Ansel Adams (65 page)

Anne’s eldest daughter, Virginia Mayhew, often stayed at her grandparents’ Carmel home during the early 1980s. While Ansel had little sympathy for her chosen instrument and style, the jazz saxophone (classical music was his definition of music), he was impressed with her disciplined practice so like his own sixty years before. Young Virginia has fulfilled Ansel and Virginia’s early dreams of becoming a professional musician. She has made it big in New York City as a leading jazz musician and has performed with an eclectic group of greats, including Earl “Fatha” Hines, Frank Zappa, and James Brown. She is a composer of note, a sought-after teacher, and the leader of her own quartet for the past twenty-six years. Like her mother, Virginia is a breast cancer survivor.
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There were, I think, two holes in Ansel’s soul: he never found emotional happiness, and some small part of him continued to equate success with a secure bank balance. Other than that, to me Ansel seemed nearly perfect. But humans have no business trying to be saints, nor do I think Ansel wanted to be canonized, though he is often painted that way. I prefer to remember him in a Stetson rather than a halo. Perhaps his flaws were necessary to ensure that he was earthbound like the rest of us, but I wish his life could have been more full of love. Surely, through his extraordinary contributions, he earned that right.

“Ansel’s mind and vision, his reverence, his delicacy and strength,” wrote his old friend Wallace Stegner, “will have power to move and enhance and enlarge us as long as walls exist for photographs . . . He is not a man to be merely remembered.”
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In 1984, very soon after Ansel’s death, California senators Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson—a Democrat and a Republican, respectively—joined together to sponsor legislation to designate the Ansel Adams Wilderness, a vast 229,334 acres adjoining the John Muir Wilderness and Yosemite National Park.
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With elevations ranging from seven to thirteen thousand feet, much of it above tree line, the Ansel Adams Wilderness is the world of High Sierra granite that Ansel so loved. Resplendent with mountains, studded with lakes, it includes such sites as the Minarets near Mammoth Lakes, where he took Edward Weston in 1937, and the west face of Banner Peak, the subject of his first memorable grand landscape. The North, the Middle, and part of the South Fork of the San Joaquin River all lay within its boundaries. The Ansel Adams Wilderness area is more accessible than most such protected lands, with both the Pacific Crest and John Muir trails traversing its expanse.
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A year and a day after Ansel died, that nameless mountain overlooking his favorite place in the Sierra, the Lyell Fork of the Merced River, officially became Mount Ansel Adams.
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Rising at Yosemite’s southeast boundary, its eastern flank set into the Ansel Adams Wilderness, Mt. AA tops out at a substantial 11,760 feet. Two full days of hiking from either Yosemite Valley or Tuolumne Meadows are required to reach its base. For most, it is best to enjoy the mountain from a camping spot near the banks of the Lyell Fork, as the scaling of Mt. AA is not easily accomplished. The mountain is composed of flaking shale. Its crumbling texture becomes dangerous underfoot as one approaches its summit. Only experienced mountaineers can attain its peak, an area no bigger than eight by ten feet, dropping off on all sides, two thousand feet straight down. It is here that Michael, a capable climber, placed his father’s ashes.

Great works of art can bridge the gap between each of us and the eternal, and Ansel’s photographs are such transcendent expressions. By revealing our natural treasures, among them Yosemite and the High Sierra, Ansel placed the responsibility for their safety squarely in our hands. His photographs clearly show us that if the affairs of mankind have no cosmic significance, they nevertheless have earthly consequence.

Ansel’s afterimage burns brightly.

Ansel Adams and Mule
,
Sierra Nevada
, c. 1930. Photograph by Cedric Wright

Lodgepole Pines, Lyell Fork of the Merced River, Yosemite National Park
, 1921. Photograph by Ansel Adams

Ralph Selby
,
Charles Hitchcock Adams
,
and Olive Bray
,
San Francisco
, c. 1891 (Selby was the brother-in-law of Charles Adams). Allen & Hay Photo Studio

Lyell Fork of the Merced River
,
Yosemite National Park
, 1934 Sierra Club Outing (Mt. Ansel Adams is the tallest peak). Photograph by Ansel Adams

Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake
,
Sierra Nevada
, 1923. Photograph by Ansel Adams

Half Dome
,
Yosemite National Park
, c. 1927. Photograph by Ansel Adams

Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California
, 1927. Photograph by Ansel Adams

The Golden Gate Before the Bridge, San Francisco
, 1932. Photograph by Ansel Adams