His mother dies and two weeks later his father suffers a debilitating stroke. After more than thirty years of trying to do so, Adams and Kerstin move permanently to a small house in Astoria, close to his father.

Builds a new darkroom after cleaning the space of water damage and asbestos and begins to photograph more after several years of relative inactivity. He finds it difficult to do so, noting in his journal that “a landscape is always more remarkable than a picture of it. A picture is just an attempt to acknowledge the sufficiency of the place.” Works with Kerstin in support of Oregon's Measure 64 to restrict clearcutting in the state; the initiative is defeated. “After more than a century of ecocide, those who live here are so numb—over what their parents did, over what they have done and not done, over what they see each day—that they are unable to see a future, much less hope.” —From notes made in 1998

Begins to photograph clearcuts near his home in Oregon, noting in his journal that “there is a bleak tension in the activity.” Turning Back Finds it increasingly difficult to obtain graded paper for printing his photographs, the kind that yields the results he requires. In the coming years it will become impossible to print correctly the majority of his earlier negatives.