When I saw that this week’s Lens-Artist’s Photography Challenge was geometry, I was at a bit of a loss at first. After all, I do primarily nature photography and although Mother Nature loves a circle or a sphere, she isn’t much into squares and cubes.
Trapezoids, circles and ovals
Then I happened to notice a similarity in the rock art of many of the ancestral peoples of the desert southwest. These folks were really into geometry! Even their sheep were made up of squares and rectangles.
Squares and circles on this petroglyph from Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in New Mexico.
Stylized, geometric depictions of people and animals can be found in rock art from the Fremont culture of northern Colorado and Utah to the Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners region to the Mogollon culture of southern New Mexico and Arizona.
Rectangles and squares – These ruins at Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in southern New Mexico date back to the 1200s.
Most of the ruins and rock art date back 700 to 1100 years. There are thousands of sites throughout the canyons of the desert southwest, some in quite remote locations. It is so thrilling to walk around a bend in a canyon and discover these traces left behind by people who lived there a thousand years ago!
Rock art panel near Moab, Utah
My first backpacking trip into the desert was in Grand Gulch, Utah. Back then it was just BLM land, in the middle of nowhere. Now it is part of the disputed Bear’s Ears National Monument. After walking around many bends in the canyon and discovering rock art and ruins here, there and everywhere, I was hooked for life. Searching out Ancestral Puebloan sites on the Colorado Plateau became a hobby and a passion of mine every spring.
The trapezoidal body shape of this petroglyph is typical of Fremont Culture rock art.
By the end of the 1800s, many ruins were damaged and destroyed by pothunters, who would tear up the dwellings in their search for the buried treasure of the artifacts left behind. In 1906 the Antiquities Act was passed by Congress to protect these national treasures.
Agate House in Petrified Forest National Park was built out of petrified wood.
Since then, only 5 presidents have not used the Antiquities Act to protect additional lands (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Trump). Trump is the only president who has attempted to remove lands from Monument status.
Many rock art panels have been defaced by bullet holes and graffiti
Theft and vandalism are still major problems faced by those trying to preserve both ruins and rock art. When I worked at Death Valley, we were not allowed to publish any pictures of rock art in the park or disclose locations to visitors because people would literally chip the panels right off the cliffs!
Rectangles and circles on this rock art figure from Dinosaur National Monument
Graffiti and target practice deface many rock art panels. This damage is difficult and often impossible to repair. I can’t help but wonder why some people feel this need to destroy the work left behind by others. I just don’t understand it.
Triangles – Why would someone deface a painting that had lasted a thousand years?
Since enforcement is so difficult, the key may be education. If we can convince others of the value of these ancient artifacts, and how that value is enhanced by being left in place for future generations, perhaps we, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren, may enjoy the geometry of ages past for many more years to come.
So it’s spring. At least that’s what I hear. In Alaska, it’s hard telling. The days are longer, but temperatures are still hovering somewhere between 10 below and 10 above (Fahrenheit) when I wake up, and it never gets above freezing most days. White is the predominant color. The only other colors you see are the brownish-gray of bark and the deep dark green of the evergreen spruce trees. It will be quite a while yet before the snow melts.
It’s a monochrome landscape in Alaska right now.
I miss color. For over a decade, I spent every March in the California desert, chasing the wildflower bloom. I’m really missing those flowers. My only consolation is that the desert wildflower season this year is a bust because it has been so dry. If I’m going to miss a year, this was a good year to miss.
But I’m still craving color, and warmth. It’s going to be locked in white here, and anywhere else I could drive to, for quite a few more weeks yet. I could use a change of scenery.
I miss color, and flowers – like this redwood sorrel from the redwood forest.
If there are no flowers in the desert, I guess I should look somewhere else for color. How about the redwood forests of northern California? There’s plenty of green there and a few flowers, too. Might be a nice place to travel to, even if it is only in my imagination!{
Trillium change color as they grow older, turning from white to pink to red.
Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world, over 50 feet taller than any other species. They are one of the largest trees on the planet, too. Redwood trees you can drive through are a popular northern California tourist attraction.
They are fast-growing and long-lived. Although the average age for an old-growth redwood is 500 to 600 years, some specimens have been recorded at over 2,200 years old!
Redwood trees are massive!
Redwood trees are water hogs. They have to be, they’re so tall. It’s hard for water to make it all the way from the roots to the crown, 100 meters up. Even though they live in a seasonally rainy climate, the trees depend on fog to survive. They can absorb water through their bark and their leaves, and 30% of their water needs are filled by fog.
Fog is essential for a redwood tree’s survival.
