There’s a certain kind of madness that only photographers understand — the good kind. The kind that starts as a date circled on a calendar and slowly mutates into maps spread across kitchen tables, weather apps checked obsessively, batteries charging like we’re preparing for siege warfare instead of sunrise.

March 13th is coming.

We don’t know where yet — which is perfect. That’s how the best trouble starts. A vague destination. A full tank of gas. The unspoken agreement between grown men that whatever happens out there will be better than whatever is happening in here.

Some people plan vacations.

We plan incursions.

By April, we return to Glide — the Wildflower Festival like some seasonal pilgrimage. Whistler’s Bend again. The Umpqua carving its way through canyon rock like it’s been doing since before we were a thought in anyone’s head. Camping in the damp spring air, that rich Oregon smell — soil waking up, moss flexing, everything green and unapologetic.

Wildflowers are deceptive. They look delicate. But they claw their way through winter like prizefighters. And there’s something satisfying about photographing that defiance. Kneeling in mud for the right angle. Arguing with wind. Waiting for light to behave.

Whistler’s Bend isn’t just a campground. It’s a reset button. It’s coffee in the early morning chill while the fog drifts over the river like something half-remembered. It’s late-night conversations that spiral from camera settings into philosophy and back again without anyone noticing the transition.

Then spring gets ambitious.

Rafting the Willamette.

There’s something beautifully reckless about deciding to float down a river and camp along the way. Let the current dictate the rhythm. Let the banks decide where you sleep. The Willamette isn’t just water — it’s Oregon’s bloodstream. Industrial scars, farmland stretches, quiet bends where herons stand like sentries.

We’ll be drifting through history, through industry, through pockets of silence where the only noise is paddle against current and whatever nonsense spills out of our mouths at dusk.

Camping along the way feels primitive in the best sense. No tight itinerary. No performance. Just movement and rest. Movement and rest.

And then June.

Eastern Oregon.

Now that’s a different beast entirely.

Wide open. Brutal. Honest.

The kind of landscape that doesn’t care about your feelings. The air gets bigger out there. The sky stretches until your problems look embarrassingly small. Dust replaces moss. Sagebrush instead of ferns. And at night — the stars.

Astrophotography out east isn’t subtle. It’s an assault. The Milky Way ripping across the sky like it owns the place. Tripods planted in volcanic dirt. Long exposures ticking off seconds while coyotes debate theology somewhere beyond the frame.

Robert’s wife counting birds like a scientist on assignment, scanning horizons with purpose. And us? We’ll probably end up photographing those same birds, trying to freeze something that was never meant to be frozen.

Eastern Oregon changes your posture. You stand straighter out there. The horizon demands it.

And somewhere between March uncertainty, April blossoms, spring river drift, and June starlight — something else is happening.

Photography is evolving.

It’s no longer just about the shot. It’s about the movement. The ritual. The refusal to sit still while the world screams about nonsense. Every trip is a declaration: I will not rot indoors arguing with ghosts on a screen.

I will go.

I will see.

I will document.

There’s momentum building. I can feel it in the way gear gets packed faster. In the way ideas are forming before the shutter even clicks. In the way the year feels less like survival and more like pursuit.

That’s the real addiction — not the image, but the possibility.

Possibility that the next ridge will reveal something new.

Possibility that the next river bend will quiet the riot in the skull.

Possibility that the next star-filled frame will make all the static worth enduring.

This year feels different. Not easier. Just sharper.

March is coming.

April is blooming.

Spring is floating.

June is blazing wide open.

And somewhere out there — in mud, in current, in dust, in starlight — the next chapter is waiting.

Load the batteries.

We’re going.