illustration by Anders Nilsen Owl Scouts: Lost in the Woods is a 14-image photo series completed in 2010. On the surface, it has a simple, tragic narrative, following the adventures of a boy and girl lost deep in the woods. The two are members of the Boys and Girls Owl Scouts of America – a fictional organization I invented after finding a pair of tattered vintage boy and girl scouts uniforms in an interstate antique mall and imagined a pair of sad ghost scouts, abused by their adventures. In the Owl Scouts narrative, the lost duo encounters four challenges that test their survival skills and, ultimately, lead to their deaths.

“…the lost duo encounters four challenges that test their survival skills and, ultimately, lead to their deaths.” I should probably also mention that I was going through a divorce during the creation process for Owl Scouts. Not surprisingly, I found myself ruminating on what kills a marriage – all the little challenges and failures that add up to its ultimate failure. It’s not really any one person’s fault, most of the time. Two people – young, inexperienced, intense people – set out on an adventure together, a marriage. And little by little they are set upon by all the little hardships of adult relationships, adult life. Eventually, for a lot of us, the marriage can’t take it. So it dies.

Some people are really put off by the kids dying in Owl Scouts, but it was clear to me from the beginning that they had to. That was the story I needed to tell. I wasn’t even sure at that point that marriages could end any other way. I mean, who’s really prepared for the things we have to face together as married couples? (Side note: having survived that marriage and divorce, and having embarked on a new adventure, I’m happy to say I now feel pretty good that things don’t always have to end that way.) “Some people are really put off by the kids dying, but it was clear to me that they had to. That was the story I needed to tell.”