[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the yellowstone fires, 20 years later

It seems a lot of my recent posts have had some­thing to do with fire. Liv­ing in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia dur­ing the fall, fire is a con­stant worry at the edges of the city. This year saw some bad exam­ples, but we’ve got our fin­gers crossed that the worst is over.

When I vis­ited Yel­low­stone last spring, reminders of the mas­sive 1988 fires were every­where, with fire-downed trees still to be seen through­out the park. But there were also signs of recov­ery every place you looked. Some places the fire looked like a dis­tant mem­ory, other places it looked like only last month, a reminder that in a land dom­i­nated by cold and snow much of the year, recov­ery can come slowly.

I took a lot of tourist pic­tures that trip. I also turned the cam­era on some of the acres in the park where the burns were still a strong pres­ence. Four of the images will be part of the upcom­ing 2009 Juried Bien­nial Exhi­bi­tion at the William D. Can­non Art Gallery in Carls­bad, in North-County San Diego. The jurors of this year’s show, Stephen Hep­worth, Cura­tor of the Uni­ver­sity Art Gallery at UCSD, and Sue Green­wood, Direc­tor of Green­wood Fine Art in Laguna Beach, selected forty-eight works by twenty-seven artists.

The pub­lic open­ing is Decem­ber 13, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the show runs through February7 of next year. It’s a city-run space and is attached to the pub­lic library. Admis­sion is free. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood!

Here are a cou­ple of the images that will be in the show. The first, “Burned Slope II,” fea­tures a site in the north of the park where recov­ery seemed just about the slowest.

A pho­to­graph can describe things clearly. You can see the slow decay of the wood, along with sub­tle signs of regeneration.

But I’m also inter­ested in a pho­to­graph that can reach for things that aren’t at all about quan­ti­fy­ing the world. I like how the slope here gives you a sense of simul­ta­ne­ously look­ing down on the scene as well as out across it, mak­ing the space–and maybe even time–seem ambigu­ous, like a puz­zle need­ing to be worked out slowly.

The sec­ond, “Hoop on Burned Tree,” was shot behind the employee hous­ing near Tower Falls. The scene made me laugh. When life give you fire and burned trees, well, why not take advan­tage of a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion and make your­self a bas­ket­ball court next to a scorched pine?

December 04 2008 | Categories: art • landscape • photography • places | Tags: basketball • Carlsbad • fire • William D. Cannon Art Gallery • Yellowstone National Park | 4 Comments »

in the garden

I’ve been work­ing on print­ing some of my Yel­low­stone pho­tographs. While I wait for the scan­ner to scan and the printer to do its thing it’s a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to step out­side and snap some ran­dom pic­tures of what’s going on in the garden.

The first Chero­kee Pur­ple tomato, grown from seed saved from farmer’s mar­ket toma­toes last year: I’ve been watch­ing it turn color for a week now, and I thought it was finally time to pick it. It’s smaller than most of the other fruits on the plant, but I’m guess­ing it’ll be pretty tasty…

Peru­vian daf­fodil (Hymeno­cal­lis fes­talis): John’s sis­ter sent down a lit­tle pack­age of presents the last time she vis­ited over ten years ago. A bulb of this plant was in that pack­age. That one bulb has mul­ti­plied all over the place, some in places where we put it, oth­ers in places where soil with the some bulb off­sets was moved to. And some are even com­ing in places–like the lawn–where it prob­a­bly have only arrived via seed.

This plant clearly has a life wish. No prob­lem. We like it. It’s happy with lit­tle or heavy water­ing, dap­pled shade to full sun. And it smells great.

A moth that died in the arms of Drosera dichotoma ‘Giant,’ a car­niv­o­rous sun­dew in the bog gar­den: When I first put out some car­ni­vores I was think­ing, “Ooh cool! Bug-eating plants!” Now that I’m start­ing to see all the carnage–this moth, plenty of gnats, and a beau­ti­ful orange dragonfly–I’m start­ing to worry about my ethics. I’m a veg­e­tar­ian, so why can’t the plants be too? Still, I guess it’s some sort of karmic pay­back: I eat veg­gies, so some of my veg­gies eat meat.

The flow­er­ing stem of another car­ni­vore, Drosera x ‘Marston Dragon.’ Droseras have a rep­u­ta­tion for reseed­ing like weeds. No weeds spot­ted so far, but it’s early yet in the season…

This sad lit­tle lupine is the descen­dant of a pack­age of seeds that were given out at a wed­ding we went to on the Olympic Penin­sula in Wash­ing­ton State. There was a bare spot in the yard, so the pack­age got emp­tied into it. But there was a rea­son the spot was bare: The area got almost no water and even weeds had a hard time get­ting a hold. The lupines never have attained much size–this one is less than four inches tall–but enough keep com­ing back to remind us of that misty sum­mer day.

And oh yeah, here are a cou­ple of the images I’m print­ing up. The first one: Undine Falls, Yel­low­stone National Park. The sec­ond: Tower Falls View­point, Yel­low­stone National park.

