The Big Wide Open

Graham Deacon was raised in Portland, Oregon. After high school he rode his bicycle to Astoria, Oregon, and worked in the woods thinning and planting trees. After a year he returned to Portland and enrolled at Portland State University...and left after three months. He travelled to Millerton, New York, to attend Apeiron Photography Workshops, which centered around black and white fine art photography. After eight months he returned Portland and went back to the university. Again it did not last long. A friend's brother had returned from Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he'd worked on an oil drilling rig and made a lot of money. Graham and his friend decided to do the same, so they hopped a freight train going to Rock Springs. When they arrived they found the oil boom was over and there were no jobs, so they went north to Big Piney, Wyoming, and there Graham got a job working as a roustabout in the oil field. After five months he returned to New York, and two months later returned to Oregon by hitchhiking and riding freight trains across the country. Landing in Powell, Wyoming, he worked on a steel gang laying rail in Wyoming and Montana for three summers. After that he moved to Helena, Montana, where he became a fly fishing guide on many Montana rivers, which he did for 25 years. During that time he went to China and adopted his daughter who was then four months old and had been left at the front door of an orphanage. Graham currently lives in Astoria, Oregon.