Growing up, family roadtrips for Mark Schiemann were always about reaching the final destination. Usually, that was a campground.
“On the way there I would see all kinds of cool stuff, I’d want to stop and we never could,” Mark said. Today, roadtrips for Mark are all about exploring, never mind a particular destination, and he does it all right here in the Cariboo.
“The Cariboo is just…stunning, and it’s stunning everywhere,” Mark said, noting how amazing the change in terrain can be all within a day’s drive. From cliffs to ranchland to plateau to desert, Mark said you can see it all in the Cariboo.
One of his favourite examples of the region’s varied terrain is while driving from one end of Dog Creek Road to the other.
“That’s a worthwhile drive, you get a bit of everything through there,” Mark said.
Another thing he likes about the Cariboo is the fact you can go to the same place more than once and there will always be something new to see. Seasons changing, the weather fluctuating, the shift from night to day and from day to night. It’s one of the reasons why he and his wife Amanda moved here from Port Moody in 2016.
“We knew we were going to move up here,” Amanda said. Mark’s parents moved to the Cariboo three decades ago, his brother shortly thereafter. Upon their first visit, Mark and Amanda knew they were in their element in the Cariboo and would soon join them.
“That kind of stuff, you just don't get on the coast,” Amanda said while describing all the wildlife they come across while living and exploring here.
Mark knew of the Cariboo’s beauty far before his visits to see family, however. As one of the first places his father worked after immigrating from Germany in the 1950s, it holds a special place in the family memory. While he grew up in North Vancouver, Mark spent much time in the Cariboo on fishing trips and gold panning adventures with his father.
“He showed me all kinds of places when we used to come up before, long before we moved here,” Mark said.
After years of regular visits to the region, the Schiemanns at last moved to the Cariboo. Away from the crowded streets and tall buildings down on B.C.’s coast, they found their place in Williams Lake.
Now settling into a semi-retired life after a career in computer animation, Mark has been dedicating more time to the things he loves.
“I've been an artist all my life…I’m a guitarist more than anything else” he said.
Mark writes his own songs, mostly instrumental, and has made music videos for them which he posts on his YouTube channel Jagged Tooth Entertainment. He’s also dabbled in painting, sculpting and print making, and in the past had some of his work displayed in galleries, though that was never quite his ‘scene.’
“I'm far too backwoodsy, too rough around the edges,” he said.
Photography, too, has always been a hobby for Mark, one which he’s spending more time with these days.
“I want to get a little more serious with it. The new cameras are such a leap above the old stuff that once I started down that road I couldn’t help myself.”
Going from all papers and chemicals to digital, mirrorless cameras with endless options for customization, Mark said photography is much more accessible nowadays and easier to learn.
Equipped with a Sony A7CR-200-600, Mark is taking full advantage of his freedom to roam and to focus on his hobbies. A nose for adventure, he’s been taking himself out for drives around the Cariboo, often in the early hours of the morning, and capturing photos of the world around him.
“This is a pretty darn good life I’m living at the moment,” Mark said as he talked about all the things he’s witnessed while venturing through the Cariboo with just his Jeep, his dog and a camera.
“It doesn’t seem right to go out and see all this cool stuff, be as free as I feel…I don't know how many people get that opportunity to just have the time to do what they want and so, I guess I feel like I gotta share it, and encourage it.”
So share it he has. Last year, Mark was out nearly every day creating a documentary he published in March 2025 called Follow the Lens - A year of exploring the Cariboo.
“The whole idea behind that is to not pick a destination but simply pick a direction,” Mark said of his documentary. Just as the journey to the campgrounds and discovering the unexpected has always been more important to Mark than the final destination, so too is the chase to the perfect photo.
“There's some days I've gone out and seen nothing, but I can’t say I'm disappointed. The exploration itself is enjoyable.”
Mark makes a point of taking the less trodden paths, of finding the places and things you don’t know are there until you see them. He’s seen tons of funky house signs, large stacks of boulders, trees busted by lightning and old, abandoned cabins. Those are Amanda’s favourite spots - the abandoned places which remind us of days past and provide a glimpse into how people once lived.
Mark will often do the initial exploring on his own and later bring Amanda to the coolest spots he’s found. She also helps him out with the social media side of things, and with entering his work into contests.
Once, they came across a massive golden eagle as they climbed the Doc English Bluff near Desous Mountain, about 30 minutes southwest of Williams Lake.
“I swear it was bigger than it should have been,” Mark said. “You don’t see that in Vancouver, you just won’t,” said Amanda. Back on the coast, she said these kinds of sightings are a ‘right place at the right time’ sort of thing. “Here, it could happen almost every day.”
Mark quickly fell in love with wildlife photography, and while he wouldn’t go as far as to label himself a wildlife photographer, he says he’s getting there little by little.
“A bear or moose makes my day,” he said.
Mark is now working on a second documentary, but in the meantime, he has been posting shorts of local wildlife, some with gentle voiceovers describing his experiences, others with the acoustic sound of his guitar overlapping bird song.
“God, this is why I love the Cariboo,” you’ll hear him say in a recent video of a fox in the garden.
“I think the idea of just going out and taking pictures and not going to a destination or rushing, not planning everything, would help people out and make them just feel better about everything,” Mark said.
He looked around him as we sat at Scout Island, the sun filtering through the trees and deer, with their large antlers, sauntering past the picnic table where we sat.
“This isn’t ending tomorrow,” he said.
