Impossible Tree Fall, Spring. Yosemite National Park, California. June 18, 2011. © Copyright 2011 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Rushing water of a seasonal creek splashes and leaps over rocks and past a tree, Yosemite National Park.
The name of this little seasonal waterfall – found along highway 120 – is not, as far as I can tell, official. However, it seems to be fairly well-known among Yosemite folks. It is also a great name – not only because of the fun conduction of words, but also because it so aptly describes the most notable feature of the fall, the “impossible tree.” In this odd little section of rocky hillside above a road, a creek flows for a short time in the spring as the winter snow melts out. In this middle of this rocky jumble grows a single tree, with its roots seemingly attached to nothing more than rocks. So it is a doubly impossible tree, growing in the middle of a waterfall and somehow finding sustenance from granite.
This photograph was made outside of the more typical “golden hour” time, though it wasn’t all that late in the morning. My timing was just right – though luck probably had as much to do with this as did planning. As we passed by, the sun was rising high enough to peek over the top of the ridge above the fall and its light was just starting to strike the leaping water from behind and above.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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