Death Valley National Park Archives ~ Rambling ranger

February 9, 2024

Desert Wildflower Update: Warm Colors

How do warm colors make you feel? For me, they bring a smile to my face, excitement and happiness. I often use a warming filter on my camera because I like my colors a little warmer in most instances. This may come as no surprise to you, as I scurry south every winter to get more of the warmth! My favorite time to do photography is the late afternoon and early evening. It’s not only that I’m too lazy to get up early, I prefer the warm light!

The desert is full of warm colors. Even in the wintertime, you can find warm colors in the sunsets, the red rock, even the birds. I’ve been seeing a lot of those warm colors this past week.

Cactus wren — Even the birds have warm colors in the desert.

As for warm wildflower colors, not so much, but there are a few.

Gates Pass — Red rock is a warm color you can always find in the desert.

The warmest color in Saguaro National Park’s foliage is the yellow fruits from last year’s barrel cactus bloom.

Barrel cactus in fruit and Prickly Pears — The warmest color in Saguaro National Park this week

But there is one flower blooming in Saguaro, the delicate pink Fairy Duster.

Organ Pipe was greener. It looks to be a good bloom there in a couple of weeks. Right now Ocotillo is what’s blooming.

Here’s a closer look at those beautiful warm red flowers.

Warm Colors - Ocotillo — Ocotillo blooms

There was a carpet of green from the Sonoran into California, giving me high hopes for a good flower season in a couple of weeks. But right now the only thing blooming in that vast expanse was Brittlebush.

Brittlebush has started to bloom throughout the deserts.

I was underwhelmed and a bit disappointed when I got to Joshua Tree National Park. I had expected more.

Even the Brittlebush was sparse. There were a couple of new flowers blooming, Bladderpod and Chuparosa. These are both perennial bushes, as are Fairy Dusters, Brittlebush and Ocotillo. Annual flowers are practically non-existent still.

I did find a few Canterbury Bells in Joshua Tree, but that was it. The carpet of green I’d noticed in the Sonoran desert was missing here. By this time of year, there should have been a haze of fuzzy green, the seedlings of the annuals, covering the roadsides. I don’t know if the southern part of Joshua Tree missed the storms, or if it’s been too cold, but don’t expect a big bloom in Joshua Tree this spring. Very little is even sprouting there now.

Warm colors of Brittlebush — Perennials like Brittlebush are doing well.

A little bit of good news, though. Reports from Anza Borrego indicate that it should be a good wildflower season there. It’s already starting, especially the Sand Verbena, the sweetest-smelling flower in the desert. I’ve seen fields full of them here in the Palm Springs area, too.

Not really a warm color, but Sand Verbena is what’s blooming!

The latest reports I’ve found from Death Valley are a couple of weeks old, but state that sprouts are coming up, so I’m hopeful. I will be visiting both Anza Borrego and Death Valley next week and will have a better idea then of what this season will be like.

Panamint Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park — Will the sand dunes be the only warm colors in Death Valley when I get there?

So it looks like the flowers may get going a little late – March will probably be the best month to see the desert bloom this year. Until then, enjoy the warm colors wherever you are, wherever you find them – in the rocks, in the sunset – but keep your eyes open, warm colors in the flowers are coming soon!

Thank you, Egidio, for bringing us this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge, Warm Colors.

Saguro sunset, warm colors — Arizona Sunset

December 1, 2023

Empty Spaces

For this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge, Patti invites us to explore empty spaces in our photography. Empty spaces can draw more attention to our subject, as it does in this wildflower photo.

Grand Hound's Tongue — Empty spaces draw attention to your subject.

In wildlife photography, leaving a lot of empty space in front of your subject gives them room to move.

A meadowlark struts his stuff at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. — Empty space gives this meadowlark plenty of room to strut his stuff.

Or empty spaces can be used in landscape photography to evoke a mood or illustrate the vastness or wildness of a place. Possibly my favorite place to capture emptiness in landscape photography is Death Valley National Park.

Panamint Valley, Death Valley National Park — There’s a lot of empty in Death Valley’s landscapes.

Empty spaces can accentuate the vastness of a landscape.

An empty landscape, but still beautiful. — The empty space in this image highlights the vastness of the landscape

Including a lonely road can evoke a mood of solitude and remoteness.

Artist's Drive, Death Valley National Park — A lonely road can evoke a feeling of solitude and adventure.

