Autumn Forest. © Copyright 2012 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Autumn oak leaves add color to a dark forest scene, Yosemite Valley.
This seems like an interesting location to me for several reasons. It is in Yosemite Valley, and in a place where many people often stop, park, and get out of their cars to gaze at an iconic feature of this place. As they do, they look right past and over this fascinating bit of forest. I do not necessarily critique them for this, as I did not pay attention to it the first times I’visited either — it is too easy to be distracted by those icons!
This section of forest is relatively dense, at least on the scale of the Sierra Nevada. Ferns and other plants grow on the ground between the trees, and walking through here can be slightly challenging as you step around this growth and the old branch that have fallen from the trees. It is also a spot where the park has applied more modern thinking about fire — in other words, the area was burned in a management fire designed to thin out that unnaturally thick growth. A closer look reveals that the bases of many of the trees have been charred. But they survived and this forest is now in improved health.
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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