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.
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.
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.
There’s a lot of empty in Death Valley’s landscapes.
Empty spaces can accentuate the vastness of a landscape.
The empty space in this image highlights the vastness of the landscape
Including a lonely road can evoke a mood of solitude and remoteness.
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.
A canyon in the Grapevine Mountains
But by far my favorite empty spaces to photograph in Death Valley are the sand dunes.
Mesquite Sand Dunes
With five major dune fields contained within the park, there are a lot to choose from.
Panamint Dunes
Emptiness can not only emphasize distance, it can also highlight the sheer massiveness of certain landforms.
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.
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,
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.
Can you imagine this wide open empty space filled with flowers? I can.
This week I’d like to share with you all some of my favorite places, ones I will miss this winter as I practice The Middle Way on Orcas Island. This week’s Lens-Artist’s Photo Challenge is Home Sweet Home. Tina Schell of Travels and Trifles asks us, ” If a foreigner were to spend a week or a month traveling your home country with you, where would you take them? What sights would you tell them to be sure to see? Where have you found some of your own favorite images? What is it you truly love about where you live, or places you’ve seen in your home country? ”
First snow in the Colorado mountains
Well, they would need at LEAST a month for all MY favorite places. Although I grew up in Colorado and now live in Alaska, I feel at home throughout the West. I’ll start with Colorado. I was raised in Colorado, and lived there for many, many years after I went out on my own. It’s probably where I’ll end up when I get too old to live deep in the wilderness in Alaska. My family is there. Colorado is always close to my heart.
Petrified Forest National Park
Although I’m at home throughout the West, I do have a few favorite places that I try to visit whenever I have the chance. One is the Colorado Plateau. This region covers big chunks of 4 different states: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona. I can’t narrow my favorite down to just one or two places in this area, it’s all so amazing. My advice to a foreign visitor might be to check out a few places that are not as well-known as iconic parks like Arches and Zion. Although I love them, too, they ARE getting loved to death and it might be good to try to spread that impact out a little. Lesser-known places such as Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Petrified Forest National Park contain wonders, too.
Grosvenor Arch in Grand Staircase-Escalante
Another favorite place is Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. This is the best place I’ve ever been for birds. It is the winter home for vast flocks of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes. Over 340 different species of birds live there. It is an incredible place to observe wildlife.
Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge
I spent 8 winters working as a ranger in Death Valley National Park. It is another desert that has captured my heart. The great thing about Death Valley is that because the altitude on the valley floor is so low (the lowest elevation in North America), the nights are seldom cold, even during the deepest darkest months of winter. Makes for great camping, and the rattlesnakes sleep in the winter! It’s an incredibly diverse park, with elevations ranging from below sea level to over 11,000 feet.
I did a little playing with LightRoom on this image. It was a daytime image and the background of bare dirt desert ground was a bit meh so I darkened it until it resembled the night sky, and tried to give a nighttime feel to the dunes, too. Since Death Valley is famed as a night sky park, and since one of my favorite things to do is to walk through the sand dunes under the full moon, I wanted to capture the feel of that experience in this image.
I love to hike the sand dunes in the moonlight.
And then there’s the bloom. If there is rain in the desert, and if it is timed right, the wildflowers will rock your world. If it seems like it might be a good year for the flowers, I try to make a circuit that starts near the Mexican border in Anza-Borrego State Park, moving through Joshua Tree and Mojave National Preserve until I end up in Death Valley.
Love those desert wildflowers!
Further west on the California coast you will find another great wildlife phenomenon, the elephant seals at Piedras Blancas near San Simeon. Although you can find a few seals there at any time of year, December through February are the best months. Thousands of seals converge on the beaches, with the big strange-looking bulls battling it out for the right to own a piece of the beach, and all the females on it. The cows are birthing and raising their babies then, too. It’s an extraordinary spot to witness wildlife drama, so close you don’t even need binoculars to see it.
Sex on the Beach
From the campground at San Simeon I can walk to the beach and see some fantastic bird action on the sea stack that looms just offshore there. It’s an awesome place to catch the sunset.
Farther north along the California coast is Mendocino County. It’s my favorite part of the California Coast. I think the scenery is even more dramatic than Big Sur, and without the crowds. It’s got big trees, too.
The beaches in Mendo are wild and uncrowded.
Speaking of big trees, I’ve really fallen in love with the tallest trees in the world, the redwoods, over the last few years.
Tall Trees
Sometimes I go straight up the coast into Oregon. Other times I head for the Siskiyou country near Grants Pass and Williams. The trees there are incredibly graceful and beautiful and it’s my last chance to see wildflowers as I head north.
Oregon has some incredible trees!
But no matter which way I go, I try to hit the coast at Bandon. It is so much fun to shoot the sea stacks there!
Sea stacks at Bandon
The Olympic Peninsula is my next favorite place. The old-growth forests redefine green and the wild beaches are phenomenal.
Ferns and feathers
And then there’s Alaska. It’s where my heart is, my community, my job, my life. My first love in Alaska was Denali National Park and I try to go there whenever I get a chance.
I love Denali!
