Where Once a Forest Stood. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.
The skeletons of ponderosa pines at the edge of high desert.
Today I interrupt the stream of photos from our European travels (“Finally!,” a few of you say…) to share something from my first return to the Sierra and points east since we got home. The European trip was great — and I look forward to more like it — but I missed my mountains! There’s a lot more to write about that and about getting back “out there,” but I will save most of it for later posts.
On this morning I was camped above 9000′ in the Eastern Sierra, but I decided (for reasons including deteriorating weather) to head out along the eastern slopes of the range to photograph in the early light. After some less-than-satisfying photography of the eastern escarpment (wildfire smoke was an issue) I headed out into the high desert near Mono Lake and then into a remarkable grove of ponderosa pines, one of the largest (perhaps the largest) in existence. I was aware of the results of a wildfire here years ago, and I wanted to photograph the remains of burned forest, so I turned off on an unmarked route and ended up here, where dead trees still stand starkly against the desert landscape.
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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
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I was fishing in the north woods of MN years ago, when I drove down a logging road on the edge of Boundary Waters Wilderness. I found myself in a grove of majestic trees. But these were not native to this region. They appeared to be Ponderosas.
Eventually, I came to a sign that confirmed it. These Ponderosas had been planted here many decades ago after a big forest fire, and had now become a huge forest.
Southern yellow pines are often found around the state, also transplants. Yellow pines resemble Ponderosas in many ways, including the jigsaw bark, but they only have two long needles, not three.
Hi Bill,
Wow, that is a surprise — I didn’t know that they had been planted in such places. In California this huge grove is in a near-desert region roughly in between June Lake and Mono Lake, and they tend to be widely spaced.
I recall in college being surprised to hear the California redwoods have been planted in many places around the globe, too.