Curvy Ladies
Photo Location: Ophir, Colorado
Most aspens grow straight — white columns reaching for the sky in neat formation, the way aspen groves almost always look in photographs. But in certain corners of Colorado's high country, where the snowpack is heavy and the wind comes from directions the trees weren't expecting, they grow differently. They curve. They bend and twist and develop a slow, organic rhythm that no amount of time in the mountains quite prepares you for the first time you see it.
I came around a bend in the trees and stopped walking. There was a group of them — curved and graceful, their trunks arcing away from vertical in long smooth lines, the white bark catching the light differently than straight aspens do, the whole stand moving like a slow conversation between the trees and whatever forces shaped them over decades. The name came immediately. There was no other word for it.
This is what the American West keeps hiding in its forests for the people willing to walk far enough — the ordinary subjects that turn out to be extraordinary the moment the light is right and the eye finally adjusts to what it's actually seeing.
TruLife acrylic-mounted limited edition of 50, signed by me with Certificate of Authenticity. Free US shipping.
Image copyright © Jongas Fine Art Photography.
