a world I know intimately. And I’ve seen so much crazy beauty over the years. And I want to grow my skills, so I can capture more of that beauty. And, and I’m going and I do that by not going to the tourist spots. Like still carrying a pack. In October I went out for two nights by myself with I have a tiny little tent that weighs two pounds. I carried my tripod, my camera, and I was there for two nights with food, the sleeping bag and I can’t and God doesn’t my favourite trips. I miss my honey. But I’m to slow down to wake up in the mountains. That’s the backcountry is very important to me. I need to spend time where I wake up where there’s no Wi Fi, no electricity, no running water. I go in the winter, usually once a winter, it’s not happening this year. Sometimes we ski to Hudson do that. And then you got to carry your sleeping bag, but you don’t have a tent or a stove. You save a little bit of weight, but then you’re carrying glacier gear anyways. But I go to cabin sometimes in the winter. And I will say oh use a helicopter for that the helicopter flies you there leaves you there with all your food. There’s like 12 of you. And then it flies away and it’s gone for a week. And for a week you have no electricity. No, no running water. There’s a wood burning sauna that’s go in there and clean up at the end of the day. And we ski tour. We climb up hill on our skis. And we ski down make turns. And we’ll do that all day. And yeah, I’m almost 60 And I’m still doing it that way. And those experiences to be away from my computer for a week. I think that’s a big advice. big piece of advice I have from young people. I grew up without a cell phone without a computer. Get outside and leave those things at home. And if you have access to a national park, where you can go camp for two or three or four nights and not have any anything electronic other than your camera. But no Wi Fi. I don’t Instagram from my camera, I come home and then decide what to post. Nobody needs to know where you are. Give yourself a few days out in nature. With no electronics, no motors, no machines, no vehicle, just you and your feet, maybe a pair of skis and on the season. Do it that way. No, that’s good. In the world. That’s advice. Sorry. Take the time. That’s a gift. And in COVID so it’s so sad when I hear stay home stay home, stay home. No, go for a walk.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  44:43  
Ya know for sure. Like, especially here in the National Park. Right. We have that chancer it’s and it’s isolated. So, you know there’s no reason why not and I think like I get the best sleep when I’m in the middle of nowhere and I don’t have anything to wear about in terms of getting notification or whatnot, because there is no cell phone, and yeah, you stop worrying about life and actually like get to, to be in peace. That’s a really good advice. And yeah, thanks for sharing that. All right, so we’re coming to the hour mark now. And it’s been interesting to hear your story about, you know, your adventure in the eyes and your adventure moving here, and how you get into photography and your view of photography, as well as writing. How for people who want to find out a little bit more about about yourself, how can they? How can they get how can they get in touch with you?

Lynn Martel  45:37  
Well, it’s really easy. I have a website, and it’s very well organised. But when Martell so it’s Lynn martell.ca. Not CA is the Canadian suffix for? So Allah martel.ca. So this is my book. So he’s nice. Yeah, and it’s a big book, lots of pictures and sell stories, you’ll learn tonnes about Western Canada, because it’s a bunch of history going back 1000s of years, right up to today. Big mix. So and on my website, it’s all there. Lynn martell.ca And I’ve got my books, speaking and photography. So check it out that way.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  46:21  
Perfect. Well, thanks a lot for sharing that. And, you know, I’ve seen some of your work and like, like you say, I think one of the thing that I really like about your approach in photography, how you find the small things and focus on the small thing, you know, I mean, I saw, like some of your photos that really focus on just the ice or the soft snow, and some of them are focusing on the wall, sorry, the wildflowers and you know, instead of the whole scenery actually go into deeper and a lot of going deeper in the landscape and actually take taking a photo of the micro and show them in a grand way. So that’s very inspiring. It’s very cool to see that. I think I’m guilty, too, to look at the macro level. And it’s definitely something that I could learn from.

Lynn Martel  47:06  
I think it takes time. Especially, you know, we get what, four 4 million tourists a year normally, you know, pre COVID Coming to the Canadian Rockies back to this area. And when you first come here, yeah, it’s all big. We would be the same. If I was running around in or, you know, walking around the streets in New York City. At first, it’s like, oh, skyscrapers. Slow down. Watch, look around you. And that’s where I think getting to know one place really well. So wherever you live, whatever you have access to get to know that place. Really well. Awesome. Started.

Stanley Aryanto – The Wicked Hunt  47:50  
That’s a great advice. And I Yeah, that’s a great way to close up this podcast as well. So thank you very much for being here late now. It’s been a pleasure. And it’s been fun hearing a lot of these stories. So yeah, we can do this. Thank you very much for tuning in. And if you are a person who get intrigued with the ice and the snow and the glacier, or even if you’re not, you know, highly recommend check out some of these work as well as her book and look at some of the stories some of the challenges that it came with, but also some of the the culture that is out of the world, I mean, coming from myself that never been here never been in a glacier never seen in a glacier before in my life. It’s definitely out of the world. When you first time see it, it’s, it’s quite amazing. So you know, getting there. And if you want to get in touch with Lynn like, Lindsey, just go on the website. And you know, you can say hi, on, on on on her website there. Well, thank you very much for tuning in. And if you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and hit the like button. But Lynn, thank you very much for being here. And it was it was a lot of fun. A lot of it was a pleasure to have you here and thank you for sparing some of your time.

Lynn Martel  49:08  
Well, thank you so much for inviting me, Stanley.

 

The Wicked Hunt by Stanley Aryanto Copyright 2020 All rights reserved.

The Wicked Hunt by Stanley Ar