The life of a nature and wildlife filmmaker is often a lonely one.

When I’m working on a project I’ll often head out well before sunrise and sometimes won’t be back until well after sunset. If I’m someplace like Yellowstone, this can go on day after day for weeks at a time. Usually I’m by myself. Sometimes my wife, Angi, will come along.

But even when I have someone along for company, I’m too consumed with figuring out what to shoot, how to shoot it and how it’s all going to come together. I’m in my own little world. Angi will bring a book to read since she’s learned over the years that nature filmmaking is many hours of boredom followed sometimes by a few seconds of something wonderful. Oftentimes she wouldn’t understand why I was so excited about something but was happy that I was so happy.

I’ve hiked to frozen lakes in the middle of July, waded through a canyon river where the walls were only eighteen feet apart. I’ve seen ancient ruins thousands of years old. Had bears close enough to touch, coyotes chasing a wolf,snow falling in the Utah desert.

I’ve seen and done a lot of things in the natural world pretty mush most of them I was the only witness that they ever occurred.

But I thought Hawaii would be different. I got a call about teaching at a workshop in Honolulu a while back. The way the schedule was set up, It would have been easy for Angi to come along and enjoy Waikiki Beach while I was out filming. Unfortunately, her schedule wouldn’t allow her to come along.The ironic thing is that the night before I left, her schedule cleared and she would have been able to go after all. The only problem was that now plane tickets were over $2k. So, she reluctantly accepted the fact that she was going to miss out on this opportunity.

Hawaii turned out to be everything you hear it is. I met some great people there and we had a blast filming around the island. In fact, I still keep in touch with them and hope to visit them the next time I’m in town. John Chance, one of the locals, turned me on to Loco Moko and Plate Dinners. We had a great time along with his family and another friend I met there Constantino Ferrer. We sat on Waikiki Beach at sunset and watched world class films being projected onto a 30 foot screen as part of the Hawaiian International Film Festival. There’s just something about watching a documentary film about sharks while you’re sitting on Waikiki Beach and can hear the ocean waves just feet away from you. It was truly magical!

But Angi was never far from my thoughts when I was there. I knew how disappointed she was that she couldn’t join me.

On the flight back to Iowa, I broke out the laptop and started pulling clips from the trip. Angi is a California girl and living in Iowa, she misses the ocean terribly.

As the plane touched down in Cedar Rapids, it was great to be home. I had been in paradise for two weeks but nothing was as good as walking in the front door of my house, setting down all the gear and being home.

So when she asked me how was the trip, I played her this video that I had edited on my flight home.

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