About This Picture

Photographed at the crack of dawn in the Patriarch Grove of bristlecone pines, at about 11,000 feet in the White Mountains of California, in August 2004.

This area's combination of relatively thin air at high altitude, arid conditions in the rainshadow of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, cold winters, scorching summers, and exposure to scouring winds, make for challenging conditions for life to flourish. Vegetation grows very slowly, and, once dead, remains as skeletal forms for ages (since the area can't support much fungi nor insects to decompose it). Trees and groundcover are sparse, and the wide open spaces are eerily silent, in the absence of animal and insect activity, trickling water, and leaves to rustle in the wind.

In this picture I show a wide sweep of land, from my feet to the distant ridge top, with little else to be seen but two trees, both dead, one fallen against the other... like monuments to life's struggle to eke out an existence in this challenging land.

Canon 1Ds, 24-70 f/2.8 lens @ 35mm.