The rainier and foggier it is, the taller the trees grow. The tallest redwoods grow deep in the valleys where the fog settles in. One of the challenges facing redwood trees in these days of global climate change is that there is much less fog than there used to be along the northern California coast.
Redwoods need a lot of water.
Once their forests spread for millions of acres throughout California’s central and northern coastal lands, all the way from Big Sur to southern Oregon. Then gold was discovered in 1849.
Redwood trees were a lumberman’s dream come true. Not only were the trees humongous, the wood was really something special. Light and beautiful, it absorbed water and resisted rot because of all the tannins it contained. Low in resins, it was also much more resistant to fire than most woods.
Redwood trees built San Francisco both before and after the 1906 earthquake and fire.
Less than 5% of the original old-growth forest remains. These forests, which had thrived undisturbed for thousands of years, were decimated in less than one human lifetime.
By 1908, the California Federation of Women’s Clubs presented a children’s petition with 2,000 signatures to the Forest Service, asking them to protect some of the remaining trees for future generations, to create a national redwood park before they were all gone.
Redwood bark is resistant to fire.
By 1918 the Save the Redwoods League formed, part of the same conservation movement that created the National Park Service. In fact, Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service, was an integral part of the formation of the League.
However, there was no Redwoods National Park until 1968. Instead, the Save the Redwoods League saved the trees. They raised money and bought up tracts of virgin redwood forest wherever and whenever they could. Eventually, they established 66 different redwood parks and reserves. Many of these groves formed the backbone of California’s state park system.
Avenue of the Giants
All these facts and figures and history of the redwoods may be fascinating, but there are no words to describe the most important things about a redwood forest. Anyone who has spent time in the redwoods would agree, though.
These forests are magical. They’re enchanted. Although they have no words, these ancient beings will speak to you if you give them a chance. Call me a treehugger, but a living redwood is a sentient being.
Can you see the spirit’s face in this one?
Walking in a redwood forest is a healing experience, a meditation. You will emerge a calmer and wiser soul than you were when you arrived. I highly recommend it for the next time you are craving a change of scenery.
Thank you, Beth, of Wandering Dawgs, for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, “A Change of Scenery”.
A rain event in Death Valley is a very unusual occurrence. After all, it IS the driest place in North America. With only about 2 inches of precipitation a year, rainstorms don’t happen very often. Rain events are even rarer.
I worked at Death Valley for 8 winter/spring seasons. In that time, I witnessed 2 rain events.
Standing at the mouth of Titus Canyon watching the first rainstorm of February 2010 come in over the Panamints
A rain event is much more than just a rainstorm. it has long-lasting repercussions. It can totally transform a landscape, and those transformations are part of the event. These are indeed special moments.
Badwater Salt Flats after the first storm
My first rain event was in 2010. During the winter of 2009/2010, it didn’t rain at all. All the oldtimers said it would be a poor flower year that spring. Too dry.
I spent a lot of time hiking the sand dunes that February because there were many times that the canyons were too dangerous. It rained and rained and rained.
Then February came, and with it, a series of Pineapple Express storms. A Pineapple Express is an atmospheric river formed above the ocean waters near Hawaii. Coming from the south, they dodge the high Sierras, leaving them with plenty of water to dump on Death Valley. We got 3 storms in a row. That February we received an inch and a half of rain. It was the rainiest February in Death Valley’s history.
The sand dunes were transformed into a desert oasis.
It was so wet that pools formed in the sand dunes, the only time I ever saw that happen. It looked like a true desert oasis.
Alpenglow on the Grapevine Mountains reflected in an ephemeral pool
The biggest change, though, was the Badwater Salt Flats. The salt flats were transformed into a lake, filled with about 7 inches of water for miles in every direction. There was so much water a friend went kayaking just for the photo op. With all the fresh snow on the Panamints, this symbol of the driest of deserts became almost alpine in appearance.
The lake at Badwater – deep enough to kayak.
The oldtimers still predicted a poor flower year, though. They said the rain came too late and there wouldn’t be time for the tender seedlings to get a good start before it became too hot.
They were wrong.
2010 turned out to be a good flower year after all.
My second rain event was the big one, a historic one, the great flood event of Sunday, October 17, 2015. It destroyed half the highways in the park. Scotty’s Castle is still closed due to this rainstorm.
It was literally my first day back to the park for the season. I needed to go to Pahrump, the nearest town, 60 miles away, to stock up since I was just moving in. It had been raining off and on for 2 days. My boss told me to be careful, there was flash flooding down by Death Valley Junction.
