Saturday, August 22, 2009

Remembering Spring




I was cruising some photos that I took earlier this year for a class and I found these two. Together, they show the explosion of spring. Feel free to click on the images for larger views.

These two photos show a wetland area just South of Bellingham, Washington. The wetland was formed years ago when beavers made a dam that saturated the area with water. The less water tolerant fir trees died off and were replaced with many different wetland species. These images are taken 56 days apart from one another, the former on April 8th, and the latter on June 3rd (17 days until the solstice). Together they show the radical change that spring brings at almost 49 degrees North Latitude in the coastal lowlands of Washington State. When Spring shows up here, it comes on fast. You can see how life is just starting to come out of hibernation in the top photo (the little yellow spots are skunk cabbage, one of my favorite indicators of spring). Then in the bottom photo, spring is fully underway and new growth is everywhere.

The photos were super fun to take, I climbed around 60 feet up in a huge Western Red Cedar each time. The view is great, and the calmness of the mind while swaying high in a tree... hard to describe.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting juxtaposition, "calmness of the mind while swaying in a tree". I find the same calm on my bike as you probably do too, sometimes stillness is the hardest for me. Cool pictures, are you going to add a summer, fall, and snow shots this year? Good to see another post up.

Patrick said...

Yeah Alex, That's the hope. A bunch of different scenes from the tree. I've found that if I pay attention to trees, there are many times, more often then not, where there will be no perceivable wind but the tree still dances.

Anonymous said...

tree-top tango in SPD's and lycra, does your girlfriend know about this... I'm gonna keep my eyes out for a spot to do this around here, maybe a pic a week, same place, same time of day, and post it each week on the blog.

Patrick said...

oh man, spd's and spando sounds dangerous! Tango can be dangerous too, if someone slips you could get nutted. I'd love to see some Ashland ch-ch-ch-changes.