Since many of the most exciting nameless canyons in Death Valley are reached by hiking up an open wash, these wide open spaces create a sense of adventure and exploration in me.

Grapevine Mountains, Death Valley National Park — A canyon in the Grapevine Mountains

But by far my favorite empty spaces to photograph in Death Valley are the sand dunes.

With five major dune fields contained within the park, there are a lot to choose from.

Wide open empty spaces of the Panamint Dunes — Panamint Dunes

Emptiness can not only emphasize distance, it can also highlight the sheer massiveness of certain landforms.

Eureka Dunes — Shock and awe – Empty landscapes can take your breath away.

Empty spaces don’t need to bring attention to a particular subject. They can also be used to bring attention to something more ephemeral, like color, as shown in the sunset colors of the feature image, captured in White Sands National Park. Empty spaces also make great palettes for abstract photography. Here is my favorite meditation image, a celebration of emptiness.

Abstract of empty spaces — All is Illusion

Death Valley has been on my mind a lot lately. A huge storm in late August dropped over a year’s worth of precipitation in one day. When the park finally reopened 2 months later, the basin was still filled with water,

Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park — There’s water still in the Badwater Salt Flats.

If there are enough little rain events in the upcoming weeks to keep seedlings moist, that big storm could lead to great things for 2024. It IS an El Nino year. Dare I hope? Could we actually have a superbloom? It’s possible. Stay tuned. I’ll be watching the weather closely. I’m keeping my dance card open, not committing to any housesits for 2024 yet. I’m hoping that instead, maybe this year, I can once again follow the flowers.

Sunset over Artist's Drive, Death Valley National Park — Can you imagine this wide open empty space filled with flowers? I can.

March 24, 2023

Spring!

What does spring mean to me? That’s the question posed by Sofia of Photographias in this week’s Lens-Artists Photography Challenge. For me, spring equals two things: road tripping and wildflowers.

This way of celebrating spring started for me when I used to work winters as a ranger in Death Valley National Park. There, I fell in love with the desert spring bloom. You would not think a land that averaged less than 2 inches of rain a year would have many wildflowers. Surprisingly though, in more years than not, it does. Due to the great diversity of landscapes and elevations, even in a dry year you can find some wildflowers somewhere.

Death Valley Wildflowers — Wildflowers in Death Valley’s Saline Valley

It can be one of the most astounding natural events you’ll ever witness in a good year. During a Superbloom, the flowers start in January and just keep coming. Dry, rocky, barren land is suddenly completely carpeted with color. The variety is phenomenal. They are so thick on the ground that you can hardly take a step without crushing a half dozen blooms. Once I saw a real superbloom, I never wanted to miss another.

Spring wildflowers Joshua Tree National Park — Superbloom in Joshua Tree

So I started following the bloom. I would spend a lot of time in February and March traveling between my two favorite desert wildflower spots, Death Valley and Anza-Borrego State Park, and spending a few days at Joshua Tree National Park along the way.

Spring wildflowers Carrizo Plain National Monument — The wildflowers should be amazing in Carrizo Plain by mid-April.

Slowly starting my trip back home to Alaska in early April, I would try to visit Carrizo Plain National Monument. In a good year, this is the best place ever to see wildflowers. Despite the hype that is out there, this year is not a superbloom year. For that, you need a good soaker storm in the fall to get the seeds going. California did not receive all that rain until January. Carrizo Plain is starting to get some color but no big displays yet. I think it could be fantastic in a couple more weeks, though, as more and more flowers germinated in January bloom.

Sierra Nevada spring wildflowers — Wildflowers could be incredible in the Sierra Nevada foothills, too.

Traveling north, I edge along the western foothills of the Sierra and make a fly-by visit to Yosemite’s waterfalls, another spring phenomenon. I think the Sierra foothills are where the real superbloom will happen this spring.

I would continue north through the Redwood Sorrel and Trilliums of northern California to my last big spring wildflower extravaganza, in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon. Since there were very few wildflowers blooming further north, I would beeline home from there, going back into winter along the way.

Spring wildflowers Siskiyou Mountains — Arrowleaf Balsamroot in the Siskiyou Mountains

This year is a little different. I have spent the entire winter in one spot, northern Washington’s Orcas Island. I’ve kept my carbon footprint low, only using two tanks of gas through the entire winter.

