Junipero Serra Peak

M-Hunter LiggettA 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.

Summit Mdw Tele View-2It 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.

This past January, I came with my eye on Junipero Serra Peak, at 5,856′, the highest peak in the Santa Lucia Range, but it was the long valley I rediscovered that stole the show.

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Meadow 2 Oaks-10-2Like 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.

If the El Niño predictions come true after four years of drought, I am hopeful for a repeat of the 2005 wildflower display.

Your Landscape

 


When I stood here at the entrance to Miter Basin, I was truly amazed. It was so vast and grand, and it had appeared so suddenly. The urge to enter and explore was irresistible; not only the basin floor but the succession of lakes I knew were nestled above. When my wife, Renée, saw this photo, or when she sees any landscape like it, she dismisses it as barren. It holds no allure for her.

I am interested in the responses people have to different landscapes. I won’t pretend to be a psychologist and guess what they might mean, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they might reveal a good deal about our basic nature. Renée loves a seaside setting or the golden oak-studded California hills. I do too, but they don’t trigger the same spinal tingle that I feel at the likes of Miter Basin.

I came to Miter Basin with four friends, and I was interested to note that the others set up camp in or near the grove of foxtail pines at the base of the slope you see in the picture. I preferred to plunk down near the middle of the basin so that I could feel the immensity of the landscape and see as much of the night sky as possible (the tent was only in case of rain). Mmmm, I wonder.
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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.

Leave the psychologists out of it, I guess. Let each of us prefer the part of nature we do without explanation. “Why” isn’t important. The gift of just standing there is enough.

 

 

Baby Grand Scenery

Creek Bottom LiteOur 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.

Few people are more guilty of this than I am. I tend to discount the landscape around my home as ordinary and unremarkable. It just doesn’t stir my juices. And of course, I would be the first to preach the exact opposite-that all landscapes have their own special beauty.

Any possible guesses? For those of you who are depressed buy levitra due to erectile dysfunction, here is some good news that you might want to hear. For people of young age the dosage is one viagra sample pill every 24 hours. Driver education classes also teach learners about traffic rules as per the requirements cialis sales australia of their state. Recent articles suggest order levitra online that male impotence is now a novel disorder, but a dysfunction that deterred men from a good seller. StumpRock1But 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.

No doubt, I will continue to long for my favorite natural settings and overlook the little wonders near home that I pass without notice. But I will work to remember; to still the internal noise, walk more slowly, look carefully, and see the baby grand scenery all around.

Earth Shadow

Earth ShadowIn 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.

Soon after sunset, look toward the eastern horizon, opposite where the sun slipped from view. On a clear evening, you will see a sight just as you see in this photograph. Notice the line across the sky that separates two distinct shades of color. Below, the sky is a darker shade, kind of blue/purple. Above, it is lighter and pinkish. The line separating these two shades will slowly climb in the sky until it disappears altogether. You are seeing the shadow of the earth reflected back to you on atmospheric haze. If you were suspended in space above the line, the sun would be shining on you. If you were situated below it, the sun would have already set.
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I love knowing this little nugget. It’s not a doozie like a comet or a solar eclipse, but now, instead of just colors in the sky, every evening I feel I am witness to a little cosmic event; a humbling but happy reminder of our delicate presence in an amazing universe.

Adventure

Ron on TopI 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.

The idea that adventure is a potent motivator continues to widen and deepen in my mind. I read a lot of history about America’s westward migration from the fur trappers to settlers who loaded their belongings in a Conestoga wagon and lit out for Oregon and California. In the pie chart of their reasons for going, how big a piece was venturing into wild and unknown territory? More than they would acknowledge, I’ll bet. You can’t tell the family you are going west because it would be exciting. You have to be practical: land, climate, a second chance, opportunity. Those things get a chunk of the pie chart, but I suggest the urge to go west came as much from the heart as the head.

Flip through your own mental scrapbook. What memories bring a wistful smile to your face? Backpacking through Europe after college? Three years in the Peace Corps? That cross country road trip in your mid-20’s?
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Adventure SignWe 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.

I keep this lovely graphic on a stand by my desk to remind me how important adventure is to a full and happy life. Certainly, the word means something different to everyone. But we don’t need to define it. When you hear a suggestion that at once excites you and scares you…that’s it. That’s an adventure. Go.

Digger Pines

M-Oak SilhouetteI’m not supposed to say that. It’s not PC. “Digger” is a condescending term that was used by early Eurpoean settlers to characterize some of the Native Americans in the Great Basin and in California who dug in the soil for roots and bulbs. One of our native pines inhereted that moniker as its common name, but the modern day arbiters of politeness say no, it must be changed. So, the digger pine has become the gray pine, or the ghost pine, or the foothill pine. I like digger pine. It is a good reminder of just how mean and insensitive we can be.

One thing for sure, the tree doesn’t know or care. It is widespread in California’s hot and dry interior foothills where it often teams up with blue oaks to brighten hills where it is tough to make a living. But digger pines are most striking when the sun bends low and illuminates the tree from behind. The open and airy way the tree carries its needles causes it to light up like a fluffy cloud, or as one new common name suggests, like a ghost. A hillside of backlit digger pines is dazzling scene of airy elegance.

For years, I walked through backlit digger pine forests looking for a way to capture the scene on film. Though it was a lovely sight, there was no photograph there. I needed something I could hang an image on.
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About 25 years ago, a friend and I were hiking out of the Coon Creek region of Henry Coe State Park. We were descending an open grassy slope. Across the valley, the entire hillside was luminous with backlit digger pines. Then, there it was. Just steps in front of me, a valley oak, its leafless branches tracing an elegant artistry, provided the perfect structural counterpoint to the raft of fluffy pines across the valley.

This photograph remains a favorite and hints at the beauty of a forest of backlit digger pines.

A Good Wildflower Year?

W-Goldfields1I am never quite sure what the exact recipe is for a great spring wildflower display. While I enjoy botanizing in California’s Coast Range and in the Sierra, I know just enough to be dangerous. I’m likely to concoct some groundless theory and assert it as fact. But based on the significant rainfall we have had thus far, I wonder if this spring could be a memorable one.

Sierra PrimroseNaturally, rain is a must, but there have been many so-so spring blooms after a wet winter; other factors certainly play a part. It makes sense that during the recent drought years viable wildflower seeds have not received enough water to sprout. Perhaps through the sparse blooms of recent springs that seeds have been accumulating waiting for a winter like we are having now. With an average amount of rainfall during the rest of the California winter, maybe we will see a spring bloom like 1997.

M-Hunter Liggett LiteDo you buy it? I may be way off base, but it sounds good.

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I’m guessing, but I am hopeful. I will keep an eye on the various wildflower hotlines (here are two: http://theodorepayne.org/education/wildflower-hotline/ and http://www.desertusa.com/wildflo/ca.html). This might be the spring for a long-awaited trip to Anza-Borrego.

We’ll see. Keep your fingers crossed.

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