The View Finder : Books: Photographer and activist Galen Rowell reaches a new summit with ‘My Tibet,’ an album that pairs his images with essays by the Dalai Lama.

ALBANY, Calif. —  “This,” says Galen Rowell, tapping a page of his latest book with his forefinger, “this is the photo that got me in trouble.”

It was not even one of his own, those miracles of image and light that have made Rowell one of America’s foremost mountain photographers and adventurers for more than 15 years.

Instead, it was a small, commercially reproduced picture of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader--and, in a yak-hair tent high in western Tibet, Rowell had just presented it to his nomad hosts, then taken a photograph of the Tibetans reverently holding it.

With that gesture, seemingly simple, ultimately profound, Rowell--the envy of thousands for his grueling mountain ascents, his winter ski traverse from Mt. Whitney to Yosemite and his exquisitely composed photos of landscapes, people and animals--reached a new peak on the adventure that has enhanced his life’s work: environmental and political activism, particularly in the Himalayas.

Also in that isolated nomads’ tent was Rowell’s Chinese escort, who reported him to the authorities; China claims Tibet as part of its territory. And after Rowell arrived home in California, he received word that he had been tried absente reo and convicted of sedition.

In an attempt to placate the prickly Chinese, he wrote a letter assuring Beijing that his intentions were not political in any way, that the photo had been a mere gift.

Suddenly, “I felt ashamed and chagrined” by the letter, Rowell recalls with a wince, even now, two years later, sitting in his Mountain Light Gallery a few blocks from north Berkeley. “What were they afraid of? I started thinking about the power of the Dalai Lama, the power of photography.”

From those musings comes the newly published “My Tibet” (Mountain Light Press, $35), which combines a series of graceful essays by the Dalai Lama on compassion, environmental responsibility and other topics with Rowell’s stunning photos. The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner also provided spontaneous--and often humorous--responses to the pictures for captions.

It is an optimistic book, full of hope that Tibet’s heritage will endure despite the Chinese presence. And although the book is deliberately not political, it is a further sign of how Galen Rowell, like a champion archer, combines precision and risk, subtlety and power.

Clad in a work shirt, jeans and well-worn running shoes, and with his golden retriever, Khumbu, at his side, Rowell seems friendly if slightly wary. His large eyes and earnest grin command a visitor’s attention, and his lean, rugged looks slice more than a decade off his age, which is 50.

He is disarmingly low-key, but his words reflect the passion and determination that characterize the man who has declared: “Photography is an action sport.”

There is, for example, no indication from the Chinese whether he can ever return to Tibet.

“I’m sure if I try to go in an official capacity, as a journalist or leader of an expedition, that I wouldn’t get to go,” he says, then chuckles. “I think if I went as just another member of a tour group that they aren’t organized enough to figure that out.”

In an article he wrote for the environmental group Greenpeace last spring, he went public with his charges of human rights and environmental abuse by the Chinese. He also recalled his first trip to Tibet, in 1981, when “I thought little of politics or human rights. I simply wanted to climb mountains and take photographs of the mysterious land I had read so much about.”

Now, in the standing-room-only lectures Rowell gives, including one scheduled tonight at Claremont College, he focuses on the glory and grimness of the region today, showing privileged Han Chinese with have-not Tibetans, Chinese soldiers preventing Tibetans from praying, artillery looming near Lhasa, the capital. Chillingly, he chronicles the devastation of wildlife, the severe deforestation, the establishment of Chinese nuclear missile bases on the Tibetan plateau.

Throughout, his admiration for the Tibetan people is evident.

“Tibetans have a calmness, not a diffidence, not a distance,” says Rowell, who acknowledges his deep but mostly intellectual interest in Tibetan Buddhism. “They’re always very happy and sincere, and they respond to others around them. Yet they’re not pushovers--they’re people of firm resolve who are very well-centered within themselves.”

As an example, he shows a magnificent image from the book, one that inspires awe in a Westerner, of an imposing scarlet-and-gold door of a Buddhist temple in the Potala Palace in Lhasa.

