Two Forests, Bighorn Plateau. Sierra Nevada, California. August 9, 2007. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.

This is a somewhat mysterious location. It is in the southern Sierra Nevada on the John Muir Trail on the Bighorn Plateau, a huge high area of rolling terrain above the Kern River trench. I can describe what I saw, but I cannot offer an explanation. Right at timberline there is a forest of large, long-dead trees surrounded by a newer forest of much smaller trees. What killed the older forest, how long ago it happened, and why the young forest is now returning are not questions I can answer.