Good Times Journal // GTPS 005
OUTDOORS // G.T.P.S HUNTER LAWRENCE
My name is Hunter Lawrence. I'm a full time photographer and film-maker, and work part time at a local boot and provisions store in Austin, Texas called HELM. If I have to be in Texas for this season of life, there's no better place to be than Austin. It's a great city full of life and full of great people.
My wife and I have been drawn to the mountains since we were little. We grew up together, going on trips to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Canada. Now that we're married, it's just a promise we've vowed to keep - that even if we didn't live in the mountains, we'd consistently put ourselves around them. This trip was exactly one of those moments. One of those moments that we just had to get out of Texas...so we headed North. We were surrounded by the tunes of Gregory Alan Isakov, Sigur Ros and James Vincent McMorrow, snow dusted evergreens, vast valleys, endless mountains and unbeatable company. It was the perfect trip.
These photos were taken during a few days we spent along Mt. Hood in the Northern part of Oregon. I think being around something so grandiose like Mt. Hood is healthy. It puts you in your place as a human. You don't look at that thing and think to yourself, "Yeah I'm bigger than that." In a way it keeps you humble. And as an artist, I constantly need that.
I've had my share of camping and backpacking trips, each of them full of their own stories of encounters with bears, elk, coyotes and wild sheep in Iceland ha...but all of them enjoyable. Donald Miller once said, "When you build a city near no water or mountains, you get materialism." I think the same is true for humans. Getting out on the trail for 5-6 days with 1 set of clothes, a few MRE's and your best friend, you begin to realize that you don't need much to really enjoy life. I'm thankful for these moments.
