When I drove back to the highway, almost immediately I came upon a roadside rest area on the scenic shores of Lake Superior. There I finally found the scarlet blueberry leaves--which I had been hoping to photograph several hours earlier--in an ideal setting among white pines and reindeer lichens. The rain and wind had stopped, and the clouds were now higher and thinner--absolutely perfect conditions for closeup photography. I spent an hour photographing there before the clouds disappeared and the sun went down. I took some of the best photographs of the trip in that hour; the light, the subjects, the weather, and the photographer's vision all came together for that brief and wonderful time.

Was this photographic high point simply luck? Perhaps. After all, a photographer makes his own luck by spending enough time in the field. But I wasn't--and am not--so sure. Could a spirit of the forest have been on my side that day for the simple and kind deed I performed? I choose to think so--the chain of events came together so perfectly that I question dumb luck.

After returning to the Pacific Northwest several weeks later, I printed one of the photographs from the Michigan trip in the rental darkroom I use in Portland, Oregon. This wasn't one of the photographs I had taken in that special hour, but it was a beautiful composition of autumn maples. I made some good prints, then got caught up in my busy art show schedule. The Michigan events faded from my mind.

Then, a month later I was back in the darkroom printing one of the photographs from that special day along Lake Superior. The first exposure from the darkroom was a complete mistake, and I swore under my breath at my stupidity. At the end of my previous darkroom session, I had mistakenly left one of the exposed photographs in my box of unexposed photo paper. Not realizing it, on my return trip to the darkroom I had exposed the paper again.

The resultant photographic print was an unintended double exposure--and I quickly recognized that it is one of the best photographs I have ever made! Somehow (by chance alone?) the prints were oriented just right under the enlargers so that they blend perfectly--neither dominating the other. I certainly couldn't have come up with this result on my own, and now I have one of my favorite pictures. I think the result is so effective that I'm sure I will explore similar darkroom possibilities in the years to come.

What can I make of this enormously unlikely chain of events--a chain that has given me a completely new area of darkroom work to explore? I simply don't know.

I've never been one to believe in the supernatural, yet I think there are possibilities in the universe that our minds are not able to fully understand. Could it be that I have a coyote spirit that influences what I do? Who knows? I guess I'll just have to see what comes.

I do know that my 1990 photographs of Yellowstone National Park's coyotes were successful enough that I could continue my nature photography profession--despite all the financial and emotional struggles during my early years pursuing this demanding career.

So, you can make your own conclusions about our world--and the spirits that might or might not inhabit it. There is much that we don't know ...