Badwater in early December 2015
I made it through the water at that low spot alright, but that afternoon the storms came back in with a vengeance. I could hear the radio reports as I shopped, the calamitous beeping that heralded a severe weather alert. When I walked outside, I could see the blackest sky ever out towards the Northwest, contrasting sharply with the brilliant flashes of dozens of lightning strikes.
I tried to hurry home. Things were starting to look serious. I knew I had to hustle to make it before the road was closed at Death Valley Junction. It had started raining, hard, and the thunder and lightning to the Northwest was truly something to behold. A light show, Fourth of July fireworks! I’ve never seen so many lightning strikes. I thought to myself that I was glad I wasn’t at Scotty’s Castle. Things looked really bad in that direction.
Storm over Death Valley Buttes
But they were bad enough where I was. Would I make it in time? The road started to get sketchy. I could see the edges crumbling and I knew for safety’s sake I had to try a different route. They closed that highway less than 10 minutes after I turned around. More than the edges had crumbled.
I thought I’d go the long way around, up north towards Beatty. I was stopped by the sheriff. That road was out, too. I ended up spending the night with a friend, a woman I worked with who lived in Pahrump.
Badwater Road and Telescope Peak January 2016
We headed out in caravan to reach the park early the next morning, in radio contact with the park maintenance crew. There was one route that just might work. There was lots of water running on the road as we crossed washes. One crossing was doubtful. I could feel my little truck slow down and threaten to stall out. I was really glad we were caravaning. In hindsight, I wouldn’t cross water like that again. Within half an hour of when we went through, that road closed, too. But we made it.
The October monthly precipitation average for Death Valley is .07 inches. Death Valley received 1.3 inches of rain in October 2015, nearly all of it from the October 17 storm. That storm caused a lot of destruction to man-made structures and roads. But it also made some amazing changes to the landscape.
Imagine the ground growing thick like this with flowers – everywhere – for miles upon miles
Of course, Badwater Basin once again filled with water. No kayaking this time, though. By the time the road crew had cleared and repaired the road as far as Badwater the water levels were already down too far for that. Mud and debris flows trashed the Badwater Road. The southern part of the road was completely destroyed, the pavement twisted and shredded.
The change that impressed me the most, though, was at Artist’s Drive. A debris flow had completely inundated the main canyon, filling it brim to brim and splashing ten to twelve feet up the walls in places. This layer of mud is now a permanent part of Death Valley’s geological record, a layer of rock that will still show up thousands of years from now. I love to see geology happen!
The main wash in Artist’s Drive filled brim to brim, overflowing with mud from the debris flow.
And then, starting as early as the end of December, the flowers came out. And continued to come out, month after month, all the way to May. They were so thick on the ground you couldn’t take a step without trampling a flower. And they were all supersized, too.
For instance, Desert Five-Spot is usually a shy flower; the plant grows about 6 inches high, with only a few blossoms on each plant. In dry years, it will dwarf into a tiny belly flower only an inch or two high with one blossom. But during the 2016 Death Valley superbloom, I found a veritable plantation of five-spot bushes, all about 3 feet high with dozens of blossoms. One plant had 53 flowers! What a difference a little rain makes!
Desert 5-spot
Although the Artist’s Drive debris flow was the most thrilling change for me intellectually, the wildflower bloom is what struck my heart. It was the ultimate of all the special moments I’ve experienced in my Death Valley rain events.
Light. Sight. Painting with light. The art of seeing. Hallelujah, I have seen the light! That’s what photography is all about, right? The art of using light, especially natural light, to share your vision with others so that they may see the light, too.
Come take a journey with me, up and down the California coast chasing that beautiful natural light. Some times of day are better than others, but we’ll be out at all hours of the day, as every kind of light can capture some mood or be best for a certain subject.
Sunrise at the Cabrillo Point lighthouse near Mendocino.
We’ll start at dawn. I’m not much of one for getting up early, so it’s an effort, but it’s worth it. No, don’t roll over and go back to sleep because you peeked out and it was foggy. The soft light captured in those early morning mists can transform the mundane into the sublime.
Fog and early morning light can transform the mundane into the sublime.
Stormy days are no reason to stay inside, either. Before long, you may find that many of your most dramatic images were taken on bad weather days. Check out my opening wave for another example.
A beach in Ft. Bragg
Besides, you’ll never catch a rainbow without a little rain!
Westport, CA
Calm, cloudy days are wonderful for flowers, animals, forest and beachcombing shots. Colors are richer and harsh shadows are eliminated.
Cloudy is best for most living things, like this egret reflected in the water of the slough at Moss Landing State Beach.
Partly cloudy days are good times to learn patience and watch the light change with each passing cloud. You can capture the same scene in many different moods by just staying put and seeing how the constantly changing light transforms your subject.
