Tag Archives: fall

“AutumnIsAroundTheCorner” Day (Morning Musings for 8/18/14)

August 18, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

Late summer morning fog clears about oak and grass-covered California hills. (And yes, it is the same image I shared earlier as today’s daily photograph.)

I first encountered “AutumnIsAroundTheCorner” day — which is my own invention, so don’t try to look it up! — many years ago on a Sierra Nevada backpacking trip. I recall the day specifically, even though it was decades ago. At the time I didn’t know quite what it was even though I clearly sensed the symptoms. As we hiked, we passed an expansive, remote meadow in which a large group of deer were feeding. It was a summer day by the calendar, but it felt different from all of the previous days of that summer. The day was windy and we felt compelled to wear warmer clothes than on other days on this trip. After that I began to notice it more regularly and pay attention to it, and I am now aware of its arrival every year.

It comes unannounced and not on any specific day. For me it typically shows up on a day in the middle of August, at a point when we are just a bit closer to the end of summer than to its beginning. I suspect that its arrival is a rather subjective thing, and that it varies by location and each person’s exposure and sensitivity to natural patterns — though this week when I pointed out its arrival to my wife while we were walking, she agreed that she felt it, too.

I cannot quite put my finger on what it is that I sense, even though I’m certain that it is here when I do sense it. I think that the quality of light has something to do with it, and yesterday we both agreed that it made sense to speak of this light as being somehow “softer.” I know it when I see it, and when I then pay attention to the light I detect a certain loss of clarity in the atmosphere, almost as if there is a bit more of a luminous haze.

But it isn’t just the light. One August I was backpacking across a meadow in the Yosemite Sierra and suddenly becoming aware of it. Again, although I recognized what I was feeling, I wasn’t completely clear about the specific cause, though I had a very clear sense that it had to do with a change in the sound quality of the wind and the way it carried across space. More recently I experienced it while hiking though a place much like that in the photograph accompanying this post, and as I hiked I tried to understand as many aspects of it as I could. The morning breeze had a crisp edge, even though the sunlight was warm. There was a glowing haze as morning fog cleared. I walked past piles of fallen oak leaves and noticed a faint sweet, musty autumn fragrance, and as I walked on them I felt and heard their crunch. I wondered whether it might be that, at some subconscious level, I was aware that the sun was now a bit lower in the sky, or if I was more aware that seasonal plants had stopped growing and were now in decline.

On this day, whenever it arrives and without any doubt, I have a certain awareness of the inevitable approach of autumn and the fading away of summer. Until this day I live in the patterns of summer, taking the warm weather for granted, complaining about the heat, and making summer plans and perhaps putting them off, comfortable in the knowledge that there is plenty of summer left. I watch my vegetable garden grow and anticipate the ripening of vegetables and fruit. But then, on “AutumnIsAroundTheCorner” day, my perspective switches — now summer is no longer coming nor here, but instead coming to an end. Summer things must be done soon. It is time to plant a fall garden. And out there on the horizon of my thinking now are autumn and then winter… my favorite seasons of the year.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.© Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Hanging Valley

August 6, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Yosemite’s Bridal Veil fall emerges from a hanging valley among monolithic granite cliffs in late afternoon light

Late on a winter afternoon, the shadow of cliffs to the west rise up past Yosemite’s Bridal Veil fall and into the hanging valley from which it springs. The valley’s still-sunny eastern slope is covered with brush and trees, but the rest of the scene is almost entirely one of granite, from the relatively gentle V-shaped valley of Bridal Veil Creek to the vertical cliffs of the wall over which the water flows and the base of taller Sentinel Rocks beyond.

Bridal Veil fall comes out of a classic hanging valley. Apparently the creek descended toward a much older Merced River canyon even before glaciers finished (for now, anyway!) carving Yosemite Valley, and this creek cut is own beautiful V-shaped valley. (The V-shape is characteristic of river valleys. If you want to understand more of the life of a creek, when you visit Yosemite you can drive toward Glacier Point and cross the very shallow valley of this creek at a higher elevation. I’ve cross-country skied to it a number of times.) When the Valley was cut into its deeper U-shaped form, the existing valley of Bridal Veil creek was left… hanging.

Commentary, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Thinking Aloud

Is It Ever Too Early To Dream of Aspen Color?

July 28, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 2 Comments

Small stands of aspens with autumn leaves stand in front of a talus slope, eastern Sierra Nevada.

Is it ever too early to dream of aspen color? In a word, no.

Every summer around this time I start to think about fall color, and for me that primarily means eastern Sierra Nevada aspen color. I’m not quite sure what triggers the thoughts. Sometimes when I’m in the Sierra — and I am not there right now — it can be some nearly imperceptible changes in the light, the atmosphere, the patterns of annual growth, or even the sound of the wind. It might also be something as simple as my now innate “tuning in” to annual cycles, something that I think we are all more able to do than we might imagine.

On hot northern California days like this one, it certainly does not feel at all like autumn. Yet, I know that the first real signs of the seasonally change will appear high in the Sierra in barely 8 weeks, and the aspen color will arrive only a few weeks after that.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Granite, Falling Water

May 31, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A spring creek cascades across dark fractured granite, Yosemite National Park

Yosemite’s Tioga Pass Road (Highway 120), which passes through the park and across the Sierra crest at Tioga Pass, opened earlier than usual this year. It was not the earliest recorded opening, but the very small snow pack of the winter season meant that in early May it looked much more like a typical June. There was some snow left on the ground, but rather than being the deep and compacted remains of months of winter snow it was mostly what was left from a single spring storm a few days earlier.

In a more typical year, a drive over this route on the opening weekend provides an experience that is, to my way of thinking, mostly about water. Not only do we get to see vast remaining snow banks holding water that will irrigate the Sierra for months to come, but the spring melt brings wild, watery scenes nearly everywhere. Waterfalls and creeks appear in places where there is almost no evidence of their existence weeks or months later. Creeks spill across the highway flood sections of it. Larger creeks and rivers overflow their banks and turn meadows into lakes. But not this year. The photograph features a small section of a larger cascade which bounces down a steep and rugged section of granite boulders. Beautiful as it is, it should look like this in late June rather than early May.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: fall

“AutumnIsAroundTheCorner” Day (Morning Musings for 8/18/14)

Hanging Valley

Is It Ever Too Early To Dream of Aspen Color?

Granite, Falling Water

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.