I have visited Yosemite National Park enough to convince myself that there are few surprises left there for me, at least when it comes to day hike destinations. Wrong…again.
I had known of Bennettville, a ghost town dating back to the 1860’s, for a long time but had always driven passed the trailhead only promising to go there sometime soon. Although not strictly within the park boundary, Bennettville is just over the Sierra crest barely a chip shot from the Tioga Pass entrance. A few years ago, I spent several days in Lee Vining along with my friends Jean Blomquist and Greg Kepferle. We were part of a group there to hike up Mt. Hoffman a couple days hence and had come early to explore on our own. A perfect chance to finally visit Bennettville.
The walk to Bennettville and the ghost town itself are both pleasant, but unremarkable. Only two buildings remain in a cool rugged perch that opens to Mt. Dana in the distance. Mine tailings, a barred mine shaft, and abandoned rusty machinery testify to the long gone hubbub that is such a contrast to today’s stillness. Sadly, I am sure that once most hikers reach Bennettville, they turn back. We found that the ghost town is where the hike begins.
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Above Bennettville, the trail eases to an imperceptible ascent beside gentle stream linking a string of lakelets, all laid out in a nearly too-perfect Walt Disney landscape. The stream drifts easily past gardens of flowers until an assortment of granite boulders coax a momentary froth from the flow. At each lakelet, the water enjoys a moment of relaxation before moving on.
Gentle beauty below, powerful peaks above. With each step, White Mountain filled more of the view ahead. I imagined what this east-facing setting would look like at sunrise. Right then, I promised I would return in the morning.
With no headlamp or adequate flashlight, I thrashed a bit as I made my way through the darkness the next morning. And indeed, I got a nice photograph, but more than that, I got an unforgettable morning.
The wet winter of 2016-2017 was one of those that wildflower lovers long for. In California, when they come, the show is in the desert. Features on the CBS Evening News and NPR from Anza Borrego Desert State Park confirmed that the display was epic. Friends who had gone there in prior wet years returned with enthusiastic reports of jaw-dropping sights. I was not going to miss out this time.
I found an airbnb in Julian, only a one-hour drive from Borrego Springs, but as different as a landscape can be. At an elevation of 4,226 feet, Julian sits at the crest of the Cuyamaca Mountains that drain all the moisture from east bound storm clouds leaving little for Anza Borrego and the desert beyond. 
Here are a few shots from that spot. It was lovely indeed, but such a vast park beckons a visitor to quieter corners. So, I ventured out, but a park this size is a feast that can only be weakly sampled on a three-day visit. In my next few posts, I will share some images of simpler beauty away from the busy loop road. 
In my last post, I mentioned that the main key to getting a good photograph is just being out there and having your camera with you. This photo is a perfect example.
As the remaining slice of sun thinned toward totality, the air chilled. Sunsets have edges – shafts of light here, shadows there – but this was an eerie uniform dusk that evenly dimmed the hundreds of square miles we could see. Going, going, gone. People on our hilltop gasped and called out, and I felt a stirring I checked with a deep swallow and several rapid blinks. Overhead, an astounding jewel radiated needles of pure white light alone in the near total darkness.
A recent day adventure took me back to a special place I hadn’t visited since 2005. Back then, I went there at the insistence of a friend who said the wildflower display there was over the top. This photo confirms his assessment. Once I saw it, I became an evangelist luring anyone who would listen to come see if the scene lived up to my wild claims. No one was disappointed.
It is the Big Sur coastline that puts the Santa Lucia Range on the marquee, but I find most trails on the coast side a bit too confining. I feel as though I am walking between skyscrapers in San Francisco’s Financial District; walled in with a narrow sliver of sky overhead. Hidden on the other side of the Santa Lucias is a wide valley that nearly shames the Garden of Eden.
Like much of the Coast Range, the Santa Lucia’s are steeply corrugated and very rough. But this green valley parted the mountains with a wide twelve-mile long expanse dotted with valley oaks. Every spot was an ideal movie location some idyllic country picnic.
Wherever we chose to roll out our bags, each of us was enchanted with Miter Basin. The rim of the basin is surrounded by 13,000′ peaks, and each recess above holds a mountain lake with its own unique charm. Beautiful fall reds colored a ground-hugging mosaic of alpine flora. Daybreak songs of a coyote choir echoed up and down the granite walls, adding to the mystery and magic.
Our relationship with nature, even when we intentionally seek it, is usually superficial. Unless the scope is wide and the scenery grand, we tend to tune out. We demand grandeur. If we are not perched on the rim of the Grand Canyon or standing beneath the immense monolith of El Capitan, we often don’t take notice. It’s a pity, for we miss so much.
But when I open up to it, photography allows me to witness the extraordinary in places I might otherwise dismiss as ordinary. The nature of beauty I find in “ordinary” places is not vast and grand, but baby grand. The wide angle lens generally stays in the bag and is replaced by a normal or telephoto lens. Morsels of stunning beauty are often at my feet, but it doesn’t come easily to me. I have to leave the house determined to look – really look, and then see. The irony in all this is that the photographs I enjoy most are those intimate portraits of a ho-hum subject, that when abstracted from a cluttered landscape, is simply lovely.
In one of Galen Rowell’s many books about the outdoors and nature photography, I read a surprising and interesting fact about something we can see every day.
I recently wrote a post about adventure; the notion that the urge for it is a greater motivator than we recognize. I suggested that 49ers came to California as much for the adventure as for the prospect of striking it rich. As evidence, I offered the testimony of many who went to a later gold rush: the Klondike in 1898-9. As with the California Gold Rush, virtually everyone returned empty-handed, but most who were interviewed by author Pierre Berton looked back on that time with fondness and satisfaction.
We often buttress our case to do something new and exciting with “reasons,” but more and more, I think the real reason we want to do it is because it is new and exciting; aka an adventure.