IrwinFoto

A gallery of photos by Mike Irwin

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  • Snow Stacks

    Snow Stacks | Leavenworth, WA | March 2019

    A late-season snowshoe hike looped through an eerie patch of logged forest. Each tree stump held a “ghost trunk” of hardened snow, a 4-foot-high cylinder that I’m sure told the story of (more…)

  • Church

    Church | Douglas, WA | February 2019

    In this picturesque hamlet on the high plateau, St. Paul’s Lutheran holds services only a few times a year. Yet the church continues to bind people together, one resident told me. Keeping the structure in (more…)

  • Ice Fisher

    Ice Fisher | Coulee City, WA | March 2019

    What drives someone to hack a hole in a foot of ice, drop in a fishing line and perch for hours in sub-freezing temperatures? Sport? Nature? Hunger? One online columnist claims it’s an appreciation of winter itself — silence, solitude, and simplicity. Surroundings are reduced, he says, to the essentials of (more…)

  • Hillside

    Hillside | Wenatchee, WA | February 2019

    A great emptiness rises above the crowded neighborhood. I scan the blank hill for signs of life — birds, deer, kids — but see nothing. Well, nothing but the (more…)

  • Rainbow

    Rainbow | East Wenatchee, WA | February 2019

    It’s possible my foot creates its own weather. Cool air rising from the floor swirls with warmer currents circulating around the porous woolen sock to induce a prismatic effect that (more…)

  • Sweet Chili Sauce

    Sweet Chili Sauce | East Wenatchee, WA | February 2019

    Can we taste sunlight? Is a food heated by photons from afar — 93 million miles — infused with astral flavor? Could Thai spring rolls, composed of photosynthetic conductors (lettuce leaves), feel (more…)

  • Steer

    Steer | Ellensburg, WA | February 2019

    It’s a cold wait, and sometimes long. But when the roper cuts him from the herd, the steer is all action — a straight-line blur to outrun the lasso. Roped or not, he then trots, all perky, into the holding pen where (more…)

  • Jellyfish

    Jellyfish | Newport, OR | March 2019

    Aliens float among us. Boneless, gelatinous, the jellyfish undulate a foot from my face as they propel across their private universe (a plexiglass cylinder). These unearthly creatures seem to radiate color, but aren’t. Instead, their translucent bodies (more…)

  • Hallway to Ocean

    Hallway to Ocean | Newport, OR | March 2019

    Standing amid sagebrush, five hours from the sea, an inlander’s heart races at the mention of a trip to (more…)

  • Recently Observed: African Violets

    African Violets | East Wenatchee, WA | February 2019

    I get on my knees in the living room and peer closely at the potted plant. My gaze is lured by (more…)