Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains

Walking amidst bristlecone pine trees is a sensual delight. The eyes get to feast upon trees that twist and turn into the most amazing shapes, with colors that range from tans to golds and browns, along with blacks and grays to the deep green of the needles. The scents are piney and fresh, the air is often cold and the wind tends to blow as it heads eastward, rising up over the White Mountains, heading inland.



Even the windy road one drives to reach the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is delightful, with views of the distant Sierra Nevada that extends from north to south as far as the eyes can see.



These pines are among the oldest living things on the planet, and reach ages of more than 4,000 years. They don't get very tall, and the harsh conditions where they live results in extremely strong, twisted, gnarly growth.





Some trees are full and bushy, with dense foliage, while others are extremely gnarled with mostly dead branches. Sometimes a tree is just about barren of bark, with beautiful colors and swirls and textures that tantalize the eye and make one reach out to touch the tree, the sense of touch confirming what the eyes behold, or not. Some trees have a small swath of bark extending from the roots up the tree, twisting this way and that, reaching up to a branch where needles grow, showing the tree is still alive, along that one stretch of bark.



A walk along the 4 mile Methuselah Trail is one that delights. It is a walk of the senses, and an experience to be cherished. So many trees with so many colors and shapes. Touching trees when textures beckon is irresistible.






You can read more about bristlecone pines at the PBS NOVA website.

Panorama views can be found at the same website.

For directions and more information on the White Mountain bristlecones, which are found within Inyo National Forest, visit the USFS website.

Solar Eclipse May 2012

The solar eclipse of May 20th 2012 created some very artsy crescents when viewed through filtering leaf shadows.



I was not in a good location to see the eclipse, with gigantic mountains rising steeply upward and the sun just about to go behind them, but when I saw the pretty crescents, I quickly grabbed my camera and zipped around town, looking for buildings that had nice crescents cast upon them.




I have no idea what viewing the sun directly does to the eyes, but upon talking with a couple friends, it seems they had done so and when I called them about 10 minutes after they gazed directly at the sun, they still were having vision troubles.

Curious, I did an internet search to find out if there truly is a reason to not view the sun during an eclipse. Apparently there is. One does not want to look at the sun unless it is entirely blocked. An interesting article on the topic can be found here and another article here.

African Grey Parrot

It may not be possible to travel to other countries, but with publications and the internet, all sorts of "virtual vacationing" is possible. In this case, a calendar publication of a beautiful African Grey Parrot inspired me to browse through online photos of similar birds, and then to figure out what the forests/jungles look like where they live. The motivation was a drawing class I took this past semester, and a piece of scratchboard upon which I "drew" or scratched the bird.



If you've never used scratchboard it is a very interesting medium to work with. There is proper scratchboard, which is a clay covered surface that has about 1/8th of an inch of clay applied to it. The surface is white but gets painted with black ink, then the ink is slowly removed by scratching it off with a needle or wire, or a scraper of some sort. The stuff is not cheap. One piece that is 8 x 12 will cost about $10 or more. A much more affordable version to learn upon is a very thin sheet of cardboard with a very thin coat of ink. With this version, a dozen sheets of the same size will cost about $5. The above drawing was done on the latter type of cheap scratchboard.

Time wise: many hours to create, perhaps 6 hours.

The above original artwork copyright © Jackie Williams 2012. All rights reserved.

Bodie Ghost Town

The Bodie Ghost Town is a fascinating piece of the old American West, with dozens and dozens of wooden buildings in a state of "arrested decay" and a number of metal clad buildings too. The town was the site of a gold bonanza back in the late 1800s.







The town is now a state park and for most of the buildings one can look through glass windows, or through wire mesh and see the falling apart or dust covered remnants of the items that are inside the buildings. There are many houses, a school, post office, fire house, mercantile, electricity building, and the mining buildings too. The church has an old organ inside, lots of pews, and a tin on the floor just inside the door (which has a wire barrier to keep people out). The church still has a collection going on with a pan filled with coins tossed in through the openings in the wire mesh.



There are a couple dozen or so houses still standing (most were burned during a fire years back), and in one of the houses it is okay to walk inside and see what things look like. The nicer houses had wall paper, which has now peeled off the walls in big sheets and pretty much hangs there, but not against the wall any longer. Beds in those days were very short. If a person were more than 5 1/2 feet tall, I don't think they'd fit. One bed had donations going on.





Bodie is a California State Park, and is located on a side road just off of highway 395, north of the town of Lee Vining (which is due East of Yosemite National Park). It is well worth taking a few hours to visit. For more information, visit the park's website.