Tour Guiding a Tour Guide on 35mm

We recently got 27 rolls of film developed and scanned. 27. Dating back to the spring of 2016. 

Early on in my burgeoning interest in photography, I found myself admiring the look, feel, and compositions that film photographers were achieving. Feeling too daunted by the exercise of learning the fundamentals of an archaic medium, I continued to shoot digital, and bought a Canon AE1 for Megan to shoot on. Megan adores anything that could be perceived as archaic, and instantly fell in love with film photography. Unfortunately, Megan’s love for film photography was always more rooted in the process of shooting—the nifty split in the viewfinder indicating focus, the texture of the weighty metal camera body, the audible slam of the shutter before the tangible advancement of the film with your thumb—not in the experience of viewing the end product. This led to an accumulation of endless rolls of film waiting to be developed. I was interested in seeing some due to the trips that I wanted to revisit. This roll, however, was one of two rolls of film that I eagerly awaited viewing because I shot them unassisted.

This roll captured a trip that I took with my friend, John. We met while training to work one of the most bizarre, demanding, and thrilling jobs that anybody could ever work: Tour Guide. Before you picture us pointing out landmarks in short shorts on Segways (which, to be clear, we would do together for fun), this wasn’t that kind of tour guide gig. We ran tours traversing the entire country for mostly 18 to 35-year-olds from the UK, Australia, and several other European and Asian countries. All were visiting to experience the “Great American Road Trip” amongst other eager visitors crammed into a 12-passenger Ford Transit with a trailer full of camping gear in tow. We were both, not so humbly, very good tour guides. Our time together was cut far too short during training as we were in different groups, and we parted ways during our training trip at Monument Valley. John’s group proceeded to train in Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Las Vegas, Yosemite National Park, and San Francisco. My group sauntered along through Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis, Wytheville, Washington D.C., and on to New Jersey. Needless to say, my training trip was…more varied. And worse.

As our groups parted ways in Monument Valley, it hit me suddenly and unexpectedly that I was really going to miss John. After our respective training trips, John and I were both awarded the first trips from our groups as leaders. My first trip was a 21-day trip starting in New Jersey and ending in Los Angeles with 10 female passengers by way of Nashville, New Orleans, Austin, the Grand Canyon, and Las Vegas. At the 2-week mark of my trip, my group had finally crossed the Continental Divide, and I felt closer to home in the West. I was taking my group out on an overnight Jeep tour in Monument Valley led by Navaho tribal members. It was my birthday month, which meant that during the ceremony at the end of the tour, I had to be trotted out in front of everybody on the Jeep tours from that day to present a birthday dance. During my slow waddle up to the stage area in front of the monoliths of Monument Valley, I heard a recognizable “Sam?!”. John’s group was in Monument Valley by way of San Francisco, and he was the first person that I had recognized for two weeks. In that time, we had both experienced emergency evacuations due to flooding, the expected amount of drama within our groups, and a general need to see someone familiar. This was an extremely brief meeting (as one of my passengers suddenly had a panic attack), but we were able to reconnect for a couple days in the Grand Canyon. From that point forward, I felt like John was going to be a very important person in my life.

After the tour guiding season ended, everybody parted ways and went back to their respective homes. There was an end-of-season company party in Reno. John suggested making a trip out of getting to the company party to the group of leaders that we trained with. I immediately responded stating that I would drive him to the party and make a trip out of it, if he just flew into Boise. John, to my surprise, immediately agreed. What I did not explain thoroughly to John before he agreed to join me on this trip was that the trip would not take us anywhere “cool,” but rather, places that I thought were underappreciated and beautiful, even if they were a bit desolate.

I took John through eastern Oregon where we stayed at a rural private hot spring. We dropped down into northern California and drove through Lassen National Park, then stayed a night with my parents in my tiny hometown of Chester. We headed into Reno for the party on day 3. Somehow, even as an accomplished tour guide, John’s sincere excitement over everywhere I took him made me appreciate all of the places that I have known for a long time in a different way. This from a tour guide who led his groups into Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Zion, along with most of the other natural treasures the US holds.

My identity as a tour guide will never really fade, even if I was only a tour guide for a short time. There is nothing quite like introducing someone to a place that you care about and having them share the same feelings. This trip with John cemented our friendship, my adoration of this peculiar route, and my newfound love of actually shooting 35mm film rather than just appreciating it from afar.