But that’s about to change. Although there are domestic flowers beginning to bloom here now – crocuses, hellebore, fruit trees – there are no wildflowers. As I said last week, domestic flowers don’t thrill me. I need a wildflower fix before I head back into winter.

So starting April 2, I’m road tripping down to the closest place where I can see good wildflowers, the Siskiyous in southern Oregon. I’m in love with the trees of that region also, so I am really looking forward to it. I’ll visit a few friends and a few beaches along the way down, too.

When I start heading home from there, I may detour into the southern Cascades for a day or two in search of mossy waterfalls to photograph. It all depends on how far spring has progressed by then.

Spring waterfall — I’ll be looking for waterfalls, too.

As I move north of the border, it’s time to start looking for spring wildlife instead of spring flowers. If I take the AlCan Highway, I may be rewarded by sightings of Woodland Caribou and the rare Stone Sheep. I will certainly see Wood Bison on that route. If I take the Cassiar, I will probably catch a glimpse of a bear or two.

Stone Sheep in Muncho Lake Provincial Park — Stone Sheep

By the time I reach the Yukon, I will have traveled back into winter. Well, it will look a bit like winter anyhow. Actually, it will be that in-between season, known in the Northland as Breakup.

Kluane National Park — It’s still winter in the Yukon in April.

Breakup is a rough time to try to travel off the paved roads. The snow is soft and soggy and will collapse and suck you in. It’s slick and icy in the morning from all the melted water. Wherever it’s not snowy, it’s muddy. The rivers, no longer frozen, are running full, and full of ice. Springtime in Alaska.

Kluane Lake — But there are signs of Breakup.

There’s a third thing spring means to me. Home. It won’t be long before I’m home, back in McCarthy, trying to figure out how to negotiate the lake in my ATV trail and the downed trees on my walking path. But that’s another story for another time. Right now it’s spring!

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park — Home Sweet Home!

April 16, 2021

(Wishing For) The Colors of April

April is not a very colorful month in Alaska. It’s Breakup, that weird season in between winter and spring, and frankly, breakup is messy and not so attractive. Morning ice skating rinks give way to afternoon mud bogs and slush piles . Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Postholing through the unevenly melting snowpack is tiring and tedious. The predominant colors are brown, gray, white, and dead grass yellow. The only pastel is the sky on the occasional sunny day when it’s not raining, sleeting or snowing.

Even so, we’re all celebrating. The thermometer actually rises above freezing and soon, soon, soon the snow will be gone and summer will be here. Already the days are long and the twilight lingers.

But I miss color. I miss my wildflowers. Although I’ve spent a lot of winters in Alaska in the past, for over a dozen years I’ve been snowbirding it, heading south to the desert or the West Coast for the winter. It’s a lifestyle I love.

Briceberg River Road — My favorite Sierra campground along the Merced River.

Last year at this time I was in lockdown in Las Vegas, one of the most surreal experiences of my life. The colors of April, found in the wastelands on the outskirts of town, were my salvation during this insane interlude.

Prickly Poppy — Wildflowers from the Vegas Wastelands

Purple Mat — Wildflowers from the Vegas Wastelands

Most years, though, I spend the month of March immersed in the wildflowers of the California desert. Then as the flowers move up in elevation in April, I follow along, chasing the bloom.

April is also the month that the cactus are in bloom.

By the middle of the month, heat and wind begin to take their toll on the flowers, and on me. It’s time to go North, time to go home, following the flowers.

My new favorite place to begin this journey is Carrizo Plain National Monument. The flowers grow thicker here than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s something to ponder, that the entire Central Valley once looked like this.

Carrizo Plains National Monument — Camping in Carrizo

From there I move on, hopscotching my way along the Sierra’s western foothills, following the path of the Gold Rush on the trail of Highway 49, with a drive through the Yosemite valley along the way.

I’ll head west to the redwoods in Mendocino County and enjoy that other color of April, green, for a day or two on my way to Oregon.

I might visit friends in southern Oregon in the Grant’s Pass area, an April wildflower delight indeed.

From there, time and flowers are both getting scarce. I’ve still got a few days to enjoy the coast on my way to Canada. It’s breakup in Canada, too, though, so I bomb through and reach Alaska right at the end of April – just in time for the first Pasque flowers of the season.

Thank you, Amy for this week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge – the Colors of April. You’ve made me really miss my spring flowers!

January 15, 2021

It’s A Small World – Belly Flowers

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.

Denali National Park — Alpine Azalea carpets acres of tundra

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!