Spring Cattails. © Copyright 2023 G Dan Mitchell.
Spring cattails growing along a trail in the San Francisco Bay Area hills.
Although I love to visit and photograph special, exotic, and distant places, there’s a lot to be said for the local spots I’ve come to know over decades of repeated visits. Because they are familiar it is easy to overlook how special they actually are — and how special my relationship with them is. This unassuming little photograph is from such a place.
There is a county park a half hour drive from my home, perhaps a dozen miles away. The park is large and mostly undeveloped, encompassing hardwood forest and grassland hills crisscrossed by old gravel roadways and narrow trails. Long ago I started going there at least in part for the mundane purposes of training for the real trips, my High Sierra backpacking adventures. But gradually the place grew on me as I hiked there in all seasons and all conditions and began to discover little off-the-grid places that few visit. I went there for an evening hike last week, and I passed by a surprising patch of cattails near the end of my walk as the light started to fade.
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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