Papersky #32 Yosemite
The Inspiration Issue
A big part of everything we do at Knee High is Nature. Ever since the days of Tokion, out minds and therefore our media have always been inspired in some way or another by Nature. We’ve consistently relied on nature as both a playground and school for higher learning. Papersky has traveled around the world and everywhere we go, there is stunning nature- and some of the most amazing nature is absolutely nothing, like the Sahara Desert. Meanwhile one the other side of the coin there is Nature that is everything like Yosemite National Park in California, this issue’s featured destination. We’ve always subscribed to the idea that Nature plays an indispensable role in forming cultures- determining a region a people’s culinary culture, sleeping patterns and even what materials a culture uses to build their houses with. Yosemite’ has inspired and influenced the life and art of generations- from the Native Americans to the millions of annual tourists. For issue 32 we traveled with Japanese actor and fashion designer Shunsuke Matsuoka to look at Yosemite through a prism of Art and Nature and the poetry of Gary Snyder. We selected six intriguing artists (Roger Minick, Tom Killion, Ansel Adams, David Hockney to name a few) from various generations and expressive mediums for each of which we selected a trail we felt conveyed the right mood or place of their artworks. This issue contains our extensive Art and Nature guide and maps, our recently introduced ‘Green Traveler’ column goes tree climbing up a forty-meter Douglas Fir, an ‘A to B’ trip in Switzerland from Graubunden to Valais, a bit of climbing history looking at some of the most unique and adventurous athletes ever-the Stone Masters, plus a look at the mother of all climbing films, Fred Padulla’s El Capitan (1968!, Canyon Cinema). Our ‘Life of Fiction’ section has a story by Dana Mazur (translated by Motoyuki Shibata) and we travel to Yaizu, one of Japan’s most famous and notorious fishing ports to learn the secrets of fisherman’s luck plus our regular columns. We hope you will visit Yosemite yourself and hike, climb, or bike the trails Papersky has chosen and when doing so, share the artists’ inspiration from the bountiful nature that surrounds.