Waves at Point Lobos
See how the mood changes with a small change in the lighting.
Bright sun is not my favorite lighting. It works well for some scenes with bright colors and bold contrasts. If you have to pick a time of day to catch some lunch, recharge batteries and catch up on the internet, chose the middle of the day. Sometimes, though, you have to just use what you got and make the best of it as I tried to do with this image of elephant seals at Piedras Blancas Wildlife Reserve.
Kicking sand in the face of a bully at the beach
Bright sun is also good for backlighting, especially during the golden hour.
Late afternoon light is great for backlighting.
That’s the golden hour of late afternoon light, followed closely by sunset. My favorite time of day, since I’m a lazy slacker who doesn’t like getting up early in the morning.
Sunset at Pigeon Point
It’s not over ’til it’s over. Even if it’s cloudy and you don’t think a sunset is going to happen, the sun may break through at the last minute and reward you with something special. Follow that sunset from the first warm colors to the last.
God rays in the sunset at Asilomar State Beach near Monterey
To the last minute and then some, capturing the last glimmers of natural light deep into the dusk.
Secret Beach
Thank you, Amy of The World Is A Book, for bringing us this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Natural Light.
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.
Blackish Oxytrope
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.
Desert Mohavia
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
Kittentails are flashy flowers.
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.
Desert Sand Verbena
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.
Is this a desert wildflower?
Or a mountain flower?
Which one is it?
Can you tell?
Guess!
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!
I’m not a morning person. I have often said that I am actually, truly, allergic to morning. Getting up early can be painful for me. In my home in Alaska, sunrise can be anywhere from 2AM to 10AM, depending on the season, so waking at the crack of dawn to watch the sun rise has never been one of my morning rituals.
Morning in the redwoods
I tend to get up and hit the computer first thing, business first, and focus on the fun later in the day. And my current mornings, sorry, are frankly not worth writing about. But there have been times when getting up early has rewarded me with priceless treasures and magical experiences.
As I look over the last 6 months or so, I remember a lot of very special mornings. Watching the sun rise over the desert. Seeing the mists dance through the redwood forest. Photographing early morning light on a Pacific Coast lighthouse.
The Bosque is a birder’s paradise. I play at being a birder sometimes. But if I was a real birder, I’d get up early in the morning! Well, for the Bosque I made an exception and did just that.
Sunrise/moonset on the Bosque
Watching the sun rise and the snow geese take off from the ponds on the Bosque is quite an experience. It’s a ritual, like watching the sunset in Key West. It takes dedication. Not only do you have to get up at the crack of dawn, it is freakin’ COLD out there!!
You need patience. Sometimes it seems like not much is happening, and it gets colder and colder because you are standing still. But wait for it.
Sandhill Cranes and Snow Geese
There will likely be a few geese already in the ponds when you arrive. The cranes have spent the night there, roosting in the shallow water as protection against predators like the coyote.
Then you hear it. A cacophony of honking, braying geese. You might see them in the distance as they fly from one pond to another. Or you might be suddenly overwhelmed, as hundreds of birds appear from seemingly nowhere, surrounding you as they join their kin in the waters before you. The din is terrific. One flock after another arrives.
Northern Shoveler
A flush of pink begins to fill the sky. Although the cranes and snow geese are the stars of the show, you may begin to notice other birds – ducks, Shovelers and Pintails, swimming around in the foreground, and perhaps a gaggle of Canadian Geese behind those cranes.
If you look closer at the vast flocks of Snow Geese, you begin to discern a few differences. That one is much smaller – it must be a Ross’ Goose. See the dark one over there? It’s a White-Fronted Goose. The sun rises behind you, lighting up the sky. But it hasn’t reached the ponds yet. They are still in deep shade.
Sunrise salutation
With the additional light, the cranes begin to get restless. They start walking, in groups. In shallow, frozen places, they slip and slide with a graceful gait. You might notice a group – peering, watching, intent, looking for a signal perhaps. They begin to take off randomly, two or three at a time. I found it hard to anticipate – which cranes will take flight next? But most of the birds are not ready to leave just yet.
They’re waiting for the sun. When the sunlight reaches the birds, they know it’s time to move to the fields for the day. On some mornings birds continue to leave in small groups, a crane here, a crane there, a dozen geese at a time.
Snow Geese
But other mornings are magic. If you’re lucky, you may see one of those rare spectacles of nature that people travel thousands of miles to observe, that National Geographic moment.
The anticipation builds. The constant background chatter of thousands of squabbling geese crescendoes. Then every goose on the pond takes off at once, exploding into the air. This is a sight you will remember forever.
