STICKS FROM THE SUNRISE STICK GAME

These sticks are made from various pieces of wood, metal, and artifacts found while on field trips throughout the West. They are used in a game called the Sunrise Stick Game that’s often played with traveling companions. The game was invented as a way to settle campfire arguments about where the sun would rise in the morning, a subject of interest to landscape photographers. At night a circle about six feet in diameter is scraped into the ground, and the stick is placed in the center. Players put markers in the ground, and the stick is placed in the center. Players put markers onto the circle in the exact spot they think the sun will cast the first shadow of the stick in the morning.

I began making these sticks around 1998 and have made them on almost every camping trip to the present. The wood used reflected their location: saguaro ribs and ironwood from the Sonoran Desert, greasewood and sage from the basin and range, pine and redwood from the sierra. Metal often comes from abandoned machinery, cars, and airplanes or military relics. The sticks vary from about twelve to thirty inches in height.

The earliest sticks I made were discarded. But over time I began to carve them by the light of the campfire and adorn them with objects found during the day. I came to appreciate that each stick represents a unique location and experience. Almost all the sticks make some kind of reference to history of the land visited, and they all reflect stories of the journey.