Sometimes finding your way through an obscure direction takes guesswork. This photo was taken several miles out on a trail that faded in and out along the way. With enough persistence and curiosity, the effort can completely pay off without having to turn back or check the maps. You just have to pay attention to what the forest and wilderness are telling you.
After a while, the trail you’re on can become hidden or less obvious to follow. When that happens, I generally mark where I am at and begin to explore around to see if it becomes obvious again. That comes with more risk, but it generally works great before I have to give up on the trail completely.
Sequoia’s fallen without erosion or decay reminds me of how recent they have toppled. Still protected by their thick bark and tannin surface, their eventual disintegration will be weather, exposure, critters, and wildlife. When looking far across this remote meadow, it is easy to see the fallen Sequoia as commonplace.
The character and reach of the Sequoia really make the forest by how they stand in their prominence. It is not enough to merely witness them in their stature but to feel and experience their being by all your senses. By sense of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch.
The affect light has on color varies by its intensity. The surfaces and shapes of natural objects can give out shades of beauty that illuminate the soul. It often has much to do with being in the right place at the right time. Or by bearing the cost and risk to put oneself in a position of the moment. To capture what the experience has to say.
Sometimes the best place to be is in an open field under the shade of swaying branches. While in a slight breeze and in the warmth of the sun. With just the whispering wind to vanish and reappear again. If you listen carefully, it speaks to you.
“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
― John Muir, John of the Mountains.
The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
Wild creatures completely reliant upon the land. Either up near people and towns or in the backcountry, they’re found in different forms of life. Either as herbivores, carnivores, or both. Such as this deer grazing on the forest floor, the time it took for this creature to mature and grow in the wilderness is an experience worth contemplating.
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