The People

Trygve (The Photographer)

Tryg fishing in Mexico

I've only ever heard stories about when me and Tryg met. We were both 1 year old with hair defiant to the common laws of nature. We learned to talk along side each other and so today tend to speak in our own selective ways. We have a unique relationship that makes me feel incredibly lucky, because I've never met people who have a friendship like us. We consider each other brothers.

Being influenced by a lifetime of exposure and personal biases makes it difficult to describe Tryg adequately.  so what follows is only one perspective on him.

Tryg is arrogant. He holds it as a rule that he is always right until proven otherwise. The main way me and him communicate is through criticism and arguments. We get sick of each other very quickly, usually after only 3 or 4 days, though a bit longer sometimes if we limit contact, or haven't seen each other in a while. Despite all this people tend to like us when we're together. We come off as funny, charming, and above all else entertaining. People can see the love that we hurl in the form of insults.

Tryg is a fisheries biologist who is proud of the fact that when he's not traveling around the world, or studying fish habitat,  he is living out of the back of his Ford Ranger pickup truck and crashing on people's couches.

Tryg is a resilient person and lives by strong moral principals. While he at times seems incredibly judgmental, that judgmentalism is more a hobby than a career.  He rarely takes himself too seriously, and is always happy to open his mind to consider someone else's point of view. 

Me and Tryg on a trip to the D

Together we tend to find amazing adventures, even in ordinary life, and now we are headed to a place that breeds incredible events like the world depends on it. I'm certain we will get sick of each other. I'm certain we'll fight and may even need to split up at some point for our own good. But there is no one on earth I'd be more excited to travel with than Tryg.

Gary (Photo Editor)

I'm not exactly sure why Gary wanted anything to do with me and Tryg when he first met us.  Sure, if you asked us back then, we probably would have told you it was because we were the most intresting mature and intelligent 17 year olds you were likely to meet, but I hardly think we were nearly as great to hang arround with as we thought we were.  Most likely it had everything to do with fishing.  We'd been fishing for a few years at that point, but had just gotten involved with a website called Westfly that was a forum for flyfishers in the western states.  When flyfishing you always have something to talk about, rises, hatches, technique, flow.  At that time tryg was just starting to breach the realm of photography which gave him even more to talk about with Gary.  Over the years we met up on various rivers and continued to talk about fish, me zoneing out when ever Tryg started in on the photography talk.

Before China there was something called Burning Pram, an event held annually in secret canyons of central washington where hundreds (or at least 50s) of flyfishermen gather to share great food, tell tall tales, and spend the days fly fishing some great water. We visited with Gary over the weekend and discussed the plans for our trip. Gary is a professional photographer who was most recently the featured artist in the January edition of "Cascade Arts & Entertainment Magazine," which you should presently go find and gawk over. Every week Tryg sends his photos to Gary for basic post processing, nothing drastic; just cropping, resizing and adjusting of light levels.  Since we don'thave a computer of our own Tryg can't do this himself reliably, but luckily Gary is one of the few people Tryg trusts with his pictures. Once the work is done Gary sends them off to Lupin for posting to the blog. 

We feel really lucky that we know someone like Gary who is willing to do this for us, for free, so please check out his website and his photos here.

http://photosnorthwest.com/blog/?p=1629

Me (The Writer)

Tryg made this a while back

When I was still in high school I took a very basic introductory Chinese language class at the school where I studied Tai Chi. I was given a name that was pronounced Tian Yi. Because of the complexity of the Chinese language though there are many possible meanings that one can associate with these words unless you know how to write them. Just like in English if you spell “there” as “their” it changes the meaning, even if it does not change the pronunciation. Years after I took that class I went to China. I was 19, and alone. I had forgotten all I had ever learned in my language class save how to say “hello” and “goodbye” So when I was registering for classes at the Chinese university and they asked for my Chinese name, I didn't know how to write it.

Tian - Sky

I decided to write the only two homonym characters that I knew. They were very simple to write. The first character is the symbol for the sky, for heaven, for the universe. The second symbol is a single horizontal line that is the character for the number “one”. Later in language class my teacher told me this name was very special. That it represented the beginning of all things it.  A wonderful accident that suited me perfectly.

At camp I gave myself the name Sage. In Taoist texts a Sage was the perfect leader and it seemed fitting as something to aspire to when I was trying to figure out how I was going to lead a group of hyperactive 12 year olds. 

On Westfly, a fly fishing website, I gave myself the name Salmosapian because it sounded cool.

Me with flaming sticks on a road trip

In real life my name is Ian. I'm 25, and China is as much a part of me as anything. I love to write. I believe in being honest when I write, and I expect to have a lot to say in the coming months.

Everyone who has ever known me for any significant amount of time has told me I think too much.  As much as I adore statements like that in the most sarcastic sense possible, I understand what they mean.  I obsess, I ponder, I work things over and look at them from every state of mind I can muster.  While this isn't always great for my mental health, it certainly lends it's self to writing interesting things.

I am the ever sensitive guy, thou also arrogant.  I have high, perhaps unreasonable, expectations of those who become close to me.  I understand people very well, though that does not always endears me to them.  Part of me is utterly terrified to go on this trip.  but I'm far more terrified of not going.  I want very much to make something of this blog so that people who read it will experience this year with me.