A Moment in Time

Remembering Robert Redford, High & Wild: Essays and Photographs on Wilderness Adventure

I just learned of Robert Redford’s passing today. He was a gracious man, who cared about people, and loved the West. In the 1970s as an actor, Redford’s good looks and dry sense of perfectly timed humor, influenced a generation. He was a fine director with a great social conscience.

I was an art director for NBC Network when his headshots came across my desk for various specials. His was a face weathered by the outdoors and untouched by cosmetic surgery.

Redford wrote this foreword for his friend, Galen Rowell, whose book, High and Wild: Essays and Photographs on Wilderness Adventure, I published in 2002 (Spotted Dog Press). In August of that year, the book was at press in Shenzhen, China. Galen approved the color proofs, then he and Barbara Rowell left Bishop on a photography expedition, to the Arctic or Antarctic—I can’t remember which one. Galen said, “We’ll see you in three weeks.” That was the last time I saw him alive.

Three weeks later, a local pilot from Bishop picked up Galen and Barbara at SFO to bring them home. The plane never made it to the Bishop Airport. Just past midnight and short of the runway, we lost four people, Galen, Barbara, the pilot and the pilot’s guest.

Though High & Wild has been long out of print, I had to re-read Redford’s foreword this morning. On the opposite page is an image taken by Galen, on his and Redford’s 1982 month-long trek to Nepal. Entitled “Spectre of the Brocken beneath Mount Everest.” Galen's silhouette of a human figure, a portrait of himself holding a 35mm camera, encircled by a rainbow of light…representative of the Earth some say...with the Himalaya behind, was as if he was saying good-bye, but now I see them both. Just a moment in time.

— Wynne Benti, Publisher
September 16, 2025