Last Light, Moraine, Trees. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
The last evening light touches clouds and a rugged ridge above an old moraine and trees growing on a rocky hill.
When the first seasonal California rains arrive in fall — and snow comes to the Sierra Nevada once again — I’m often still working my way through the archive of photographs from the previous season. As I look back at these (mostly) summer photographs on a day like today, with wind and rain here in Northern California — I often pause to consider how different places like this one are now. When you stop to think of it, what those of us who visit the high peaks in the summer think of as “normal” — those sunny, warm, snow-free days — is actually the exception in a range where it is more likely to be cold and snowy during the majority of the year.
I made this photograph on one of those sunny days around the beginning of September — a fascinating time up there, when it is still the warm season, but when the signs that winter is coming are unmistakeable. After a week of almost universally clear skies, on this evening we had glorious clouds, and everyone was out admiring and photographing the sky and the evening light on peaks. That light is obvious here, but other elements of this scene seemed important to me, too. Those trees on the rocky rise are examples of what we find in this high country — small trees often living in little more than cracks in the rock. And beyond the trees but below the sunlit ridge is a gigantic terminal glacial moraine, one of the biggest I’ve seen in this range.
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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