Bill's hike-H.264 for Apple TVGQyjvWrlKigW2BPjBill's hike-H.264 for Apple TVThis morning my ole buddy Bill Bacon completed his conscious time on this Planet.
We traveled a lot of miles together...Alaska, Sweden, Grand Canyon, the Caribbean...making films in all those places. The memories are voluminous.
When filming a grizzly at one time, she began to indicate that she was about to attack me. Bill came up beside me with his tripod folded and at the ready…ready to crack that bear across the head should she come too close. We slowly backed away…and so did she. She could count. Two to one.
On another occasion we were filming glaciers, and arranged to be flown in to a glacier in a remote location that couldn’t be reached in any other way. We had planned to be there for two days, so carried two days worth of rations.
However, it rained and the weather really socked in. No pilot could find us in that weather. It was over a long week before the weather opened up enough for his return. In the meantime we ran out of food.
In those days, photographers often carried a ‘bean bag’…a bag full of beans that he could throw on the ground or on a tree stump and place the camera on it in order to get a steady shot. Bill had one. His was filled with rice, however. But after being without food for three days, we decided to open the bag and consume the rice. We were able to cook it over a little fire, and although it was pretty full of dust after years of being carried in that bag, we were most grateful for it. We also managed to find some blueberries near the glacier we were filming, but by the time the plane arrived to pick us up, we were pretty ravenous.
We had brought a shotgun and slugs along on this excursion, although this was rare for us. This was done at this time because we were in such a remote location. The first evening there, a grizzly feeding on blueberries came up near our camp. We were really focused on him for a while, until he finally wandered on, and we didn’t see him again. After several days without food though, we were sort of hoping he might return…just in case we should really need some roast bear. That thought hovered over us as we became hungrier.
At this location we would stand in front of the glacier all day in the rain, waiting for the ice to calve off. It was necessary to stand next to the camera constantly, because if an iceberg was about to break away, there was only a second or so to start the camera and capture the action. We did this for 14 hours every day in this remote site…there was no where else to go, nothing to do.
At night conversation was our only option for pastime, and we would sit next to our fire and talk into the night. We talked of our filming, of wildlife, of past experiences, and especially, extensive musing about women.
A few years later, filming in the Grand Canyon, we would sometimes go for days without a shower there, as we were then filming on the North Rim in the remote western area of the Park. Finally Bill remembered that he had a black plastic water container in our vehicle, which he filled with water and hung in the sun. When it was thoroughly warm, Bill punched a series of holes in another bucket, hung that in a tree, and we really enjoyed a warm shower!
Bill's hike-H.264 for Apple TV
I thought Bill was really old when we met. I’d just turned 40 and he was 52. He was a big man with big heart (in all ways), big lungs, and strong legs. On another occasion we were attempting to film dall sheep in Alaska, and could see them high in the mountains in the Brooks Range. (They are hunted there and are extremely wild.) But we wanted to film, so began to climb.
I could run off and leave Bill for a time at first. But after an hour or two of climbing with our 60 pound camera packs, I would start to slow down a bit. Bill could just keep powering through, though. When we came down from the mountains that day we shared the food we had…a can of vienna sausage, a can of sardines, and three slices of musty bread. Delicious!
On one trip, we hiked in to a hidden glacier to film the calving, taking several hours to get there. We filmed until it was almost dark, then decided we would return to our vehicle.
We had crossed a deep, rugged canyon to reach the glacier during the day, but now re-crossing that chasm without light was deemed to be too dangerous. So, we elected to spend the night on the ridge at the top of the canyon. No tooth brush, no sleeping bag, no food, no water. We could cut alder leaves and branches to sleep on.
It became cold during the night. By morning we each had a pile of alder leaves the size of a Volkswagen, that had grown during the night as we would cut more and more branches to burrow down into…attempting to stay warm.
On our way to this location the day before, we knew we would need to skirt a cliff jutting out into the ocean here, so we carried only our large 35mm motion picture camera and the heavy tripod used to support it.
When we came to this cliff, we saw that we’d have to climb a pretty steep slope to get over the top. We split the equipment with Bill taking the camera in one hand and I took the tripod. Eventually the climb became so steep we had to back down and go inland to the canyon mentioned above.
We were on the edge of the ocean as we made this attempt, and black flies were here. They swarmed around us, creating small clouds of pelting bodies around our heads.
I’ve seen some intense concentrations of mosquitoes in Alaska, especially up along the Arctic coast where I’d spent one summer. On a rare day when the wind would die down there briefly, the mosquitoes could look like smoke rising from the tundra.
But these blackflies were different. They zoomed into your nostrils, into your ears, mouth and eyes! With one hand carrying equipment and the other hand clutching the brush and weeds of this steep slope, it was maddening. Even though we had buttoned the collar and sleeves of our shirts, by the time we retreated back down the slope our wrists were bloody at the edges of cuffs and around our necks. Literally a ring of blood. So we moved inland to cross that deep canyon to reach our glacier destination.
There have been songs written about blackflies, that they can take the meat off your bones. We concurred with that assessment.
Bill had been in the movie business for years, beginning with the Disney organization, and had won an Emmy in 1968. He had a reputation and was well known around Anchorage.
One morning we were having breakfast at a famous restaurant in Anchorage, known as Gwennies. As we ate, a young lady came to our table and complimented Bill, saying that she was an admirer of his work and accomplishments. Later, as we were leaving and about to pay the check, it had already been paid! I said, “Bill, that’s the first time your face ever got me a free meal”!
Bill was adaptable and resourceful. Car is stuck in a mud hole a long way off the main road? He could find branches and just get it out…no matter where we were.
I’ll miss you old friend.