Framed by a Patagonian Beech (Nothofagus sp.), wild morning clouds hover above a southern finger of the Hielo Sur, and are reflected in the waters of Lago Dickson, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile. The vast quantity of ice in this part of the world creates insistent katabatic winds. These are formed because the ice-draped mountain ranges cool the air, which then sinks rapidly downslope, cooling and sinking and gaining speed as it goes.

Sometime before dawn, an atmospheric equilibrium must have been achieved, because the winds were largely absent, and had cleared away the cloud cover that had obscured the Hielo Sur the previous day. Now the ice was resplendent and white beneath the dark branches of the shoreline trees. I would love to return to Patagonia for the austral autumn, when the beech trees transform from green to brilliant yellow and orange.

For those familiar with some of my other photos from this trip to Patagonia, yes, I did employ the knee-pod yet again here...

Explored 2017-03-14

Tags:   Andes Andes del Sur Chile Chilean Andes Glacier Hielo Sur Landscape National Park Nothofagus Patagonia Patagonian Andes Patagonian Beech Southern Andes Torres del Paine clouds dawn ice lake morning morning light mountains reflection silhouette sunrise tree water

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Creating an effect like an artist with a palette knife, the rising sun slathers color across a rich canvas of layered clouds east of Boulder, Colorado.

In late December a raging prairie fire swept through this very spot, driven by 100+ mile per hour winds and fueled onward by the general lack of snow cover that might have otherwise slowed it down. I haven't returned to this vantage since the fire, and there is a strong possibility that the house you see here in the distance no longer stands. Over 1000 homes were burned, and I think everyone in the local community knows someone who lost something.

Tags:   Boulder County Colorado Fall Great Plains Landscape autumn clouds crepuscular crepuscular light dawn high plains magic hour morning morning light plains sunrise Boulder United States

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Standing amongst their spent brethren from the previous summer, yucca blossoms (Yucca glauca) are backlit by the rising sun on Davidson Mesa, near Boulder, Colorado.

Carrying on with an increasingly strong tradition of the camera picking up details beyond what I noticed in the moment, this image revealed some interesting surprises when I peered more closely during processing. The bright dots on the three right-most stalks are the translucent bodies of aphids, taking their morning meals as the nascent light shines through them, each one a tiny lamp beaming salutation to another journey around earth's axis.

I came here to watch the moon set behind the Southern Rockies, and I found the yucca blossoms equally enthralling. These plants are also known as Spanish Bayonet, Soapweed Yucca and Great Plains Yucca. While the name 'Spanish Bayonet' speaks to the pointed horrors that the first western people who visited this part of the world thrust upon the First Nations inhabitants, the name Soapweed Yucca hints to one of the many gifts the First Nations people learned to receive from this plant. When excavated, peeled and pounded, the root and stem will yield soap, suitable for cleaning blankets, garments and body. The leaves, too, can be fashioned into rope, mats and pads.

The fact that the Arapaho and Cheyenne figured out how to meet all of their needs, year round, from native plants and animals continues to humble me when I stop to really appreciate what it means. Although the buffalo were certainly a large part of how this land once supported people, of equal importance were the many ways in which plants were used, for food, fiber and medicine. I often walk these hills that I have lived in for over 15 years and know, with utmost certainty, that were the trappings of western civilization to disappear tomorrow, I would not survive a single winter in this place I call home. So what does 'home' mean when I know so few of its secrets?

Explored 2017-07-05

Tags:   Boulder Boulder County Colorado Davidson Mesa Landscape Soapweed Spanish Bayonet Yucca glauca clouds dawn flowers morning morning light sunrise wildflower wildflowers yucca Louisville United States US

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The full moon and the first light of dawn over Boulder's Flatirons, with a view up Bear Creek Canyon between the north and south portions of the formation. The summit of Bear Peak is just out of view on the left of the photo, and the Nebelhorn, the large knob on the north flank of the Peak, is just beginning to glow.

Tags:   Flatirons snow winter full moon clouds sunrise dawn Boulder alpenglow National Center for Atmospheric Research Bear Peak Bear Creek Canyon South Boulder

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Sunrise light warms the underbellies of multi-layered clouds near my home on a December morning in Boulder, Colorado.

Looking back at the human experience of this past year, it has involved tragedy for far too many families around the world, and fear and loss for a good many more. Co-inhabiting the space of loss, sorrow, dreams postponed, and relationships stalled is also a collection of lessons. I think this year finally taught the majority of us that ignoring climate change is like ignoring part of your house being on fire. Because quite literally people lost their homes to fire all over the west this last year. I grew up in Western Oregon, and it is hard to imagine the forests that I remember from my youth now immolated over such a vast expanse. Of course, record-breaking wildfires afflicted California, Washington, and many other places, as well as my current home state of Colorado. For those not living in fire-prone ecosystems, this past year also delivered more hurricanes than have ever been recorded in an Atlantic hurricane season. We also know that these storms carried more water and energy than they have in the past, and they tended to stall out once they made landfall, delivering unprecedented deluges to the land below. This water that is driven inland by battering winds falls on a landscape with fewer wetlands than at any point in the holocene, thanks to our industrious activities. Without wetlands to absorb moisture over large scales, catastrophic flooding is the result, and frequently in communities built ill-advisedly on floodplains.

Not to ignore the elephant in the room, there are also the lessons that COVID teaches us, should we care to pause and listen. Why is it that COVID-19 was able to make the leap from bat populations into humans? Ultimately, I think the answer comes down to the simple count of how many of us human beings there are on planet Earth at this moment in time. Via our quest for dietary protein, we have come to dominate Earth, and in many places protein takes the form of wild animals, and specifically bats in the case of COVID-19. We ourselves are a monoculture, from a biological species point of view. When one looks at wild places, what is striking is the biodiversity and the interconnectedness of successful, persistent life. Sir David Attenborough does an exemplary job conveying this tapestry of richness in his most recent magnum opus, "A Life on Our Planet." How successfully, then, will a monoculture survive and persist? As Attenborough advocates, we need to invest ourselves in re-wilding the planet and becoming custodians of its biodiversity.

Along with the difficult lessons, I feel like there has also been hope and a re-discovery of the importance of the relationships in our lives. I found an opportunity to connect more with my wife, and we now go on long walks together with the dog on most mornings before I have to retreat upstairs to the home office. I also get to hear my boys playing their instruments throughout the day. At larger scales, and despite a pandemic, more people in the United States participated in a democratic election than ever before in the history of the country. On average, the people have stated that they want a leader who will attempt to aggressively address climate change, and to do so while creating jobs in the process. For all of our sakes, I hope he succeeds. Imagine what could be accomplished if we really tried, and if we all began to pull in a constructive direction? We got to the moon once, could we not also figure out how to live more sustainably on this planet, our only home? Do we really have a choice?

Tags:   Boulder Boulder County Colorado Landscape Winter clouds dawn magic hour morning morning light sunrise

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