July 27 2008 | Categories: my garden | Tags: carnivorous plants • Cherokee Purple tomato • Drosera dichotoma • Drosera Marston Dragon • Hymenocallis festalis • in bloom • lupines • Peruvian daffodil • Tower Falls • Undine Falls • Yellowstone National Park | 2 Comments »

virtual vacations: now

Don’t you love it when you talk about two sep­a­rate things and then some­thing hap­pens that forces an unex­pected con­ver­gence of the two? Ear­lier I was doing some Google Street View sight­see­ing of celebrity gar­dens. And I’ve posted a few notes (1 2) and pho­tos from my recent Yel­low­stone trip.

Thanks go to Peter, who the other day pointed out that Google now has added ten parks and recre­ation areas to Street View, includ­ing Yel­low­stone! So you want to see what the view is along Yellowstone’s Fire­hole Lake Drive? Just drop into Street View to find out. Of course, like all things vir­tual, it lacks some­thing of the actual. How will you smell the lodge­pole pines or get a whiff of the sul­fur fumes ris­ing from the springs?


While Street View is a great tool and can let you get a low-res look at places you’d never visit, it’s really just a pre­sen­ta­tion tool for canned pho­tog­ra­phy. The views are updated peri­od­i­cally, yes, but the peri­ods span many months. What you’re look­ing at today is soooo yes­ter­day, and in some ways it feels so Web 1.0.

Web cams offer a com­ple­ment to Street View and can pro­vide an imme­di­acy the for­mer tool lacks. In fact, if you’re inter­ested in the Old Faith­ful Geyser and Upper Geyser Basin at Yel­low­stone, there’s a recently installed web cam at the attrac­tion, with images updated at inter­vals of less than a minute.

Street View does a nice job of con­quer­ing space, giv­ing you the free­dom to move around a map and see what there is to see from dif­fer­ent loca­tions, and web cams can con­quer time by giv­ing you almost-immediate, up-to-date views of things as they’re happening.

What’s the next killer app? What will con­quer both space and time?

Will all cars have cam­eras and GPS installed and then have the images beamed to some cen­tral loca­tion for real-time descrip­tions avail­able to any­one on the web so that you can see what things look like right now? And if that hap­pens, who will be the cen­tral loca­tion serv­ing up the images? Google? The Depart­ment of Home­land Security?

June 19 2008 | Categories: landscape • photography • places | Tags: Google Maps • Google Street Views • virtual tourism • Yellowstone National Park | No Comments »

yellowstone “wild” flowers

There were a num­ber of spring flow­ers doing their thing at Yel­low­stone a cou­ple weeks ago. I saw a patch of bright yel­low and took this photo:

Yes, dan­de­lions. They were all over. I talked to a ranger nearby who said that the park has a big prob­lem with inva­sive species. He wasn’t a botan­i­cal expert, he said, but he thought there was a true wild dan­de­lion, as well as the gar­den ver­sion. Unfor­tu­nately, this to me looks like the gar­den ver­sion. They were all over the park, as well as all over Idaho on the way there.

June 12 2008 | Categories: landscape • places | Tags: dandelions • invasive species • weeds • Yellowstone National Park | No Comments »

soil problems

So you think you have prob­lems with unco­op­er­a­tive gar­den soil? Here’s a juniper try­ing to hold on to life at Mam­moth Hot Springs, in Yellowstone:

June 11 2008 | Categories: gardening • rambles | Tags: bad soil • Mammoth Hot Springs • Yellowstone National Park | No Comments »

on the road–part 2

Late on the night of Day 2 I roll into Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Mon­u­ment. Like Yel­low­stone it show­cases some strik­ing vol­canic fea­ture, in this case recent erup­tions along the local rift zone in the Earth’s crust. Here are a cou­ple shots from Day 3, images of an intense wild­flower bloom and of resid­ual ice in Indian Tun­nel, a lava tube you can explore.

Then it was on to Yel­low­stone. Here are some of the pics from there, in no real order.

Upper Falls of the Yel­low­stone River:

Tourists at Artist’s Point over­look­ing the Lower Falls of the Yel­low­stone River. The artist in ques­tion is Thomas Moran, who used this van­tage point for his famous image of the Grand Canyon of the Yel­low­stone River.

Spring thaw begin­ning on Yel­low­stone Lake:

Clouds and ice, Yel­low­stone Lake:

Sun­set Lake, Black Sand Basin, Yel­low­stone:

A cou­ple shots from Mid­way Geyser Basin, from the brink or Excel­sior Geyser:

The Jeep didn’t care for the cold, wet weather, and took its own vaca­tion by the side of Yel­low­stone Lake.

View­point at Ledge Geyser, Black Sand Basin, Yel­low­stone, with some of the only sun­shine all trip:

The worst of the trip’s bison jams, this one when a herd of about five dozen was mov­ing from their break­fast to lunch graz­ing loca­tions:

Algae in the geyser runoff at Nor­ris Geyser Basin:

What? No pic­tures of Old Faith­ful? Sorry. There’s a cou­ple hun­dred more of these tourist pic­tures but I’ll spare you. Once I start print­ing up some of my more “seri­ous” pho­to­graphic work and have some­thing to show I’ll post a few more images.

June 08 2008 | Categories: landscape • photography • places | Tags: geysers • hot springs • tourists • Valley of the Moon National Monument • viewpoints • Yellowstone National Park | 2 Comments »