alpine tundra Archives ~ Rambling ranger

Well, it’s almost Christmas and Winter Solstice is only a few days away. Kind of reminds me of a Dar Williams song, “Christians and the Pagans”. (Give it a listen) There’s a line in that song, “And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere, ”

I’m a pagan at heart, it’s nearly Winter Solstice, and I do find magic everywhere, especially in the natural world. So here are a few of the places and things I find magical.

Mountains

Denali National Park — A magical alpine landscape

I’ve always been a mountain girl, and it’s not only the big peaks that are magical. I’m in love with the alpine, the land above treeline. Not just the big views, either, but every little detail. Especially the little details. There’s another Lilliputian world there if you look closely, and it’s a magical place.

Alpine wildflowers in Denali National Park. — There’s a whole other world beneath your feet!

.I used to play a game with my visitors when I did Discovery Hikes as a ranger in Denali. I would give them circles of string, about six inches in diameter, and have them enclose a patch of alpine tundra. I would ask them to count all the living species they could find in their circle. Then I would hand out magnifying glasses and have them count again. They always found more the second time around, with that closer look!

Water

Golden Falls, Coast Range, Oregon — Waterfalls are magical. Do you see the face in the rocks to the right of the falls?

Water is life. Literally. Without water, there is no life. It’s a magical substance. And there’s this weird thing that happens occasionally when I photograph waterfalls. Although I don’t see it when I’m making the shot, I will sometimes find a face in the photo (the spirit of the waterfall?) when I open it up to process. That’s what happened in this image. Can you see the face? It’s magical.

Trees

Navarro River State Park, CA — Redwoods are amazing trees.

There are a lot of magical trees out there. Have you ever meditated with a redwood? Or wandered through the fairyland of a temperate rainforest, like you might find in the Pacific Northwest?

Hall of Mosses is a magical trail. — Olympic National Park has some magical forests.

One of the most magical kinds of forests I’ve ever seen are the Madrone/Manzanita woodlands of Oregon’s Siskiyou Mountains, with trees that look like women, decorated with delicate lichens and moss. Magical.

Tidepools

Bandon, Oregon — Tide pools on Bandon Beach

Tide pools are magical places. Especially to me. I’ve been on a mission to find good tide pools, and I’m not always successful. Timing is everything. If you don’t have a real low tide, forget it. But I got lucky last spring, twice; once at Bandon, my favorite spot on the whole Oregon Coast, and then at Cape Perpetua. I scored an awesome campsite with great wildflowers at Cape Perpetua, too.

Ochre Sea Stars on the Oregon coast — Sea Stars are making a comeback!

One of the most miraculous discoveries in my successful tidepooling this spring was that sea stars are coming back! Decimated by sea star wasting disease, it’s been years since there was a healthy starfish population anywhere on the Pacific Coast, but there were a lot of them in Oregon this spring. Brings joy to my heart

Desert

Shakespeare Arch, Kodachrome Basin — Arches are ephemeral.

Arches and natural bridges are pretty magical, too. I listed them under desert to go with my photo, but you can also find them on the coast, products of erosion, sculpted by the waves. In the desert it’s the wind doing the carving for an arch, and water for the natural bridges.

These nature sculptures are ephemeral. beings. You never know how long they will last. The arch in this photo, Shakespeare Arch, is already gone, collapsing a couple of years ago. I’m glad I saw it when I did because it was a beauty, now gone forever.

Another magical product of erosion are slot canyons. All canyons are magical, never knowing but eagerly anticipating what’s around the next bend as you hike up one. Slots just bring the excitement up a notch, with the beauty of their polished walls and the way they have of drawing you in, deeper and deeper.

Springtime in Death Valley National Park — Flowers in the desert can be magical.

A good wildflower season in the desert is definitely magical. To see a landscape that is pretty bleak most of the time, nothing but dirt and rocks, transform into a veritable garden of delight, completely drenched with flowers – well, it’s got to be seen to be believed. Maybe we’ll get lucky this year. Fingers crossed.

Magical Death Valley National Park — It’s not only the quantity of flowers that blows me away, it’s the incredible variety.

Home

Last, but not least, I live in a magical place. When I first came to McCarthy, I felt like I’d discovered Never Never Land. It was a place where you never had to grow up, unique, like nowhere else in the world. That was before social media, before McCarthy was discovered by the rest of the world.

