Bristlecone Pine The Dancer

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The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, Inyo National Forest, Inyo County
mid afternoon August 3, 2003, slide 03S3-21
Pentax 67 AEII, 55-100mm zoom, Gitzo G1325 Mk2
Drum scanned Fuji Provia 100F 220 film to 200mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature bottom mid right

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Friend Doug and I had two days to road trip in the Owens Valley on the Sierra Nevada's eastern flanks before we started a weeklong backpack out of Onion Valley. The Sierras in this summer of 2003 had been under a 21 daylong period of Mexican Monsoon thunderstorms, which had finally just broken on this day. In the morning we'd hiked up Little Lakes Valley along Rock Creek and I shot at Box Lake, a fine lake reflection also made into a large print. In the afternoon after a tasty Mexican lunch in Bishop, we found ourselves uncertain about where to spend our afternoon productively. The better work along the Eastern Sierra is usually in the morning when sun from the east front lights the slopes. We'd been up in the White Mountains for bristlecone pine work 6 weeks earlier and had not planned to go there on this trip. Did not even bring along any maps. It was a long drive from the valley to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest reserve but once the idea played in my mind it sounded right.

A large cloud kept forming over part of the range ridge top, so we drove out north along the gravel road and shot some well-photographed roadside trees. The cloud had receded some so with not much remaining time left in the afternoon we drove back south. Hiking out with little hope of finding anything I at one point noticed this tree in the distance atop a ridgeline. When we reached the ridgeline and traveled out along its top, we encountered numerous relatively gnarly short trees obviously shaped by wind. The cloud mass was still plaguing our shooting as the sun poked in and out beneath. And Mr. Sun was soon to disappear behind a higher ridge to the west.

We reached this short tree and I was immediately impressed by its astounding form, that from my position, mimicked the legs spread and stretched twisted skyward pose of a dancer. What an absolutely incredibly beautiful long golden root this tree had which make up the dancers legs. Close up we marveled at the beauty of its finely sculptured surface. Certainly the finest wood I've ever seen. Shooting was a bit cramped against another short tree below the shadows of which can be seen lower right. We set up and waited for sun to intermittently peak out before shooting. Hoping for interesting cloud patterns behind the tree to form, I fortunately managed to shoot this very brief pattern when the sun came out for just a few seconds. Waited moments for one ball of cloud to move between two arms as though held in hand and depressed the shutter.

Bristlecone pines, pinus longaeva, tend to grow on just dolomite outcrops that is the grayish white rock here. Along the left side of the trunk one can see bark beneath which is a layer of living cambium transporting nutrients between roots and the chlorophyll factories in its pine needles. The ancient white dolomite rock is metamorphosized limestone from shallow sea bed deposits in the Cambrian Period between 500 and 600 million years ago in the past. A few tufts of grass grow between the foreground cracks in the scant soil. Some kind of cushion plant can be see near grass in the left bottom corner. Here and there a bit of rusty lichen finds a dolomite surface to live on. And one disintegrating pinecone rests in front of the rock a bit from the right frame edge.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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