Forest Meets Meadow, Yosemite. Yosemite National Park, California. July 28, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A small sunlit meadow filled with shooting star flowers meets the edge of a dense lodgepole pine forest, Yosemite National Park.
For some reason many of the photographs I made on my recent trip to the Yosemite high country seemed to focus on the trees and the forests, and perhaps a bit less on the rocky peaks and prominences of the park. This photograph was made in a place that is not “special” in the ways that specialness is often measured in this park. As far as I know, it has no name, though it is not too far from Olmsted Point. It is simply a little area like so many others in this part of the Sierra, but one that I feel a connection to now that I have revisited it on several occasions and gradually pushed out the boundaries of my familiarity with it.
I first stopped near this spot along Tioga Pass Road several autumns ago on an evening when fog blanketed the nearby ridges. Very close to this spot there was a break in the fog, and I could see the sunset light and its effect on the fog clouds, so I pulled over and made some photographs. A year or so later, now having an actual awareness that there was a pull-out at this spot in the road, I stopped again on a summer morning for no particular reason and saw that a faint trail headed off into the lodgepole forest that was mixed with glacial boulders. I walked a short distance out on this path and found a small pond that I photographed, and I filed the location away as one to investigate again later.
On this July’s visit, I put this spot on my agenda and made a plan to visit it early on morning after photographing first light on a nearby ridge. Because there is no single attention-grabbing icon at this spot, rather than leaving my car with a target in mind I wandered slowly into this forest and simply kept my eyes open. (And I tried not to think about the mosquitos that are always thick in the lodgepole forest at this time of year!) First I stopped at the pond that I had previously photographed; then I picked up that trail and followed it through the forest, past other ponds, and across some glaciated granite near the edge of this small meadow filled with shooting star flowers, with the light coming through the forest beyond.
G Dan Mitchell Photography
About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.
(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)
Dan,
Glad to see you commenting on / documenting / capturing / noticing / loving the largely unseen, unheralded, underappreciated, unnoticed, superficially observed miracles in our midst, if only we’d open our eyes to witnessing them instead of always comparing the scene to some other more marvelous and awesome grandeur or seeking someplace “better” or (as you put in quotations) something more “special.”
Thanks for that! You are so right, and there is much that I could say about this whole issue. I’ll restrain myself a little bit and only mention a few things right now. :-)
The “special” places, views, and things are certainly special for a reason. And it is reasonable to be overwhelmed by them when we first encounter a place, especially a “place” like Yosemite whose riches are overwhelming. When photographers who are going there for the first time ask me what to photograph, I tell them to go ahead and start with the icons and then build their knowledge of Yosemite out from that point. You have to start somewhere.
But in really getting to know these places, we cannot help but discover that there is so much more to see, feel, do, and otherwise experience. It isn’t just the “things” that we see, but it the whole sensory package of light, temperature, smell, sound, remembrance, and on and on. And often we (I, anyway) develop our own special places that seem not at all special to others – who may have their own special places that would not attract our own attention.
When I camped in the distinctly non-iconic Porcupine Flat campground this past week – for the first time in many years – I was brought back to a memory of one of the first pack trips I took my older son on when he was perhaps five years old, nearly a quarter of a century ago. He was adventuring around the nearby creek when he fell in and soaked himself. Now no one else – other than my son, assuming he remembers – would have this connection back to such a decades old event in this spot, but I sure do.
I like to say that I now know individual rocks and trees in the Sierra. When ever I hike back down Lyell Canyon toward Tuolumne Meadows, I always have to stop and sit down and lean back against a specific small boulder on an inconspicuous bit of granite slab. Many years ago, on a loop up Rafferty Creek to Fletcher and Ireland Lakes, I returned this way on a thunderstorm day. As I reached this spot I was tired so I leaned myself and my pack against this rock and watched the curtain of rain approach across the valley – and now I recall that afternoon every single time I pass by again and pause to sit against this rock.