Perhaps it’s not quite so magical now, now that it is on the map. With Instagram, there are no longer any best kept secret magical places. But I’ll bet it’s still pretty magic to people who have never been there before, who are freshly discovering it. And after all, it’s the people who play the largest part in making any place magical, and McCarthy is still filled with amazing, kind, beautiful people, people who keep the magic alive.

Ghost Town at the End of the Rainbow — McCarthy is a magical place.

Thanks to Ann-Christine of Leya for this week’s Lens-Artist’s Photography Challenge, Magical.

Some of my favorite wildflowers are the belly flowers, blooms so small and low to the ground you need to get down on your belly to really check them out. These treasures grow in two of my favorite habitats, the desert and alpine tundra.

I mentioned in my Then and Now post last month that these two habitats, although vastly different, share lots of astonishing similarities. When Anne Sandler of Slow Shutter Speed chose “It’s a Small World” as the theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to expound on one of those similarities, belly flowers.

The tundra can be incredibly cold and the desert unbelievably hot, but one challenge common to both is the wind – harsh, desiccating winds that will suck the life out of most plants. Laying low is a good strategy for plants that live in these extreme environments.

Death Valley National Park — Desert Star

Laying low is a great strategy, (and one that I can relate to during this crazy winter!) but it’s not always enough. There are other strategies that many of these plants share, too. For instance, most belly flowers hold onto moisture and prevent harm from damaging UV rays by wearing a sweater. In both the desert and the mountains, many belly flowers have fuzzy leaves or even furry flowers. These hairs not only protect them from too much sun, they also help hold in moisture so it doesn’t evaporate as quickly.

Round leaf Willow — Many belly flowers have fuzzy leaves or furry flowers.

Have you ever crowded together with your friends on a cold, blustery day to stay warm? Some plants grow in cushions or mounds for the same reason. Low, rounded cushions do not leave much surface area exposed to the elements. They retain water, soaking it in instead of letting it all run off. They also catch dust and dirt blowing in the wind and anchor it in place. Since both habitats have thin, poor, rocky soils, capturing and anchoring the minerals and nutrients blowing by is an excellent survival strategy. Moss campion is the best-known alpine cushion flower. My favorite desert cushion is Turtleback.

Turtlebacks were named after their resemblance to a turtle shell, but those convoluted, gray-green leaves also look a lot like a certain important body part. On one of my favorite hikes as a ranger, I was leading a small group up a nameless, nondescript wash in Death Valley. I was walking with an older, slower visitor and let some of the other visitors take the lead. Around a bend in the canyon, I found a little girl and her father crouched down, intently studying something on the ground in front of them. “What did you find?”, I asked. The little girl looked up, face filled with wonder, and said, “We found a brain flower!”

Survival strategies are good, but worthless if you can’t pass them on to the next generation. Reproduction strategies are important, too. For some belly flowers, it’s a numbers game. If there are lots and lots and lots of flowers, the odds are that some will survive long enough for their seeds to mature. It may be easy to overlook one or two tiny flowers, but if you have thousands upon thousands of them, the blooms will literally carpet hillsides and paint the entire landscape with their pastel colors.

Other flowers are more flamboyant, sure to be noticed by pollinators because of both their size and bright colors. The plant lays low, diminutive and nondescript until it’s showtime. Then it’s hard to believe such a teeny tiny plant could produce such a big, showy flower.

Many flowers use yet another reproduction strategy, one that is a great reason to get down on your belly and up close and personal. Attract those pollinators with your irresistible perfume! Rock Jasmine, an alpine flower – well, the name says it all. Desert Sand Verbena is another one. It has the loveliest fragrance of any flower in the desert.

I have a little game for you to play. With so many strategies in common, it could be hard to tell a desert belly flower from an alpine one. Check out the following five flowers. Can you tell which ones are desert flowers and which ones grow in the Alaskan tundra? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’ll put the answers there in a few days, and also let you know in next week’s post.

By the way, it IS a small world. During these difficult times, it’s good for the soul to practice gratitude and express thanks for the little things in life. It helps make dealing with the big things a little easier. Thanks for reading my posts! Until next time, Happy Trails!

Tag: alpine tundra

Magical Places

Mountains

Water

Trees

Tidepools

Desert

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It’s A Small World – Belly Flowers

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Mountains

Water

Trees

Tidepools

Desert

Home

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