Snag, Pond, Clearing Fog. © Copyright 2018 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Fog clears from the morning sky above a snag and a wetland pond.
After enough time spent in the outdoors, wandering about by one means or another (on foot, skis, vehicle) one collects an odd little archive of personal bits and pieces of the land that seem to have special meaning, sometimes for reasons that cannot be articulated. My list includes a particular boulder in the Yosemite backcountry that I once reclined against as I watched rain approach, a nondescript bit of alpine tundra where I sat down one evening near a high country camp, the spot where I first arrived at the Pacific shoreline on foot rather than my car, a particular use trail in a local park, a flat rock where I’ve set up my backpack kitchen a few times, a particular grove of aspen trees in the eastern Sierra… and this tree.
I imagine that almost everyone has such places. (I know that a few folks I’ve mentioned this to have theirs.) One common feature is that others would probably not see them as being particular remarkable or even worth noting at all. Trust me, there a many, many places where dead snags like this one grow in or near water. But I virtually always stop and try to photograph this one, so I’m claiming it as mine!
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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