Recently I deviated from my wedding photojournalism agenda to chase another kind of photo story. This was a personal project that I was interested in pursuing. I'm still in the middle of the story, however, I wanted to share some of it with you since i've all but abandoned my blog lately.
Part of the story is about an ancient treasure that has been sleeping beneath the waves for over 100 years. The rest of the story is about reclaiming that treasure and turning it into one of a kind pieces of art.
The subject of my story is William Joiner, who operates a boutique company called Antique River Logs. His family history reveals five generations of navigating the waterways of Kentucky. His father, Captain Bill Joiner served 53 years as a towboat captain. His grandfather Cecil Joiner, ran a snag boat and a mail carrier boat, his great grandfather, Commodore Joiner, ran a ferry; and his great-great grandfather William Perry Joiner, piloted a packet-steamboat.
William is a former Social Worker who spent much of his life exploring the planet before deciding to return to his native Kentucky. He served two years as a missionary in Scotland, managed a scuba diving safari boat on the Red Sea in Egypt, and spent many years studying diverse cultures, philosophies and meditation styles before returning from his journey.
Combining his family's river heritage, his diving skills, woodworking craftsmanship and an appreciation for the conservation of our natural resources, Antique River Logs, Inc. was born. He recognizes the rare and limited opportunity to offer timbers that are no longer available.
Back in the nineteenth century these beautiful old hardwood trees were cut down, pulled to the nearest river with mules, dog chained together as rafts and floated down river to the nearest mill. Some of the heavier logs never reached the mills and sank to the bottom of the river where they have been resting ever since.
The old growth timber which is no longer available combined with over 100 years of living in the river gives these logs a truly unique status.
The first step to reclaiming the logs is locating them and that requires diving. Ordinarily diving is done for sport, however, diving in a river with a moving current and near zero visibility is quite a different matter.
An intense portrait just before a diving exploration.
A rusty old spike and chain driven in by a nineteenth century lumber jack, evidence of its time capsule existance.
Here is one example of a river recovered old growth log that has been cut into slabs. This log has been resting on the bottom since the early 1800's and bears the unique markings of reclaimed virgin timber which lends to its exotic appeal.
A great example of river reclaimed hardwood flooring.
In my research I found this excerpt that reminds us of what once was and what could have been.
All the forces of nature cannot bring back extinct species
An excerpt from an old book:
... As civilisation advances upon the forest, the wild species retreat; when the forest falls, the wild species are gone. Every human generation during these centuries has a last look at many things in Nature. No one will ever see them again: Nature can never find what she has once lost: if it is gone,it is gone forever.
What Wilson records he saw of bird life in Kentucky a hundred years ago reads to us now as fables of the marvellous, of the incredible. Were he the sole witness, some of us might think him to be a lying witness. Let me tell you that I in my boyhood—half a century later than Wilson's visit to Kentucky —beheld things that you will hardly believe.
The vast oak forest of Kentucky was what attracted the passenger pigeon. In the autumn when acorns were ripe but not yet fallen, the pigeons filled the trees at times and places, eating them from the cups. Walking quietly some sunny afternoon through the bluegrass pastures, you might approach an oak and see nothing but the tree itself, thick boughs with the afternoon sunlight sparkling on the leaves along one side. As you drew nearer, all at once, as if some violent explosion had taken place within the tree, a blue smoke-like cloud burst out all around the tree-top — the simultaneous explosive flight of the frightened pigeons.
Or all night long there might be wind and rain and the swishing of boughs and the tapping of loosened leaves against the window panes; and when you stepped out of doors next morning, it had suddenly become clear and cold. Walking out into the open and looking up at the clear sky you might see this: an arch of pigeons breast by breast, wing-tip to wing-tip, high up in the air as the wild geese fly, slowly moving southward. You could not see the end of the arch on one horizon or the other: the whole firmament was spanned by that mighty arch of pigeons flying south from the sudden cold. Not all the forces in Nature can ever restore that morning sunlit arch of pigeons flying south...
Quoted from The Kentucky Warbler (p. 148-150) by James Lane Allen, published in 1918 by Doubleday, New York.