But home is McCarthy, in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. I truly believe it’s the most spectacular place in North America. Case in point – check out my daily commute! And the feature image was taken while I was standing on my front porch! It doesn’t get much better than this.
My daily commute to work
I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my favorite places. As Jim Morrison of the Doors said, the West is the best!
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.
Art exhibits by Mother Nature – abstracts composed of soft, sensuous, sculpted curves – ephemeral, ever-changing sand dunes. When I saw that Ann-Christine had chosen “soft” as the theme for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, the graceful contour of a sand dune was the first image to come to mind.
When I worked at Death Valley, I got to know sand dunes well. Although only about 1% of Death Valley is covered with dunes, the sand has captured the public imagination and become the iconic symbol of Death Valley to many. The park has 5 major dune fields and a couple of minor ones as well.
Soft, sculpted lines of a sand dune
I learned that even though some dune fields may look similar, each one is unique, with its own ecosystem. Since the dune fields are separated by many many miles of other types of habitat, they may have endemic plants or animals that live nowhere else. Each one is worth a visit.
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
The Mesquite Flat dunes are the ones that most people think of when it comes to Death Valley. It’s the largest dune field in the park, and the easiest to get to, right off the highway. Mesquite hummocks harbor an interesting assortment of wildlife. It’s a great place to look for tracks. Go early in the morning for the best insights into the lives of the creatures that come out and play at night after all the tourists are gone. Then beat the crowds and hike up to the top of the tallest dune. Take your shoes off and feel that soft, soft sand, walking barefoot for the final approach. This is another reason to get an early start. The sand can get HOT later.
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes
The Mesquite Dunes are the best dunes in the park for sunrise and sunset photography. I love these dunes and their firm yet soft sands for meditation and yoga, too. I have a couple of spots I’m fond of that are easy to get to but a bit off the beaten track, for when I need to get away from the crowds of visitors for some alone time.
Mesquite Dunes are a great place to go at night, too. Stargazing there is phenomenal, and nothing beats a full moon hike in the dunes. You might even see some of the critters that leave those footprints behind. Be aware in the warmer months that some of those critters are sidewinders. Look for their weird J-shaped tracks to see if they’re up and about yet when you go.
Go early in the morning to look for tracks.
Saline Valley Dunes
This is the smallest and the lowest of the major dune fields. It has the whitest sand. It’s my least favorite. That’s probably because I have not spent enough time there to get to know them well. I’ve only visited once. It was a windy day, so I couldn’t take many pictures. I was only there an hour when a major sandstorm blew in. I saw it coming and fled.
By the time I reached the crest of the valley, it turned into a real haboob, zero visibility, the kind of sandstorm you see in movies about the Sahara. That may have colored my impression of these dunes.
Patterns in the sand – Saline Valley Dunes
The Saline Dunes are in the difficult to reach Saline Valley. Except on those rare occasions when the road has been recently graded, you will need 4-wheel drive to get there.
Eureka Dunes
The Eureka Dunes contain the tallest sand dune in California, literally a mountain of sand. These sands are special, too. The Eureka Dunes are singing dunes. When the moisture content is just right any vibration – from a hiker’s footprint to a strong gust of wind – may set off a low, rhythmic rumbling throughout the dune, growing and building.
Eureka Dunes – the tallest dune in California
It sounds a bit like a jet engine. But it just may be a real jet engine. Hotshot pilots from the China Lake Naval Base play in the airspace above the Eureka Valley, occasionally flying very low.
The Eureka Dunes harbor an amazing little plant kingdom, including three endemic plants that live nowhere else. The showiest of these plants is the Eureka Primrose. In a good year, the lower reaches of the dune field may be carpeted with these flowers. Alas, I’ve never gotten the timing right to catch that.
Looking down the dune field at Eureka
Part of the reason is the road. Sometimes it’s just high clearance, but at other times all that sand creates some of the worst washboard in the park. It’s far away from everywhere, too, taking many hours of driving whether you come in from the east or the west. This is not a day trip! If you do make it in, there’s a great little primitive camping area with a pit toilet and fire rings available at the base of the tallest dune.
Panamint Dunes
You have to work for this one, but it’s well worth it. There are 5 miles of rough, high clearance dirt road back road to traverse to get near these dunes. And once you get those 5 miles in, you still have a 3-mile hike to reach them. These obstacles keep the Panamint Dunes quiet and untrammeled, some of the best dunes in the park. There may be some beautiful and unusual flowers on the approach, too. I’ve found Lilac Sunbonnets and Broomrape, two of my favorites that I seldom get a chance to see.
Panamint Dunes
Ibex Dunes
They’re not the biggest, or the tallest, or the most popular, but these dunes are my personal favorite. Another high clearance road that can sometimes be 4-wheel drive gets you close, but anyway you look at it you’ve got to hike in a mile to reach these dunes.
It’s a beautiful hike. The Ibex Dunes are full of life. One of the inhabitants is the rare and endangered Mojave Fringe-Toed Lizard. Look for sand verbena and paper-bag bush in the springtime.
