A foray into the wilderness of filmmaking...
For a number of years now I have been going out to explore the wilderness with a group of friends byway of off-road trails in Jeeps and trucks. It began in April of 2021; I joined them for a trip to Death Valley. I rode with my friend Chris because I didn't even own a vehicle capable of driving off road. A month later I bought my Toyota 4Runner.
Seeing how other photographers used their 4Runner's to take them out into fantastic places, I knew that vehicle would be a solid choice for both my day-to-day needs1 and going out exploring with my buddies.
Unlike many who are into this hobby, I did not grow up working on cars or going off road, so everything was new to me, and you know how it goes, new hobbies demand lots of time watching YouTube to learn more about it! However, over the years I have found the content for this hobby has left me wanting, creatively speaking. Sure, Brad will guide you down some amazing trails and give you great advice from everything to do with modifying your vehicles and trail etiquette on TrailRecon. And Tinkerer’s Adventure will explain the in’s and out’s of suspension systems, tire widths and full electric camping. But what I felt like I was missing was a more artful perspective on these trails...
Back in February we took to Arizona to explore a new area, the KoFA National Wildlife Refuge, or KOFA Wilderness. KoFA is an acronym for King of Arizona, the name of a mine in the area that operated at the turn of the 20th century.
At the time, David Lynch had just passed away and I was feeling inspired to just make something artful and maybe a little weird. So I shot lots and lots of video clips while we drove and explored this region. I had only a vague ideas in my head about how a final edit would look, but I knew I didn’t want to take a literal approach of narrating the trail and reading off wikipedia facts, as so many other videos do. So I had to find the narrative in the edit. Fortunately I was able to piece together a dark story of dying cacti interlaced with the vibes of camping surrounded by desert wilderness.
I hope you enjoy.
I want to make more videos like this and while I’m putting them on YouTube I don’t think I have the ability to do this more than a handful of times a year—so while I would love it if you Like and Subscribe™️ to my The Feel of the Place channel on YouTube, I don’t know if the algorithm will take too kindly to a highly sporadic release schedule. I would much rather you subscribe to this blog by signing up below and then sharing it with your friends. By doing so, you'll see when I make new trail videos, or have more photography and writing to share, right in your email inbox.
The KoFA National Wildlife Refuge is a beautiful area that I would highly recommend anyone explore (and is pretty easy to get to from Southern California!). 2
Here is the Gaia map for the route we drove:
Finally, if you're looking for more color on our adventure, my friend Chris made a series of videos of our trip on his YouTube channel, Locked and Low Offroad.
1 Namely, my friend Lance Gerber as well as analog photographers Nick Carver and Ben Horne. ↩
2 The trail itself isn’t particularly technical or difficult. Any standard high-clearance vehicle with 4-wheel drive will be sufficient for driving here.↩