“Why do you think Tibetans laugh at this?” he asks, savoring the punch line. “Because the sign on the door says, ‘Don’t spill grease from the butter lamps on the floor.’ ”

Yet he seems self-effacing about his contributions to the book, saying of the Dalai Lama, who fled his homeland in 1959, “I never met anybody who was so completely there with me, with such rapt attention.”

In 1972, Rowell made the switch to full-time photography after years of taking pictures as a hobby to illustrate hikes in the Sierra. A college dropout, he founded a small auto repair business, then sold it and was down to his last $50 before starting to earn money as a photographer. His photos have since been exhibited and sold nationwide--on calendars and post cards as well as in galleries--and have been featured in about a dozen major National Geographic articles, among others. “My Tibet” is his 10th book.

Altogether, he has made some three dozen trips to the Himalayas, Alaska, Africa, the Galapagos and elsewhere. With thousands of climbs to his credit, he has participated in major expeditions to Mt. Everest and K2. Once, when he had fallen in a crevasse during a climb, he insisted on snapping a few photos before being pulled out.

“At first, I would do just about anything--lead a trip and so forth,” he recalls. “Little by little, I’ve been able to pick and choose. Now I’m choosing projects with a strong environmental impact.”

His persistence has paid off; last year, for example, he persuaded the editors of National Geographic to publish a piece on environmental degradation in Nepal after they had turned him down twice.

“It’s great that environmental concern has become mainstream consciousness,” Rowell says, adding that he believes it is “inevitable that in 10 or 20 years, the environment will probably be the No. 1 concern, rather than the economy, rather than defense.”

And although he is concerned that some would-be environmentalists may be too enthusiastic--such as amateur photographers who harass wildlife in their zeal for the perfect shot--he believes wild places’ increasing exposure to human impact is offset by the increasing awareness it brings.

But sadly, he points out, humans are often neglected as an integral part of the environment.

“Within the environmental movement, there’s so much pressure to consider human beings as not part of the environment,” he notes. At some outlets where his photos are sold as prints, “If I have a picture that shows some native people, nope, can’t have that. We want nature .”

In any form, Rowell’s work is lauded by leaders in the environmental and Tibetan independence movements. Copies of “My Tibet” have been distributed to the members of Congress by Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), one of Tibet’s biggest backers on Capitol Hill.

Michele Bohana, director of human rights for the Washington-based Campaign for Tibet, says Rowell’s “high profile draws attention to the overall (Tibetan) issue, draws attention to human rights, draws attention to the environment--most important, draws attention to (the Dalai Lama’s) five-point peace plan; point four is the environment. It allows us to articulate the peace plan over and over.”

Similarly, Bruce W. Bunting, vice president of the World Wildlife Fund’s Asia program and the man who helped introduce Rowell to representatives of the Dalai Lama, declares: “Galen Rowell has been a significant voice in the environmental movement in Asia, particularly in the Himalayas.”

“His involvement with World Wildlife Fund, especially in Nepal and in Bhutan, has been instrumental in creating greater awareness of the environmental issues that the Himalayas face, both within these two countries, as well as in the United States and Europe.”

For his next adventure, Rowell and his wife, Barbara Cushman Rowell, are off in December, not to the Himalayas but to Patagonia, at the southern tip of South America, for climbing and photography. The Rowells live in the Berkeley hills, just a quarter mile from the house where Galen grew up and where his 89-year-old mother, a former music instructor and climber herself, still lives.

Rowell described his wife as having “a good business sense” and being a moving force behind the creation of Mountain Light. She will pilot the couple’s Cessna 206 on this trip, as she often does.

Sitting amid a cornucopia of photographs--including a 4-by-6-foot blowup of his most famous image, a shimmering rainbow over the Potala Palace--Rowell says he is not worried that he might never be able to visit Tibet again.

“I don’t regret my decision (to speak out) at all,” he says firmly. “The only thing I regret is that I didn’t do it earlier. It felt like I was taking a giant pack off my shoulders.”