Pepper Trail

Pepper Trail is an ornithologist, conservationist, and writer.  He began watching birds as a boy in upstate New York, and traces his incurable love of travel to a family trip to Mexico when he was twelve.  Since then, Pepper has studied birds around the world, from the rain forests of Amazonia to the coasts of Antarctica.

Since 1994, Pepper has lived in Ashland, where he is the ornithologist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory.  He is involved in many regional environmental issues, especially the establishment and protection of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and is a regular contributor to Jefferson Public Radio and the Jefferson Monthly.  His essays have been published in the books Intricate Homeland and A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places, as well as in a variety of journals. He began to write poetry about five years ago, and his work has appeared in Open Spaces, Borderlands, Atlanta Review and other publications.

Pepper Trail's web site.

Jim Chamberlain

Jim built his first darkroom almost 40 years ago simply for the fun of developing film. During the "dark room" era he became interested in building electronic projects using vacuum tubes, then on to transistors at home and finally integrated circuits while working in the research laboratories of Xerox Corporation. Both interests finally merged when he designed and built an enhancement for a photographic enlarger which he sold to the Beseler Corporation. 

Now using purely digital technologies with state of the art camera and software, the pursuit continues.  To Jim photography is about the mystery of where and when an image will be discovered, it’s the chase of searching for the next one. It’s the heightened excitement and visual awareness when he senses a satisfying visual experience is about to come together.  His background in electronics and computers has taken him on a more intensive digital path than most artists. This passion for expanding visual experiences through the digital process is what he finds so addictive.

For the past ten years Jim's day job is as a Forensic Specialist at the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon.

Jim Chamberlain's web site.


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