Because of the fragile ecosystems, motor vehicle use is prohibited on all of Death Valley’s dunes. The wind may blow your tracks away, but it won’t bring back the plants and animals damaged by your vehicle. So go to nearby Dumont Dunes or Big Dune if you want to tear it up with your dune buggy or dirt bike.
Soft and forgiving, dunes are a wonderful place to explore and play, a great place to bring the kids or commune with the Great All. Check them out the next time you’re in the desert or at the seashore!
For this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Patti @ Pilotfishblog asks, “What images can you find that feature a subject that begins with the letter S? For an added challenge, capture an image that illustrates a concept with the letter S, such as serene, sharp, spooky, or silent.” So, see if I have succeeded!
Shocking Pink Shooting StarsSnowy slopes seem like superb skiing but are susceptible to slides. Stay safe!Surreal sealSurly snarling sealSweet Stone Sheep on a steep slopeSnake! Scary slithery Sidewinder sleeping in the shadeSlender Sandhill Cranes and a swarm of Snow Geese salute the sunrise.
I used to embrace the cold. I worked ski resorts in Colorado for 15 years. For ten of those years, I worked at the top of the mountain, at 11,000 feet. I’ve seen some savage storms, and brutal cold.
I spent 10 winters in Alaska. Five of those winters were in the remote Interior rural community of McCarthy. IÂ watched the frost creep up the nails on the inside of the door of the cabin my first winter there, and marveled at the cold, colder than anything I had ever experienced.
The coldest temperature I’ve ever seen was 53 degrees below zero. That’s cold, so cold my thermometer didn’t go that low. I had to call a neighbor with a better thermometer to find out just exactly how cold it was!
I used to embrace the cold when I spent my winters in Alaska.
I USED TO embrace the cold. Then I learned to drive and bought a car. Now I’m a snowbird.
I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 50. I didn’t want to be part of the problem. I was worried about my carbon footprint long before the term “carbon footprint” was ever coined. I rode bikes, took buses, and lived in communities where you didn’t need a car to get by.
I’m OK with snow, just not on the road.
But in order to get a job promotion with the Park Service, I had to get a driver’s license. It was a prerequisite for the job.
I can definitely correlate my aversion to cold and winter with when I acquired a vehicle. I just don’t want to drive icy roads in nasty weather!
This is why I don’t do winter anymore!
I’ve decided I’ve seen enough cold. There’s a lot of beautiful places to see in this world, and they’re not ALL cold & snowy in the winter.
But there are things about winter, and the cold, that I miss. The beauty. The serenity. The quiet. Sun sparkling on the snow. Snowshoeing. Most of all, the northern lights.
There ARE things about winter that I miss.
So, occasionally, I treat myself to the tiniest taste of winter. I just make sure I have an escape route or the luxury of waiting for a good weather window so I can get out without driving those icy roads.
I needed to travel across practically the entire state of Colorado this past weekend as I transitioned from visiting my family to my next housesitting gig. I was lucky. I hit the perfect weather window, with a big storm in the mountains Wednesday to Friday, then a bluebird weekend for travel before the next front came through on Monday.
On my way down from visiting my family in Denver, I stopped at the Great Sand Dunes. It was cold. The wind was bitter. But it was beautiful.
I’m in southwestern Colorado now, Durango to be exact. Although I am in the mountains, the desert and relief from snowy roads is less than an hour away.
Durango isn’t big, but it is a bit bigger than I usually like my towns to be. I’ve gotten a little lost a time or two. I’m surprised at how much I enjoy it. Although the desert is close, Durango is definitely a mountain town, vertical topography rising in every direction. The wild is still close. Driving down an urban street in the heart of town, you see deer strolling the sidewalks like they own them. I like that.
Durango is beautiful.
It’s snowing on this Thanksgiving day, but it’s a gentle snowfall, not a raging blizzard. It isn’t even sticking to the driveway, although the frosting on the trees is very pretty. It IS cold, though. BRRRRRR!!
Since it is Thanksgiving, I’m pondering gratitude and the many things I am grateful for. Throughout this year I’ve been more consciously grateful, on a day-to-day basis, than ever before in my life. I’m thankful for my many blessings.
COLD waterfall
I’m thankful for my family and the time I’ve been able to spend with them recently. I’m thankful that my mother, although quite fragile at 91, is still with us. I’m thankful for my home in McCarthy and the amazing community there that I am privileged to be a part of. I’m thankful for work that I enjoy and that I feel is important.
I’m thankful for my many friends, wherever they are in this wide world. I’m thankful for the freedom that allows me to travel and see more of this amazing planet we all share. I’m thankful that my little Toyota truck is still going strong at 285,000 miles and I hope it continues to treat me right.
Just a tiny taste of cold…
I’m thankful I have food to eat and clothes to keep me warm. I’m thankful for wine and chocolate – oh, and raspberries. Can’t forget raspberries.
I’m thankful for the shelter that keeps me out of the cold. And I’m thankful for the cold – the little bit of cold I’m getting a taste of right now – because it will make the warmth that much sweeter later. What I’m especially thankful for, though, on this snowy Thanksgiving weekend, is that I don’t have to drive any treacherous icy roads today!
