There are rare stretches within the Narrows where the canyon widens enough, and enough soil has accumulated in steep banks along the river course--and held firm against the recurring floods--that trees gain purchase and have room and time to grow larger than one might expect. This is one such place where a few stalwart conifers have been able to reach considerable size nestled against the sheer sandstone walls and where a copse of coloful maples has created a miniature forest home on a steep slope little more than twenty or thirty feet wide measured from the river's edge to the canyon wall.

it's a delightful little spot, even if not one that clearly reveals itself in a photograph as even being in the Narrows. Adding to my enjoyment of this little respite from hiking over rolling river rocks, I saw a strong-looking eight-point buck at the water's edge just below where I made this image. If he actually lived there, he'd be pretty safe from any local carnivores, I expect, but he'd have to walk a pretty good ways downriver to find a date.

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Countless millennia of relatively quiet wind, water and chemical erosion reveals an incredible landscape of pleasing tumult at the foot of the sharp, glacier-carved peaks of the Sierra Nevada in southern California.

These jumbled and tumbled features of the Alabama Hills are made of the same stuff, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, as the Sierra Nevada's peaks that tower in cloudless skies just beyond the top of the frame here, but with much different stories since their shared hot origins deep in the earth. The glaciations of the relatively-recent past that shaped the highland alpine reaches didn't much reach or endure in the lowlands this far south in North America.

I've taken a shot very similar to this before on another morning where weather conditions allowed me to focus my attention more solely on the details of the Alabama Hills rather than being drawn always to include the dramatic high peaks beyond, but I wanted to try to catch it again here appreciating the nice orange-pink morning light that visually brought this amazing landscape to life.

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Tags:   Alabama Hills 395 Lone Pine California Nikon Nikkor Landscape Mount Whitney photobenedict Lone Pine Peak Mt. Whitney Sierra Nevada Manzanar Sunrise Rocks Rocky Boulders Crags Clouds Peaks Ridges Hills Slopes Scree Fields Boulder Erosion Eroded Cloudy Wisps Mood High Sierra Dawn Inyo National Forest Eastern Sierra Soft Subtle Light Sierra Crest Morning

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After a few days of acclimating rain, the clouds parted serendipitously at sunset one evening as we wandered through beautiful Killarney National Park and many other gorgeous areas in southwestern Ireland a couple of years ago. It was my first time in Ireland, and the landscape, culture and people were amazing, though one of the more memorable aspects of the trip for me turned out to be simply driving around on the tiny, sharply winding country roads that were ostensibly for two-way traffic, but which were barely wide enough for one car and tightly lined everywhere with ancient stone walls covered with rain-forest dense greenery.

I can still remember the sounds of the ferns that covered many of those stone walls slapping relentlessly against the sides of the car as we gained confidence and drove some of those pinched tracks obeying the quite liberal speed limit signs (rare though those signs were) perhaps more than common sense given our inexperience.

When night fell or the rains resumed with extra vigor, there seemed always an inn nearby, often with a log on the fire, a hot meal, and pint of Guinness at the ready to revive the weary traveler. Such a wonderful place.

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Tags:   Killarney National Park Kerry Ireland Muckross Abbey County Kerry Kenmare Travel Beautiful Nikon photobenedict Ring of Kerry Sunset Lake Reflection Mountain Mountains Dusk Water Evening Night Lough Leane Clouds Parting Storm Rain Landscape

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A quick trip to the Outer Banks (OBX to folks around these parts) in search of some delicious fresh seafood turned even better when the westward cloud bank somewhat surprisingly pushed south and broke apart, leaving a nice path for sunset light to burst through and put on quite a beautiful show over the iconic Bodie Island Light Station, in the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, North Carolina.

This lighthouse and its surrounds may be among the most photographed places in the Carolinas, but during the cold season you can have the place to yourself, or nearly so, most sunrises and sunsets. It's absolutely worth the extra fleece layer or two. I only wish the light was set come on a little earlier before dark (this is about 20 mins after sunset, and the light still wasn't on). Like a mariner from the age of sail, I would have been very heartened to see the lighthouse's rotating beam, and I really would have liked to have a sunstar from that light in this image. But, alas, 'twas not to be.

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Tags:   Bodie Island Light Station Lighthouse Dusk National Park Outer Banks North Carolina Manteo Nags Head Bodie Island Cape Hatteras National Seashore Nikon Landscape Sunset photobenedict Beach Seashore Atlantic Ocean Salt Marsh Marsh Boardwalk Long Exposure Singh-Ray Clouds Pink Color Trees Spring Kitty Hawk Albemarle Sound

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Few things are more intellectually and conceptually interesting, and confounding, than attempting to understand wave-particle duality and the role of the observer in quantum mechanics (as many of us first explored as young people being shown versions of the famous double-slit experiment). This is not that or anything like it, of course, as these dunes built of miniscule grains can all be appreciated and described in the classical world. But spending a quiet sunrise in Death Valley among these beautiful wave forms visibly borne of billions upon billions of ever-restless particles got me thinking crazy abstractly nonetheless . . .

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Tags:   Mesquite Dunes Death Valley National Park California Sunrise Nikon Landscape Desert Sand Dunes Light Shadow photobenedict Winter Beautiful Dunes Warm Cool Morning Dawn Stovepipe Wells Gold Golden Yellow

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